"After the heart break " 100 Love Letters I'll Never Send part 5 (Inside Your Shadow) (c) 2022-2023

 

He pulled over at the state line rest stop, wanting to hide. Wanting to hide. Wanting to take a break from life for a while. All he could do was cry. “Well son, you ain’t drunk are you?” He watched his tears fall onto the seal of Solomon coin. “Damnit Damnit Damnit.” “That’s a lot of damns, son.” He laughed. Then he lit a cigarette. Took a long pull. “I’ve dedicated my whole life to her.” “Bullshit. You ain’t seen her in twenty years. You know what to do I’ve heard you say it in meetings. You know. Like that Neil Young song. ‘I am but a dreamer, and you are just a dream. You could have been anyone to me.’” Why didn’t you try to stop?” “I did. But you just had to find out for yourself. What’s the song say?” “’I am but a dreamer, and you are just a dream. You could have been anyone to me.’” “That’s right son. “Now get your ass to a meeting.”

              He kept crying and crying. Had been driving for about four hours now. Was listening to the drive back home CDs. “She was supposed to be with me now! God I just don’t understand. Why can everybody else have love but me?” He cried as he thought about all the times he had been rejected in his life. Then he remembered what he heard, “We relied too much on others to make us happy.” He wanted his thoughts to stop. Few minutes later his gas gauge light was blinking. He also remembered, “Be still. That’s when the LohRd will speak to you.” He turned on exit 62. “Don’t take yourself so seriously.” First thing he noticed was a car that looked just like the car she used to drive twenty years ago. Also on the car’s bumper there was a sticker that read ‘Friend of Bill W.’ “I’ll never love anyone ever again. Jesus,” and he wondered in a pause of thinking if he intended on saying the Lord’s name in vain or was he asking for help. He was paralyzed by his overwhelming emotions, “Be still. Be still,” he muttered. He remembered saying, “I’ll never love anyone ever again.”-he then wondered if he really knew what he meant when he said that; with those nights. It was so long ago. Almost seemed like, “No it was another lifetime ago.” When he lived in that garage apartment surrounded by Alcoholics Anonymous literature left by the former tenant. Didn’t want to face his own manufactured self-inflicted pain-the way he reacted. Drinking to forget. His anthem was any song about heartbreak. His favorites were on Bob Dylan’s album Blonde on Blonde. Especially, the songs “Sad Eyed Lady of The Lowlands” and “Sooner Or Later One of Us Must Know” personalized statements from Bob “I didn’t mean to treat you so bad. You just happened to be there that’s all.”

              He lit a Marlboro Red thinking about it all from years ago. It was an overcast day, as he was sitting in her car with her. It was a 1989 tan Toyota Corolla. She turned the cassette player off and stubbed her Marlboro Red in the full ashtray. He’d later recall. “It looked like a bunch of bones in a pile of ash. He pulled slow on his 32-ounce Budweiser. “I got to go with my mom to Missouri.” He remembered so vividly he could smell it all now: her perfume and the strong cigarette and weed smoke. He turned his head. Waited on her to turn her head. When she did, “You ain’t gotta move. I’ll take care of you.”

              “Boy, you better be sure. It’s a big world out there,” his father told him. His father a ash gray suit, neatly trimmed beard. Had papers scattered on his desk. Papers that were contracts to clients. Papers that were different stocks on the Wall Market. Papers of insurance contracts. Papers that granted different accounts and deductibles measuring different health factors. Examples were “People with bad dental hygiene can be more susceptible to dementia.”

              “Yea dad, I’m quitting college,” he proclaimed to his father.

              Now he thinks, “Beyond space and time.” He looked at the coin, looked at the car and smiled realizing that he could finally let her go. Then he looked at the gas gauge on E.

”Running on empty.”

              Then he remembered being in that bathroom in that two hundred dollars a month rental with one den, a kitchen, and one bedroom. One of the many places that he insisted they move into. He didn’t have a job. He remembered squeezing the sponge. He was so tenderly cleaning her back, “You think we’ll stay together?”

Why did i…

              He remembered the look she gave him. So heartbroken.

              A police car with lights on pulled into the parking lot. He was frightened until a few seconds later. The officer was scorning a homeless man. It was enough to interrupt his thoughts. He got out of his car. He went into the gas station saying to himself, “I’m not going to look for her.”

              Inside he saw the big pictures of beer advertisements: The Loving Couple doing couple things. “Cheers” advertisement of the beach scenes, hot chicks hitting the volleyball. The model type Ken and Barbie having good times at the beach. He noticed the big face of a red bulldog. He used to enjoy Red Dog beer. Inside the beer caps there’d be a saying like “Follow the dog.” He thought about “The Fool” tarot card: the traveler about to step off of a cliff with the dog barking at him-yea she taught him that too.

              “How did I get here?” he asked himself, standing in front of the beer cooler. He immediately walked to the cashier “…and fate. It had to be,” Bob Dylan. “Oh but fate is another matter. Drugs and revelation took all the people around you,” is what he thought Chris Robinson was telling him with the song Sometimes Salva-tion, “Cuzz sometimes salvation is in the eye of the storm,” by the Black Crows.

              “Can I help you,” the cashier he noticed was the same age he was when he was trying to get rid of the break up feeling by drinking and drugging. Yea, Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde album was made for him. Blonde on Blonde for $9.99 in a small stand by the cash register. The same cost as a descent buzz-another time he could die emotionally and spiritually.

              “Fourteen in gas, and this CD.”

              Ten minutes later, the tears came again, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” He looks at the road ahead. Looks at the cd. Looks at the road ahead. Looks at the cd. Looks at the sign, “Missouri The Show Me State,” then he realizes he was driving the wrong way. He took an exit, removed the cellophane from the CD. Drives, makes a U turn with Dylan’s “Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands.” More tears dropping on the coin. He picks the coin up squeezes it tight. Feeling the coin press into the flesh of his palm. He remembered another one of the two many, “Or not enough?” of the I’ll always love you, but I never want to see you again. That one was a convenient substitute for him to get over the previous I’ll always love you, but I never want to see you again. He remembered how he’d be talking about how the last one hurt him. The substitute would always tell him, “Well, I think it’s those past relationships that get you prepared for true love.”

              Then he pressed the button for the driver’s window. Threw the seal of Solomon coin out of the window Then he pressed the eject button of the car CD player, but the CD would not eject. Blonde on Blonde kept playing. It was stuck,

                                              “LOVE SONGS AIN’T NO FRIEND OF MINE.”

              “Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet,” Dylan sang, as he mumbled to himself, “How did night come so quickly,” he mumbled. He had hours to go. As he contemplated throwing away all of the CDs that he made for the trip.