Calm before the storm?

Another day.

Another year.

Another birthday.

I had a date with Amanda tonight. (Is it a date when you almost married the girl 5 years ago?) She called this afternoon and cancelled because of work duties.

I was kinda wanting to go play basketball tonight, because for the rest of the world, it’s not a special day. It’s not the day before 30, the day before everything in my world comes crashing down upon me like a ton of bricks. And maybe, by going and blending in at a place where much is familiar and people are generally neutral-to-positive regarding my presence, I can forget about 30 for a couple of hours.

Amanda flaking is no big deal. I suppose I’m a little disappointed, and she was as gracious as ever, apologizing profusely and wondering aloud if meeting for lunch tomorrow or Wednesday might be a possibility just as she said something about needing a Diet Pepsi. “Some vices never change,” she muttered. It was nostalgically attractive, just as her flaking was attractive nostalgically.

She always did choose work over me. Work over herself. Work over life. Work over us. And so, however irrational, I found her flaking today to be pleasant, if only because it was an echo of our entire relationship. It didn’t make me happy. Nor did it make me sad. It simply was a reminder, and I found myself pleased that I saw it coming.

In a way, I suppose, I have always expected women to flake on me. At one point I fought this vigorously. Then I gingerly hoped. And finally, I angrily accepted.

Today I am just apathetic.

I wonder where the razor edge between apathy and depression lies.

--

A day of reckoning in my life is coming tomorrow. I’m not sure what that means. I’m not sure what comes next. I’m not sure if it means that after tomorrow I’ll come out with guns a-blazing, afterburners firing, and a glow about me. Or if it means that I’ll just fade into my own private version of hell a little more precipitously.