Juliet was the first person I came out to. She was an old friend. Not really, but having known her for 4 or 5 years made her my longest running friend since moving to Western Washington. She was the only friend that I saw with any regularity outside of work. I guess she was my only friend.
Every other Friday we had dinner together after work. It was the Friday that my kids went to their dad's. Spending that time together made the night a little less painful. Still, when I arrived home there was no denying the lonesomeness of the empty house. All that unoccupied space. That's not quite true. It was full of stuff - dishes needing to be done, mail piled on the kitchen table waiting to be opened, boxes of things from the move waiting to be culled through, gotten rid of or put away. There were boxes of the drawings my children had completed from our lives back in Texas before the cross country move, before the separation, before the kids left me every Wednesday and Thursday and every other weekend. They were full of things they'd made when we were still a family, when I was there to tuck them in every night, to make sure their school work got done and to make them dinner.
It's no wonder I took to the bathroom when I got home. The small space held me and protected me from the pain of the kids' empty bedrooms across the hall. I stayed in that bathroom for hours.
I'd taken to cutting my own hair. It started when my son began refusing to get out of the car to get his hair cut. I bought my first pair of shears from Sally Beauty Supply. I checked out books on cosmetology from the library and did google searches for hair cutting techniques. I watched "how-tos" on YouTube and printed out illustrations explaining hair elevation and cutting angles. I hole punched the print outs and placed them in a 3 ring binder behind a tab labeled "hair cutting". I made organizing tools on the computer, to do lists, weekly and daily planning sheets. I researched GTD, David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology, all the while nothing got done.
Cutting Ben's hair lasted for hours, usually broken up over a couple of days. By the end of our sessions Ben would be begging for me to let him go. Despite a few snips to his ear and the torture of the marathon sessions, he continued to sit for me instead of the alternative. At some point I turned the shears onto myself.
After Juliet and I had eaten and said our good byes, I returned to the empty house. Taking to the bathroom was not intentional but sooner or later I'd have to use it. It was inevitable, being in front of that big mirror, washing my hands. I couldn't help inspecting. Where was it uneven? Where needed a trim? I'm just looking, I told myself. Famous last words. Just one beer, one cookie, one new pair of shoes. An hour could pass before I opened the cabinet and took out the shears. That might seem like a long time but you can't see very much with one mirror. No, you need to get out the hand held to see the back and the hand held is small so you have to walk your butt back on the counter so you can see better. If you're gonna get out the shears, which you know you will otherwise what was the point in all that checking, then you're gonna have to find a way to hang that hand held mirror cause you can't very well hold it and cut your hair. This process can take some time.
Just one snip, I lied. C'mon, a sentence which starts with "Just one" anything is always a lie and I dove right in. There was no arguing with myself. Those days would come later. For now, I was single minded in my focus, lost to time and place. There was me and the mirror, the comb and the scissors. In this there were no empty rooms where children should have been. There were no boxes of broken dreams. There were no dishes to be washed and no mail to be opened. The mirror and I, the comb and the scissors - we were coupled. We belonged.
++++
What's the next sentence? I can't end there. I have to end with a beginning!
The night I told Juliet was a Friday.
Every other Friday we had dinner together after work. It was the Friday that my kids went to their dad's. Spending that time together made the night a little less painful. Still, when I arrived home there was no denying the lonesomeness of the empty house. All that unoccupied space. That's not quite true. It was full of stuff - dishes needing to be done, mail piled on the kitchen table waiting to be opened, boxes of things from the move waiting to be culled through, gotten rid of or put away. There were boxes of the drawings my children had completed from our lives back in Texas before the cross country move, before the separation, before the kids left me every Wednesday and Thursday and every other weekend. They were full of things they'd made when we were still a family, when I was there to tuck them in every night, to make sure their school work got done and to make them dinner.
It's no wonder I took to the bathroom when I got home. The small space held me and protected me from the pain of the kids' empty bedrooms across the hall. I stayed in that bathroom for hours.
I'd taken to cutting my own hair. It started when my son began refusing to get out of the car to get his hair cut. I bought my first pair of shears from Sally Beauty Supply. I checked out books on cosmetology from the library and did google searches for hair cutting techniques. I watched "how-tos" on YouTube and printed out illustrations explaining hair elevation and cutting angles. I hole punched the print outs and placed them in a 3 ring binder behind a tab labeled "hair cutting". I made organizing tools on the computer, to do lists, weekly and daily planning sheets. I researched GTD, David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology, all the while nothing got done.
Cutting Ben's hair lasted for hours, usually broken up over a couple of days. By the end of our sessions Ben would be begging for me to let him go. Despite a few snips to his ear and the torture of the marathon sessions, he continued to sit for me instead of the alternative. At some point I turned the shears onto myself.
After Juliet and I had eaten and said our good byes, I returned to the empty house. Taking to the bathroom was not intentional but sooner or later I'd have to use it. It was inevitable, being in front of that big mirror, washing my hands. I couldn't help inspecting. Where was it uneven? Where needed a trim? I'm just looking, I told myself. Famous last words. Just one beer, one cookie, one new pair of shoes. An hour could pass before I opened the cabinet and took out the shears. That might seem like a long time but you can't see very much with one mirror. No, you need to get out the hand held to see the back and the hand held is small so you have to walk your butt back on the counter so you can see better. If you're gonna get out the shears, which you know you will otherwise what was the point in all that checking, then you're gonna have to find a way to hang that hand held mirror cause you can't very well hold it and cut your hair. This process can take some time.
Just one snip, I lied. C'mon, a sentence which starts with "Just one" anything is always a lie and I dove right in. There was no arguing with myself. Those days would come later. For now, I was single minded in my focus, lost to time and place. There was me and the mirror, the comb and the scissors. In this there were no empty rooms where children should have been. There were no boxes of broken dreams. There were no dishes to be washed and no mail to be opened. The mirror and I, the comb and the scissors - we were coupled. We belonged.
++++
What's the next sentence? I can't end there. I have to end with a beginning!
The night I told Juliet was a Friday.
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