THE PROVERBIAL YOU (MEANING ME)

You’ve been having one of those mornings.

It’s been one of those mornings that follows one of those evenings, when through no prior thought or premeditation, you find yourself alone with a bottle of wine.

Without a word or so much as an invitation, that bottle becomes your constant companion. You go for walks with the bottle, to and from the far corners of your apartment. You lie back on the couch with it. You watch TV together, and it even follows you to the bathroom, much the way a good girlfriend should… were you a woman and headed to the loo.

At one point in the evening, that bottle up and leaves you. The fact that it's empty comes as a shock, as most things unexpected tend to do. There’s no point in denial. Suddenly, that bottle is gone, and so you do what any sensible person might.

You go to find another.

While there is another bottle on the kitchen counter, that would take some time to chill. Never mind that the show on the TV can wait, for you have Tivo. That’s hardly the point, now is it? You don’t want to wait and the fridge is filled with beer, and so you do what any misled person might.

You switch.

One… two… three… four beers later, and how are you not laid prone upon the floor? Actually, you’re upright (to a point). There you are, sitting on your bed, propped up against the headboard. It might seem to be a harmless condition. After all, you’re just sitting there. It would appear to be benign, this place in which you find yourself, except that a computer is perched upon your lap. It’s turned on and you’re online, and so you do what any inebriated person might.

You begin to Google the names of women who you kind of, sort of, maybe dated once upon a time, and then—wait for it—you decide to reach out to one or two of them, or maybe a whole handful.

So, yeah… you’ve been having one of those mornings.

It’s been one of those mornings that follow one of those evenings, and though the details are hazy and you can’t quite recall exactly what it was that happened? There is a part of you wishing, hoping—pleading, even—that the Googling is all that you got up to, but truth be told?

No part of you can quite remember.

(Sigh.)

MEANING

My Dear,

I have come to realize that life can disappoint, and that things seldom happen in the ways they frankly should. The older one grows, the more of life one passes through, the more one comes to understand that the “bitter pill” is not proverbial, but a recommended part of a balanced diet, and that higher minded ideals—things like “justice” and “integrity”—will not always come to be, not when evil and inequity exist within our world.

A lesser man might turn a cynic in the face of all of this. He might find himself a corner of the world in which to cower and escape, but I am no ordinary person.

I believe in hope. I believe in faith. I believe in the power of optimism, and in the doing of good works. For that matter, I believe in a mandatory, four-day workweek, as a testament to family values.

I believe in science. I believe in miracles. Therefore, I believe that science and religion can peacefully coexist.

While we’re on the topic, I believe in drinking decent beer, and that while a draft beer calls for a proper pint glass, any beer ordered in a bottle should likely be consumed from that very same bottle.

I believe in speaking my mind. I believe that an opinion can be the most attractive thing about a person, and also the most reprehensible. I believe that even the slightest voice has the volume to be heard.

I believe that people are, by nature, fallible creatures; therefore, I believe in instant replay.

I believe that language is a gift from God Himself, and that those who choose to mangle the language do so at their own peril.

I believe in marrying up. I’m still working on that one, but I’m kind of hoping you can help.

I believe in all of this and more, and always in the notion that meaning can be derived from the most unlikely of places. There are moments lost on consequence. It’s the sum of these smaller parts—the stolen glances, the lost afternoons, the silly and innocuous—that when added up over the course of many years, over a lifetime, end up mattering most of all.

This is about those moments—the times that we share together, to be certain, but especially those for which you’re not around.

I believe it’s in those moments that I miss you most of all.