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Did you think that you were dreaming?
Dec. 8th, 2004 09:35 pmI still have a subfolder named "Nashville" in my email, under "My love". There are only ten messages in it.. the last one dated 1/31/2000. I don't know why I haven't removed it.. put those ten messages with the rest of the emails from M. I'm very big on folders, but I wouldn't normally create a folder for such a small group of messages.
We always knew that it would be M that would make the move across the big pond. We talked about doing it the other way, but there were just so many reasons it wouldn't be practical for us. The original plan was different from what actually happened, though--Dell was just opening a location in Nashville, and M tried to transfer within the company. I was still in college, so I might transfer there as well, or we would have a closer long-distance relationship than before, doing the commute-on-weekends thing, until some point as we managed to bridge those last four hours. M asked me, on his first visit here, on almost the last day, if I would live with him there. I'm not sure what I said--it was much later when we realized that we placed different meanings on what he was asking. I was 19, and.. I doubt this has really came across here.. much more tradionally-minded than I probably appear to be now. I'm not saying that I wanted him to suggest marriage.. I just had never visualized myself shacking up with someone, so it took me by surprise. He, on the other hand, looked at it as a pretty serious committment in itself because he viewed the matter much differently.
In any case, my answer wasn't to make much difference--the Nashville thing fell through.. although not as quickly or painlessly as it sounded just there. We're pretty certain that it was his boss who soured the deal for him.. he had a known history of lying to people when asked for a reference. (We are speaking of a man who was fired from being a captain of the paratroopers for excess cruelty.. in fact, someone who managed to get themselves fired from three different positions. In Sweden.) They were interested right up until they talked to this particular manager, but then treated him as if he had the plague. (We watched a really interesting documentary this weekend about the Black Death, by the way. Do you even realize what a horrible time that would have been to be alive?) So after a while, we finally decided that getting married was a better option.. something we had rather tried to avoid because getting engaged to satisfy a bureacracy is not exactly a story to tell the grandkids.
At this point, Nashville--at least in its former incarnation--is a total no-go.. has been for almost five years. He's here, we're married, there will be no commuting between here and there.. and still, I don't delete the folder. I think that I like the reminder of What Could Have Been, or What Could Be. It reminds me of a hopelessly, painfully optimistic time. It reminds me that but for the poison tongue of one fat, balding middle-aged man, I might be living in Tennessee right now. I might have graduated from a college other than Morehead. I might not be married. I might have the most exciting job I could ever dream of, or be working at McDonald's to help pay the bills. We could have been retransferred to the Austin location. We might have a house and a Lexus and a kid. Maybe, maybe. There's such an.. unmanageably huge number of paths that we could have taken, and almost none of them would have ended up right here.
I'm not saying that right here is an inherently bad place to be. It's just.. sometimes that string of coincidences that have led to where we are now hit me, and I can't imagine the consequences of alterng even one little thing, and you know, if you think about that too long.. you're going to start wondering about every single thing in your life.. not just about the big stuff, like if you should take one job instead of another.. but if a simple trip to WalMart would result in a fiery car crash, or if should really have cereal for breakfast tomorrow morning, or if somehow having oatmeal would set of a chain reaction ending in winning the lottery. Life is just so damned unpredictable that it could really cause the emotionally unstable pangs of unease if they gave it much thought.
Not me, of course. You know I never worry about anything.
Not even what I'd be doing right now in Nashville.
Or Canada.
And I sure don't worry about what would have happened if an exboyfriend hadn't happened upon muds, and I happened to log onto one, just for the fun of it, and if that hadn't happened to be Hysteria, and I hadn't happened to fall in love with it, and if I hadn't happened to meet Mark, who didn't happen to inherit another mud, which happened to have this funny, slightly drunk Swede as a power.
Because that kind of thing would drive you crazy, right?
Right?
P.S. Please don't take me too seriously. I don't really have a point. I'm not trying to be profound, or witty, or sincere. I'm just saying, that's all.
We always knew that it would be M that would make the move across the big pond. We talked about doing it the other way, but there were just so many reasons it wouldn't be practical for us. The original plan was different from what actually happened, though--Dell was just opening a location in Nashville, and M tried to transfer within the company. I was still in college, so I might transfer there as well, or we would have a closer long-distance relationship than before, doing the commute-on-weekends thing, until some point as we managed to bridge those last four hours. M asked me, on his first visit here, on almost the last day, if I would live with him there. I'm not sure what I said--it was much later when we realized that we placed different meanings on what he was asking. I was 19, and.. I doubt this has really came across here.. much more tradionally-minded than I probably appear to be now. I'm not saying that I wanted him to suggest marriage.. I just had never visualized myself shacking up with someone, so it took me by surprise. He, on the other hand, looked at it as a pretty serious committment in itself because he viewed the matter much differently.
In any case, my answer wasn't to make much difference--the Nashville thing fell through.. although not as quickly or painlessly as it sounded just there. We're pretty certain that it was his boss who soured the deal for him.. he had a known history of lying to people when asked for a reference. (We are speaking of a man who was fired from being a captain of the paratroopers for excess cruelty.. in fact, someone who managed to get themselves fired from three different positions. In Sweden.) They were interested right up until they talked to this particular manager, but then treated him as if he had the plague. (We watched a really interesting documentary this weekend about the Black Death, by the way. Do you even realize what a horrible time that would have been to be alive?) So after a while, we finally decided that getting married was a better option.. something we had rather tried to avoid because getting engaged to satisfy a bureacracy is not exactly a story to tell the grandkids.
At this point, Nashville--at least in its former incarnation--is a total no-go.. has been for almost five years. He's here, we're married, there will be no commuting between here and there.. and still, I don't delete the folder. I think that I like the reminder of What Could Have Been, or What Could Be. It reminds me of a hopelessly, painfully optimistic time. It reminds me that but for the poison tongue of one fat, balding middle-aged man, I might be living in Tennessee right now. I might have graduated from a college other than Morehead. I might not be married. I might have the most exciting job I could ever dream of, or be working at McDonald's to help pay the bills. We could have been retransferred to the Austin location. We might have a house and a Lexus and a kid. Maybe, maybe. There's such an.. unmanageably huge number of paths that we could have taken, and almost none of them would have ended up right here.
I'm not saying that right here is an inherently bad place to be. It's just.. sometimes that string of coincidences that have led to where we are now hit me, and I can't imagine the consequences of alterng even one little thing, and you know, if you think about that too long.. you're going to start wondering about every single thing in your life.. not just about the big stuff, like if you should take one job instead of another.. but if a simple trip to WalMart would result in a fiery car crash, or if should really have cereal for breakfast tomorrow morning, or if somehow having oatmeal would set of a chain reaction ending in winning the lottery. Life is just so damned unpredictable that it could really cause the emotionally unstable pangs of unease if they gave it much thought.
Not me, of course. You know I never worry about anything.
Not even what I'd be doing right now in Nashville.
Or Canada.
And I sure don't worry about what would have happened if an exboyfriend hadn't happened upon muds, and I happened to log onto one, just for the fun of it, and if that hadn't happened to be Hysteria, and I hadn't happened to fall in love with it, and if I hadn't happened to meet Mark, who didn't happen to inherit another mud, which happened to have this funny, slightly drunk Swede as a power.
Because that kind of thing would drive you crazy, right?
Right?
P.S. Please don't take me too seriously. I don't really have a point. I'm not trying to be profound, or witty, or sincere. I'm just saying, that's all.
