Bio Assignment - Pete

I'm in my sort-of-late 30s, while most of my local social circle are in their mid 20s. The more time I spend here, the more it seems clear that you have the kind of life you decide to create around you. I'm working at creating a pretty sweet life.

I have a higher-end nerd job; at other times I’ve lived a life of intrigue and danger ( heh ) but now, not-so-much. I do information architecture and experience design for people with lots of pennies, I also do some work for people with no pennies at all. I am ( slowly but surely ) working towards my doctorate. At the moment, my side thing is spreading the word like fire through digital spaces. If I am able to someday shift this from "side thing" to "main thing", that would be... noteworthy. But I also wouldn't mind doing a few other things.

I'm doing many things in my life out of order, and for the most part do what I want, and what feels right... as opposed to maybe what most other people tell me I should do. So far, this is working out pretty well, though I do stumble now and then.

I live with intensity; "no power in the 'Verse can stop me."

Except me, that is.


...

I found her in our bedroom, straightening a very straightened lamp on a dust-free table. The colonial blue walls we'd painted caught the light of late October very well. She'd always had a very good eye, that way.

"Hey," I said, the word dropping out of my mouth, almost thudding on the carpet. My stomach was on fire. With bees. And lava. My arms and legs were numb.

"Hey," she responded, looking up for a split second, a doe caught in lights. Then turning her attention back to getting the lamp just right on the table. I saw her swallow, and wet her lips.

"If this is a bad time, we can do this later..."

I knew that sounded crazy, the moment the words were out. She laughed, with absolutely no mirth at all.

"A bad time, Peter?" Then she looked at me, her ponytail disappearing behind her head as she met my eyes, and looked at me. Right into me.

And I almost put t off, again. For the thousandth time. Her eyes were green and amazing. The freckles on her cheek noticeable now, for some reason. And she'd called me "Peter". She was the only person who really ever did. Not my mom, or any other person I'd ever loved.

Somehow, I reached out, and took her hand. I found some bizarre reserve of strength to do this thing. The kind of calm that people must feel before the blindfold goes on, and the rifles raise.

I led her into the loft area, which was still unpainted. She planned do do something edgy and festive here, when we got the time.

Ha.

We sat on the couch. I'd paid for it, outright with cash, so it was mine. Huge and green and the most expensive non-car or non-house thing I'd ever bought. It was the center of the room, everything else taking a sort of decor cue from it. However the paint on the walls would have gone, it would have definitely needed to take the couch into account.

It would have been amazing, I'm sure. I'd helped her paint before; she'd had the ideas, I'd been a strong and willing arm with a brush.

We were sitting close, knees more than touching, hands held, not looking at one another. Our heads were down. Over the last two years I'd been in this exact place very often. She being so close I could see her pulse in her neck were I to look. I could hear it. I always touched her at times like this, no matter where we were. In the car, on the bed, or on a couch. It was a conscious effort on my part to let her know I still wanted some contact with her, no matter how things went.

At these times, these trying, stressful moments of emotional agony I also studied the smallest items in my immediate space, ADHD trying desperately to get me off the tracks before the whistling train of choice bore down on me.

Somehow, impossibly, the dogs knew. They came upstairs, heads low, eyes up. Without ceremony or ritual turns they sat at our feet. I remembered then that just beyond them at the top of the stairs was where she left me a cake for my birthday. I was living here by myself while we were separated, in "the largest one bedroom apartment in Harvard", as I used to joke.

The TV stand from Ikea, one we picked out and I built the first weekend she moved back in was just behind me. The rim in the laundry room was colorful and peeking out from an open door; I would have never even thought to bring color into that space, but she did.

The desk I'd bought from Sam's with my cash and my girlfriend's card was in the room a few feet away. I remembered getting it here in her minivan, she and I putting it together in the vacant, unfurnished house before we screwed on it like pornstars, driving another nail into the coffin being meticulously built for my marriage.

Back to her hands, in mine.

They felt natural in mine. They -had- felt natural for more than ten years. All my life that had -really- mattered. Before I met her I'd saved my brother's life once, I'd put my feet on yellow footprints, and I'd helped taken care of my grandfather. But every other real accomplishment I'd ever made that ever meant anything was with her, because of her, or for her.

Back to her eyes. She was crying now. Looking at me silently, tears pouring from her.

A fair weather friend at best, that reserve and determination. It had fled. Instantly, when I heard her cry like that.

The desire to pull her close, to take care of her, to tell her it was going to be alright was powerful beyond the simple tools of words I could use to describe it. If there was one thing I was -exceedingly- good at, one skill I'd been born to, it was taking care of her.

