Home alone

I am a uniquely blessed individual.  Gifted with exceptional wit, charm, strength, sex appeal, and the ability to lie convincingly about my attributes, I came to Japan.  I came to be a teacher.  I was young and had a desire to travel the world.  I wanted to join my friends from Japan who had spent a year as exchange students at my university in their home country, to experience firsthand the food and culture and excitement they described in vivid detail, language barrier be damned.  But mostly I was following a girl.

You know how it is: you find someone and you connect with them.  Where moments ago you saw a person but now all you see is warmth and beauty and the one.  There's a magical spark and like a soldering iron that creates magical sparks you find your souls fused together.  Also the soldering iron only works on souls, I forgot to mention that.

Maybe it was reckless, chasing a person I had known less than a year across two oceans and two continental landmasses, but at the time it felt so rational and right.  And I'm pretty sure the pilot was flying the wrong direction.  Here we were on the same island, her in Tokyo and I in Osaka.  So close and yet so far.

And then things happened, mistakes were made, and it was all gone.

Oscar Wilde said something once.  I didn't read it but I heard someone talking about it at the library or maybe at a Foot Locker.  It probably would have been pretty good to use here.  Hold on let me check Google:

"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."

-Oscar Wilde

That didn't help at all.  Thanks a lot Oscar, you fucking hack.

It's a horrible thing, the outright rejection and purgation that comes with a really good breakup.  And what follows the inevitable digging of a cavern of sorrow with a shovel of loneliness and a pickax of really cheap vodka or I don't know maybe whippits.  And then there's a light at the end of the tunnel and you ran out of money for whippits like two days ago so it can't be a hallucination and it's a metaphorical light anyway.  Because one day, coaxed out of your cave by your friends or the realization that worms and bats tend to live down there, you follow that light back out to the surface.  And there she is.

Perfection personified.  The empty half of your life distilled into a perfect specimen that fits comfortably in all the right places and some places are a little tight but that's good too.  Someone whose very countenance warms and sustains your very life essence, and this time it's not a soldering iron but something stronger.  I don't know what that would be since I'm not really into metallurgy but I'm talking about love.  

The impermanence of sadness is all that permits man to survive amidst the harshness of reality.  The existence of love is all that allows him to thrive.

Just, you know, not all the time.

Mrs. Merican and I have been married for over four months now.  Prior to that, we'd been dating for about 18 months.  We've done this country up and down as much as two people in our own particular financial situation (poor as fuck) possibly could.  Shrines, monuments, nature, bars, restaurants, parks--both amusement and municipal, operating rooms of hospitals, embassies, police stations, a Red Cross trailer, the list goes on and on.  Fact of the matter is, you name it, we've probably been there or somewhere similar.  We've done about as much with and to each other as two people such as ourselves could hope to in the two years we've been together.

It's awesome.  A+++++++++++++++ would marry again.

We've logged countless hours together, and I look forward to adding inestimably to that figure.  It's the stuff life is made of: moments spent with the people you love doing things you enjoy.  Anyone who says otherwise is selling something, probably whippits.

Hey man, lookin' to buy some refuge from the existential void of a lifetime of loneliness?

I have since learned, however, that sometimes it's really okay to have a break.  I'm not talking about a divorce or trial separation or anything like that.  Fuck no, that's for the birds.  I like juxtaposing profanity with 1930s slang.  People say it's annoying, but I think that's bullshit and I won't have any more of their guff.

What I'm talking about is time apart.  You know, time with the guys, a night at the bar, or a day where you jerk off eight times in a row watching topless Brazilian chicks punch each other in the stomach.  Everyone needs that.  Husbands need it, wives need it, and the Brazilian economy especially needs it.  How else are they going to keep paying for those waxes of theirs?   

This is that time for me.  This.  Right now.

Early on, the missus and I had a bit of a rough time managing our personal time and our together time.  After that, we had a really rough time managing our personal time and our together time.  Then we screamed a lot and I think someone threw a plate.  We were at one of those themed Greek restaurants at the time though, so I don't think there was as much emotional content behind that as perhaps you might have originally thought.

This gyro is amazing and you're a selfish bastard!

The point is, love starts as infatuation.  Love is a drug, and we get our fix from being around one another.  It's like that time you went to go buy a dime bag from your dealer and she was holding opium at the time so you thought "sure, what the hell, you're only in college once."  You smoke it and that wobbly feeling ripples out from your kneecaps, tickling your thighs and calves and blissful white noise washes away all of life's problems.  But what happens on the comedown?  You feel itchy.  You need more just to drive that itch away, and riding a constant wave of bliss and harsh reality, you burn through your whole stash in no time flat.  Love is the same way.  

That constant affection for another human being slams dopamine through your brain's synapses, nourishing your body with God's own analgesic.  It makes us feel good.  And once we get a taste, we crave more and more--we need it.  Still don't think addicted to love like a drug?  Consider this: people hooked on love will literally suck dick to get their fix.  Think about it.

Eventually, though, comes the balancing act.  Two people, being two people, are two people.  While it kicks ass to lay in bed trading smooches and titty twisters on a lazy Sunday until finally rolling out of bed at the crack of 2:00PM for some pancakes, eventually Monday morning arrives.  In spite of all the romance and good intentions, we can't stop the sun.  We go our separate ways, deal with our separate comedowns, and take in the remains of the day separately.

Infatuation allows us to waste a day together in perfect bliss in each other's arms.  Love is what allows us to leave, take care of ourselves, and expect to return to that embrace that night.

And as I sit in front of the computer by myself on my day off of work, grinding out my thoughts on these keys, logging that increasingly scant "me" time, I can relax and refresh.  My arms were tired from all that embracing--I need them to be ready for when she gets home.

If you know what I mean.