Yesterday was a very difficult day, as they all have been………………..and all will be. I love Columbus. I love going down to OSU and driving the neighborhoods and being in the environment on campus around the games. I think a lot of it is because I’m back in the north and so close to home. I’m in my element and around people who are like me, people I feel comfortable around. I feel at home here. The cool fall weather and colored trees and breeze only add to my homesickness. There’s no place I’d rather be than on campus on gameday in the fall. It always gives me a special (good) chill. I love walking around or sitting in my favorite gameday bar, the Out ‘R Inn, just watching people and soaking it all in for hours.
Even with all the games I’ve been to and all the gamedays I’ve spent here and elsewhere following OSU, it is still an immense thrill and I still consider it an unbelievable privilege to be able to do it. I never could’ve envisioned my wonderful opportunities over the last 15 years, when I was a young kid in WNY watching the Buckeyes on TV and going to the Marilla General Store every Sunday morning to get the BEN so that I could digest the previous day’s OSU and college football coverage and cut out the OSU article for my OSU scrapbook. It has been an incredible privilege to do the things I’ve done the last fifteen years. And still, there’s no place I’d rather be than in Columbus and on the OSU campus on a fall gameday. I still tear up many times when I walk out into the stadium to my seat before each game. It’s a special privilege I will never take for granted, though I don’t know how many more times I will be able to do it.
But yesterday, I was alone. My cousin wasn’t even there to hang with. Though I frequently am alone, still, yesterday, I was really alone and especially painful. From the second I left my Dad’s driveway, every thought for the rest of the day surrounded her……………and how overwhelmed I’d be to have her by my side………….and how I’d feel so cool driving down to campus and showing her around and hanging with her and taking it all in with her. It was an entire day of dreaming………………………..and hurting.
Several months ago, I had ordered a new, black, Nike OSU polo. I had not worn it and had been saving it for today. I’m weird (stupid) like that. I’m so into “moments” and special occasions of significance. I’m an idiot. I buy so few things for myself, so everything I do buy is carefully screened. I only buy things that really strike me and that I really love. Since there are so few, they all are special to me. But, I was so unhappy and so depressed today (and every day), that I almost did not wear it. I just wanted to say, “F it! I don’t give a damn. I have to put who I am/was behind me.”, in a further attempt to put my prior life behind me. In the end, I wore it, but it meant very little to me.
It was a perfect, gray day with a sky full of gray clouds, in the 50’s. Just the kind of day I absolutely love, the perfect day for spending with that perfect other half. I could’ve just walked around among the tens of thousands tailgating and on the streets for hours. Then I received the email. And I went down to the path on Olentangy River shoreline below the Lane Avenue bridge to read it and ponder it and watch the geese and smoke a cigarette………………or three. I needed to cry so bad. I needed to lie down on the ground and just ball my eyes out. I needed to be held. Then, as a further cruel twist of fate, a band at one of the big, nearby, outdoor pre-game parties began playing one of the songs on The List. I could not believe that, here I am already about to cry and feeling faint, they could stick the knife in by playing one of the songs. And it’s not even a song that you would ever expect at one of these outdoor parties. At that point I had to leave to get away.
I then walked around enjoying all the typical sausage and gyro street vendors and grills, watching all the people, listening to the bands……………………………..and just wishing and dreaming. I feel so weak and so immature and so evil.
I did not drink one drop of alcohol the entire day. In the near 200 college football games I’ve been to, I’m not sure that has ever happened, certainly not in the last 15 or 20 years. But I did not feel like it. And I think I also wanted to say, again, “F it! That will only remind me of my former life and further accentuate the pain.”. I drink when I’m happy. I am/was not happy. I have been drinking only in social situations the last few weeks, when I have to because everyone else is drinking. Otherwise, though, I’ve virtually quit. Again, like virtually everything else, I associate drinking with happiness……………and her, cuz we would’ve had so much fun yesterday sipping Jack n’Cokes walking around on the street or parking ourselves at the bar at the Out R’Inn. It will probably help me lose weight, not that I have anyone to try to impress by losing it now. I really don’t care what happens to me now. Who gives a shit what I look like.
Of course, I stop at a convenience store after the game. I go to look for a drink and, of course, my eyes fall on Vitamin Water, another painful remembrance. As I walk out, I happen to look at the gas pumps and notice the Mobil logo, the horse with the wings. I just sink inside, because, in a split second, it took me back to the former Mobil station at Bullis and Bowen in Elma. God, I can’t get away from remembrances anywhere I go. They are everywhere, hiding in the smallest and inconspicuous of things. Hell, just being in central Ohio, so near to Cedarville and, thus, so near to Springfield and her school, was a heavy weight all weekend. I envisioned her there for four years, laughing and having fun and entertaining her friends in the yellow house and driving guys crazy and just being the coolest girl every on the face of the earth…………………………..and it just kills me. Her laugh just so melts me and makes me want to scream. And I remember the first photo of her that she ever emailed to me. It is permanently imprinted on my mind. She was so stunningly beautiful in the photo and her expression was so her. Every photo of her, but especially my memory of that photo, so reminds me of her locked gaze, how her beautiful, brown eyes seemed to never leave mine during the hour or so that we were together one year ago. I don’t ever remember in life any girl who was so concentrated in maintaining eye contact, let alone, on that day, a total stranger. I remember how much she impressed me that day. What a deep, mature, thoughtful, insightful woman. Why so late in life was I exposed to her, when I can do nothing about it? How can there be someone so perfect in the world and why did I have to meet her????? And how can someone so perfect be so humble and disbelieving of her perfection, when there are so many millions who think they are perfect and can’t hold a candle to her???? No one approaches her. Certainly not me. She is so much higher than me, I’m not sure, if given the chance, I could even denigrate her by attempting to be a part of her life. She deserves much better than me. Much better. Why has God done this to me??????
And then I had to spend a second straigtht evening with my feeble, fundamentalist family, the family that so contributed to the weak, pathetic, worthless person I am at 48. My teeth were gritting the entire time. I wanted to scream. So much talk of home. I wanted to strangle them and tell them to shut up about how often you get to return to Buffalo and spend time there. Do you know how painful it is to love your home so much, yet know that you are now banished from ever returning, to have to be around feeble people who get to go there all the time and don't appreciate it like you do????? I was coming out of my skin.
So now I sit, waiting to fly back to a place I do not want to be, a place that has never been “home” to me, a place so far away from where I want to be, where I am surrounded by people who are not like me and who love that place and think it is so great. I feel so at home just sitting here. I don’t want to go. I’m so tempted to say, “I can’t do it anymore! I’m not going back. I’ll live on the street if I have to, but I’m not going back.”. But I can’t. I cannot be without my wonderful dog.
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