Portia didn't know a lot of things and every day she was more certain that she knew less than she did the day before. Not an uncommon thought for Portia, but a subject she found herself mindlessly returning to with greater regularity over the past couple of years.
On this particular day, she listened to a young, new girl's voice emmitting from her car's speakers searching the songs for any lyrics she could cling to. As she did, something in the girl's voice made her think of all the voices of all the female vocalists her former lover had so admired. She realized that if they were still together, she would've shared this new voice with him. The next realization was that they weren't, and she wouldn't and, for some reason, the loss of this part of their relationship... their friendship, if that is what it had been... made her begin to cry.
And it wasn't even a sad song.
Suffering as she was, though the suffering was self-inflicted in every way, she decided to offer herself a kindness to get through the morning and stopped most inconveniently at a little coffee shop she favored. Not because the coffee was so good, but because it was a local establishment with a cool girl at the counter who was always nice to her. She had a hot pink stripe in her hair, a ring in her nose and never treated Portia like some kind of preppy pariah... although at times, she did masquerade as such.
Portia even persuaded herself to purchase two fresh cranberry walnut muffins that she had no intention of eating just to prolong the morning coffee conversational exchange a little longer thus delaying the inevitable arrival at her workstation.
So, much for comfort, coffee and muffins. Back to the Epiphany.
Oh, I didn't mention that yet, did I?
OK. So, there's this epiphany. Let's call it, "Portia's Epiphany on Being a Poster Child for Doubt." Turns out that, as she is caught up in her Emo-Moment of Loss pertaining to a certain satisfaction she once had, she realized why she is so stuck in the moment.
It was like a closet full of barely used shoes.
Many things in Portia's life seemed to boil down to a shoe metaphor and this was no exception.
She had two pairs of shoes in her closet. One pair looked gorgeous but pinched when she wore them and, eventually, caused a blister. Once the injury was incurred, it took about a week for it to heal. About that time, the beauty of the shoes lured her back for another session of pain.
The other pair didn't really go with anything in her closet. But it was the most comfortable pair of shoes she'd ever worn. So, considering her desire for something comfy on any given day, she would sometimes turn to this pair of shoes. However, every time she did and caught a glimpse of herself, she realized these shoes didn't fit her in any other sense... they didn't even look like they belonged on her body... and she didn't like them at all. Then the comfort dissolved into discomfort as halfway through the day they began to make her feel she was trying to be someone she wasn't.
Those two pairs of shoes seemed like relationships. Some parts of them worked, some parts of them didn't. But until Portia cleaned out her closet and got rid of both pairs of shoes, she knew she'd keep trying to make them fit and work for her- though they never would. They would always be the shoes they are.
So, Portia realized, to find a pair of shoes that complimented her more satisfactorily, she needed to keep trying on new pairs of shoes.
Yet she knew she was in no way ready for that. And this thought made her sadder still. What had she learned in the past three years? It seemed she had learned nothing at all except how to put on a different, yet still somehow inappropriate pair of shoes.
Or maybe there was just no right pair of shoes for her feet. Nothing to protect her from the cold, uneven, stony path. No cushioned insole to ease her march across the days of her life and lift her as she jumped at the Joy of Just Being Alive.
And that thought made Portia the Poster Child for Doubt.
That thought made Portia realize that some kinds of cold have nothing to do with the temperature. This other Cold could seep deep down into every pore of her skin bringing her to the brink of freezing- so deep that she could be shattered into a million splintering shards of glistening ice.
That thought made her believe she should seriously consider the possibility of the life of a recluse, of a solitary life. A life lived without shoes at all... toes wiggling in the dewy, green grass, free and unfettered.
In those moments, she pondered, a barefoot life seemed the best alternative for such a girl as her.
On this particular day, she listened to a young, new girl's voice emmitting from her car's speakers searching the songs for any lyrics she could cling to. As she did, something in the girl's voice made her think of all the voices of all the female vocalists her former lover had so admired. She realized that if they were still together, she would've shared this new voice with him. The next realization was that they weren't, and she wouldn't and, for some reason, the loss of this part of their relationship... their friendship, if that is what it had been... made her begin to cry.
