Bear Essentials

Hey.

What's up?

Yeah.

Uh huh.

Not great.

That's fine.

Okay.

That's me these days. Short. Uninspired. Bland. Hang-dog. Rudderless. A generally shitty attitude about most things. Mix in a healthy splash of bubbling frustration and even the occasional dash of wayward anger and you've just about nailed today's Petey Wheatstraw.
Sorry, you judgmental sonofabitch, but i just can't help it.
I really can't. It's like Dumbledore told Harry Potter, "difficult times lie ahead." No. Nope. That's untrue. Difficult times are here now, Albus. And I am going through the earliest growing pains of being separated from my fiancee/best friend/one-true-love, for SIX MONTHS! That's one half of one year. Ugh. Fuck, man!
I know. I know. It's fingerling potatoes in the history of awful shitty things that happen in one's days on the job. There are examples everywhere.
I put on my Ray Ban Wayfarer's (same sunglasses the ole' lady wears, by the way) while entering a 7-11 this morning, to avoid making eye contact with a slumped over homeless fellow who was in such a fuck-all state that he didn't even ASK for money. He just sat there. Can you imagine being so utterly hopeless and ruined that the simple act of begging or even putting out an empty coffee cup for pennies, is too much?! "Fuck it. If they want to, they can just drop some change on my chest. Or on the ground. Whatever." Makes me sad just thinking on it. And that was on my way to work this morning. People are eating tankers full of shit all over the world, over and over again and my problems aren't that tough. I do know that.

But I love someone.

Genuine all-in, baby-talk, warts-and-all, more-than-anything love. And when you love for real, nothing else matters all that much. Even something as terrible as a person that is unable to muster the strength to beg.

And right at this moment, she is very, very far away and I am sitting on my couch alone and I would do anything to hear her keys jingling as she unlocks our door.
Or for her to sit on the couch beside me and bitch about her old job for twenty minutes.
Or to hear the two honks from her car's horn as it passed by outside, that always marked her return home.

But that isn't going to happen and I know it.
She is there and I am here and that's how it's gonna be for a spell. We have been side-by-each for over six years. Almost every minute of the day. And I'm talking about good minutes. Great hours and spectacular seconds. Hardly ever a fight. Just the goods. That makes the bads more raw an unfamiliar.

So, in summation, it's balls right now.
But I believe in two things: First. It's going to get better. And Second. It could be much, much worse. There is a guy sitting on the sidewalk in front of a convenience store not far from where anyone is at anytime.

Could be a lot worse.