Spillt Ink

"I never knew you were married," she said.  A co-worker, but a stranger, how would she know; we had never had a single conversation, but the way she said the sentence was as though she had just discovered I was  newly wed.  "Twnety-three years," I replied.  She looked confounded.  "We have four children."  "Where have I been?" she answered.  How could she have known?  She couldn't have.  The questions that came to me, lingered, was why had she made such a assumption about me.  Did I appear as though I couldn't, wouldn't marry?  Do I create a shadow that says solitary, alone, independent?   Why did she create a story about me so far from the truth? 

This is from Jonathon Carroll's journal on May 18th of this year:

At the end of their relationship she asked if they could still remain friends. His face stayed expressionless until he said "No. Because we put friends in boxes. You see them once in a while, or even a lot, but still they have their box in your life, their specific place.Their *category.* That's one of the great things about being someone's love-- you have no box in their life because you're part of all their boxes. You're their friend, their lover, their confidante-- all those things. I don't want to be put in one of your boxes and I don't want to shrink you to fit into one of mine." 

I wonder is this man a genius at the comprehension of intimate relationships or does his statement to the woman reek like a crock of phooey?

Constant, heavy rain, the streets black and puddled, flooded, headlights and their reflections, the spray of water from passing vehicles and the ones too close in front, the white flashing light above school buses, the dashes of red and gold signaling, the solid darkness of county roads, the patches of mist and fog in the dips and hollows or close to the river, and on repeat, forever repeating, Underoath's "When the Sun Sleeps.

I was having a conversation with a friend not too long ago where they mentioned an event and I said I wouldn't want to do that. Too many strangers, too much stress for me. "Why?" they asked.

"I'm an introvert," I said, "I don't enjoy doing things like that."

"Really," they asked.

"Really," I said.

"But you weren't always an introvert, were you? I bet when you were younger you were a hellraiser, weren't you?"

I didn't know how to answer.

"Their fat, little bellies."