And it wasn't even a sad song.
Suffering as she was, though the suffering was self-inflicted in every way, she decided to offer herself a kindness to get through the morning and stopped most inconveniently at a little coffee shop she favored. Not because the coffee was so good, but because it was a local establishment with a cool girl at the counter who was always nice to her. She had a hot pink stripe in her hair, a ring in her nose and never treated Portia like some kind of preppy pariah... although at times, she did masquerade as such.
Portia even persuaded herself to purchase two fresh cranberry walnut muffins that she had no intention of eating just to prolong the morning coffee conversational exchange a little longer thus delaying the inevitable arrival at her workstation.
So, much for comfort, coffee and muffins. Back to the Epiphany.
Oh, I didn't mention that yet, did I?
OK. So, there's this epiphany. Let's call it, "Portia's Epiphany on Being a Poster Child for Doubt." Turns out that, as she is caught up in her Emo-Moment of Loss pertaining to a certain satisfaction she once had, she realized why she is so stuck in the moment.
It was like a closet full of barely used shoes.
Many things in Portia's life seemed to boil down to a shoe metaphor and this was no exception.
She had two pairs of shoes in her closet. One pair looked gorgeous but pinched when she wore them and, eventually, caused a blister. Once the injury was incurred, it took about a week for it to heal. About that time, the beauty of the shoes lured her back for another session of pain.
The other pair didn't really go with anything in her closet. But it was the most comfortable pair of shoes she'd ever worn. So, considering her desire for something comfy on any given day, she would sometimes turn to this pair of shoes. However, every time she did and caught a glimpse of herself, she realized these shoes didn't fit her in any other sense... they didn't even look like they belonged on her body... and she didn't like them at all. Then the comfort dissolved into discomfort as halfway through the day they began to make her feel she was trying to be someone she wasn't.
Those two pairs of shoes seemed like relationships. Some parts of them worked, some parts of them didn't. But until Portia cleaned out her closet and got rid of both pairs of shoes, she knew she'd keep trying to make them fit and work for her- though they never would. They would always be the shoes they are.
So, Portia realized, to find a pair of shoes that complimented her more satisfactorily, she needed to keep trying on new pairs of shoes.
Yet she knew she was in no way ready for that. And this thought made her sadder still. What had she learned in the past three years? It seemed she had learned nothing at all except how to put on a different, yet still somehow inappropriate pair of shoes.
Or maybe there was just no right pair of shoes for her feet. Nothing to protect her from the cold, uneven, stony path. No cushioned insole to ease her march across the days of her life and lift her as she jumped at the Joy of Just Being Alive.
And that thought made Portia the Poster Child for Doubt.
That thought made Portia realize that some kinds of cold have nothing to do with the temperature. This other Cold could seep deep down into every pore of her skin bringing her to the brink of freezing- so deep that she could be shattered into a million splintering shards of glistening ice.
That thought made her believe she should seriously consider the possibility of the life of a recluse, of a solitary life. A life lived without shoes at all... toes wiggling in the dewy, green grass, free and unfettered.
In those moments, she pondered, a barefoot life seemed the best alternative for such a girl as her.
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"Well, it turns out that my rambling thoughts are there for a reason. I should throw the shoes out of my closet and walk barefoot until there is some damn good reason to put any shoes on my twinkle toes again," Portia realized her current life was a fantasy in her head. Yet another lie she tells herself to make the world bearable. "What's the point," she thought? She had so much to learn. "Did it really mean so much to her to have a man's underwear mixed into her laundry? To watch the way he shaves at the sink? To smell the unique scent of masculine sweat versus the lingering scent of her own perfume in the laundry as she dropped it into the wash?"
But this morning, there was only pain. The kind of pain that made her stomach and chest ache and made the thought of food unappetizing. The kind of pain that would eventually rob her of sleep again. The kind of pain that made her realize these shoes not only didn't fit, they, themselves, thought they didn't belong.
These shoes sought an adventure without her but, for some reason, most likely fear of never being worn again, had sought her out.