I pulled her close, and she wasn't silent any more. I did it because I knew holding her close was what she wanted, and really what I wanted, and I also knew that if I kept looking at her eyes, I'd lose my resolve. And I knew that whatever tentativeness I might give in my voice, any sort of tiptoe straying from the absolute path of what we knew this conversation was supposed to be about, that would be it. She'd cling to it like a life preserver, and I'd fish her up out of the stormy sea.

We'd spend another year being sweet, but not making love. Another year holding hands, but feeling trapped. Another year together, but apart.

I cried, too. Not the free flowing, sobbing cry she was, but my own silent outpouring.

After a while, we stopped. I reached over and got some tissues for her, an intimate ritual for us as ancient as my calling her by her full name, instead of some shortened version. And we sat there. Our legs wrapped together, our canine kids at our feet, and the clocks not-ticking as October leaves blew off the trees outside our first dream house.

"I can't do this any more," I said, after a very long time.

Another very long time passed.

"I know," she answered. Her voice was very small.

"I love you," I said. And I meant it. More than I ever had, since I'd first told her first, over ten years before that moment.

"I know, Peter," she said. "I know this isn't about that."

My hand come up to her cheek and stroked it, as we both silently brought more tears out.


...


At some point in the late afternoon of October 26th, 2003 I told my wife that I couldn't keep going on the way we were. At some point, we were both rational enough to agree that if things weren't better in 3 months, that we'd go our separate ways. We were driven by so many different things that had brought us to that exact crossroads.

If we'd had any idea what it would be like to divide furniture between us, or to go to our storage unit at different times to remove our own stuff with helpful and somber friends, or what it would feel like to sleep in separate beds whle in the same house, I think both of us would have pushed through. Maybe another year. Maybe for the rest of our lives.

But we didn't.

Three months passed. Three months of soul searching, couples counseling, taking the trash out and walking the dogs and sleeping in the same bed and living together, but apart.

The thing that hurt the most immediately after we had decided was that she wouldn't sleep in the same bed or room as I, despite the fact that we were still plainly deeply in love. She couldn't share a bed with me, knowing we weren't going to be together. It would later turn out that she couldn't share a friendship with me, either. Too painful for her, if we weren't going to be together.

It hurt even more that when I offered her our bedroom and she declined, taking the guest bedroom. I forget what she said exactly, but she made it sound like she was sacrificing for me, doing me a favor by letting me have the big bed.

I know better now, certainly. I'm a bit older, and wiser.

I'd spent a very long time not really knowing who I was. I defined myself by my ability to take care of her, my ability to live up to what she expected of me, and my ability to become the man I know she wanted, and deserved.

This is not a recipe for happiness, certainly.

Growing up, dad had passed away when I was young, and mom had always painted an idyllic picture of their time together, so I thought marriage was pretty accurately portrayed on the Brady Bunch. I thought fighting was bad, and I thought you always gave the other person what they wanted, even went it hurt you, deep down.

I've learned a bit about myself, since then. I've been in a few relationships I could call long-term. I've been in love since then. I have a much more defined sense of who I am as a man, and as someone himself; not as part of a pair.

I imagine I am a better part of a potential pair, for knowing this.

Getting to this point in my life has been brutal, at times; I am glad to be here. I look back and know that I've shaped almost every single aspect of my life, either with my intention or my action. I've chosen paths and roadblocks. I went back south to my family and my friends, the ones I'd been drifting away from since I started working full-time on the marriage thing. I got rid of a lot of my stuff, and lived out of hotels and my car for two years.

I moved back to Hawaii. And back to Chicago.

I haven't used personal credit except for my present car in four years. I have decorated my own place, and liked it, and received compliments.

I have a lot to learn, but I am now the master of my own space in ways I could not bring into descriptive relief while I was married. I believe I am better, although sometimes I feel worse.

I am keeping half an eye out for my partner in crime... maybe I know her now, maybe I'll know her when I see her. But until I figure that out, I'll be just fine, I think.

....


I'm in my sort-of-late 30s, while most of my local social circle are in their mid 20s. The more time I spend here, the more it seems clear that you have the kind of life you decide to create around you. I'm working at creating a pretty sweet life.

I have a higher-end nerd job; at other times I’ve lived a life of intrigue and danger ( heh ) but now, not-so-much. I do information architecture and experience design for people with lots of pennies, I also do some work for people with no pennies at all. I am ( slowly but surely ) working towards my doctorate. At the moment, my side thing is spreading the word like fire through digital spaces. If I am able to someday shift this from "side thing" to "main thing", that would be sweet. But I also wouldn't mind doing a few other things.

I'm doing many things in my life out of order, and for the most part do what I want, and what feels right... as opposed to maybe what most other people tell me I should do. So far, this is working out pretty well, though I do stumble now and then.

I live with intensity; "no power in the 'Verse can stop me."

Except me, that is.