I tried another way for just a couple minutes

I rode my bike home tonight. It’s been a tough week at work. Noth­ing colos­sal hap­pened, but I’ve had to remain present and solve some prob­lems and deal with some oth­er prob­lems being out­side my abil­i­ty to solve, and be around my boss when he’s been hav­ing a very dif­fi­cult week and not par­tic­u­lar­ly want­i­ng to hear that I could­n’t solve the things that I can­not solve. Espe­cial­ly because the stuff I can’t fix has left the project I work on with­out the abil­i­ty to col­lect rev­enue for a lit­tle more than a week now.
Build­ing for a while I have been more and more over­whelmed by con­fronting the details of my last rela­tion­ship. I’ve done some writ­ing to iden­ti­fy my resent­ments and my parts in it all. On Sun­day after spend­ing an hour or so writ­ing I stopped and went home. On the bus I just felt exhaust­ed and drained and sud­den­ly I wondered:
What is the point of all this? Am I look­ing to get healed and move on? What is the point of that? So I can jump in and get destroyed all over again? No, of course, it’s more like so I can go in and not make the same mis­takes again. Yeah, right. I don’t believe it’s pos­si­ble. I don’t have that faith that the next time it will be better.
Isn’t it bet­ter then just not to have a next time? Isn’t it bet­ter for me to be bit­ter and lone­ly than to risk going out there to do bat­tle again?
Act­ing as if. Act­ing as if it actu­al­ly will be bet­ter for me to heal and move on. That’s what I’ve been told, so that’s what I get to do.
Then I get instruct­ed to go and have fun this week­end. It’s a blow to my ego that I have to be told to have a good time, and I’m a lit­tle scared that I’ve let any­one close enough to know that I have no social life. But Sam fig­ured it out. It seems like a bur­den. Once again, it’s eas­i­er for me to just stay here, rent a movie, do my laun­dry, and go back to work on Monday.
Give me my cocoon back, already!
So the tapes were run­ning full speed on the way home tonight, of course. Where am I going to find a date for Wednes­day, nev­er mind make some sort of social plans for tomor­row or tonight? and What about going to the gym and pun­ish­ing myself all day until I’m too raw to move? Does that count as social?
Then the guy in the mini­van made the right hand turn into the gas sta­tion direct­ly in front of me. I was close enough that I had to pull in to the gas sta­tion myself in order to avoid slam­ming into the minivan.
I shout­ed at him. I had the rage in my bel­ly and I let it out at him. What the fuck were you think­ing? He got a few choice words thrown at him and I saw his pas­sen­ger — his girl­friend or wife — look­ing back at me, afraid. He slowed and I rode around and back out to the street, where there was a red light and I let myself stop.
I was shak­ing and breath­ing hard. The adren­a­line wave was whip­ping through me, although I’d stopped. And in an instant, I saw myself as this fierce ball of rage lash­ing out at this guy who fucked up in traf­fic. I looked back and the words I read some­where once came to me: «Putting out of our minds the wrongs oth­ers had done, we res­olute­ly looked for our own mistakes.»
I dis­mount­ed from the bike and walked it back toward the gas sta­tion. I took my hel­met and glass­es off and went back toward the mini­van. The dri­ver was pay­ing, and I stayed far from the vehi­cle. I could see his wife watch­ing me from the pas­sen­ger seat. The dri­ver turned from the cashier’s win­dow and saw me. I stayed still and did­n’t get close because I did­n’t want to alarm him.
I apologized.
I told him that I had no cause to call him names or use the kind of lan­guage that I had and that I was sor­ry. He apol­o­gized and said that he had­n’t seen me and did­n’t know that I was there until I’d yelled. I thanked him for his apol­o­gy and he asked if I were all right. I told him that he’d giv­en me quite a scare but that I was unhurt. I told him to have a good evening and I got back on and rode away.
And I did­n’t stop sob­bing the rest of the way home. Stripped of my rage, I had noth­ing left but the rem­nants of my fear, and not even any more shout­ing to push it out.
I don’t expect any­one else to under­stand it, in fact, I expect sev­er­al of you to think I’m a sap for not going back and beat­ing him up or break­ing his wind­shield or some­thing. But I could­n’t let myself get away with it.
And now I’m just tired, and the music is playing:

tak­ing a jour­ney
trac­ing a mem­o­ry
as long as the world keeps turn­ing
your secret is safe with me

and I won­der: who will keep my secret safe? Who will take that journey?