She was a fool for putting on the shoes. This made Portia recall the story of "The Red Shoes" and some of what Estes had said about the tale. She decided to read it again.
Portia knew she was tired of dancing but the red shoes kept moving. She loved those shoes so much it made her heart hurt and she started to cry.
She knew the truth. And somehow, she had to let it all go if she was ever going to find her own rhythm. She had to let go of everything she had ever known, every fantasy she ever held of happiness, every hope she had ever held, every last pair on shoes in her closet had to go.
She knew that somehow she had to find a way to settle into her own shoeless existence and face her deepest fears and take responsibility for her great failures.
There was no way to escape loneliness. Not for her, anyway.
It was a requirement. Emotional pain and sadness were requirements of her existence on the planet. They always had been.
Why should now be any different?
When we walk barefoot, it need not be lonely, only different. Not that Wallace knew anything of this. If he was without four or five pairs of shoes lined up for his choice, the void was so great that he would just sleep instead of buying a new pair.
On that note, Wallace was quite aware that sometimes he carried a metaphor to a point where it made no sense. He wondered if he could craft a new writing niche where you take a metaphor and twist it only for the resonance of the words as you hear them, barring any semblance of meaning.
Nonetheless, he was sure that Portia's talk of shoeless eternities was just the worst-case scenario we fill our heads with. Should she be shoeless long enough, perhaps her standards would be more aligned with those of Wallace. Perhaps they could form a club where creepy old men with inappropriate facial hair and middle-aged women who lacked the face to pull off the weight could enjoy the company of each other.
Portia heard what Wallace said and it echoed across the cavity in her skull bouncing off the grey matter tht sloshed around in the ooze that protected it from banging up against bone as she banged her head against yet another brick wall.
Metaphors aside, Wallace's view into such a sad future made her wince.
"Was this better," she thought? "The unappealing men and women who, for whatever reason, do not set our internal chemical reactions into motion?"
She decided not. She could've stayed where she was two years ago and had a very attractive version of that. Handsome and beautiful and smart... just not one who could be her mate. They'd been through too much together. Tried on too many personalities, blamed one another for too many of their own faults, passively aggressed against one another for decades. See.... love just isn't enough.
A lesson she was learning yet again... love isn't enough. You can love someone and show them gratitude and appreciation but they don't feel your love, don't feel your hug, don't feel your hope and possibility because they are thickly wrapped in a blanket of their own denial, pain and loss.
Maybe they are asleep with their eyes open and perhaps they will never wake again.
Portia knew for a fact that she and Wallace deserved better. Neither was looking for perfection. Each was looking for a few necessary specifics that apparently aren't included with every model.
Maybe the upgrades of a thoughtful mind, a hand to hold, a knowledge of when to talk and when to just offer a shoulder or a hand or a hug were just features that cost extra and Portia wasn't sure what currency to use to procure them.
Her sadness deepened.
That morning she had crawled back into bed half dressed and hugged a man who didn't know the thoughts in her head or heart. She hugged him from behind and quietly cried in a way that he could not detect as she spoke. He did not know that she was counting the freckles on his shoulder, recalling the mole behind his right ear, smelling the scent of his body waking from the night, feeling the chill on his shoulder from the morning air and thinking how much she would miss these things when he was gone.
He had no way of knowing that she was trying to begin to learn how to tell him good-bye.
Portia had realized she wasn't his One. She was A One. That wasn't enough for her... because inevitable The One will come along.
As the line in the film "Shopgirl" goes, "So I can hurt now or I can hurt later. I think I'll hurt now."
Portia hope she could be that brave. But life isn't a movie and there's not a cute guy on the horizon trying to become good enough for you who will sweep in and appreciate you for who you are.
In real life, there's just the journey and one step in front of the other and fighting off the depression.
In real life, there's just trying to make enough sense of the world to survive it well enough to enjoy what beauty it has to offer.
And to learn to love yourself enough to be satisfied with not sharing those experiences with anyone... that life is a do-it-yourself project and there are no guarantees and no promise of a hand to hold.
And so it goes... the beginning days of the long Good-bye.
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