Friday, January 17, 2014

I Love You Like The IRS Loves...


Ours is a thoughtless love.
I love you like a fat man working in internal revenue loves cake, not for any stereotypical reason having to do with his weight, but because the presence of cake means a distraction from the usual routine that so fails to distract him from his self confidence issues. Our love is not warm enough to heat the overly air conditioned confined spaces of the office, but it is enough to sustain you like the overabundance of coffee you drink, partially to stay awake, but mostly to warm up. 
Our love requires zero thought processes, it is done day in and day out like a typical 9 to 5 job that has been worked for more years than you would care to celebrate with an anniversary. It's thoughtlessness and repetition are not genetic or predetermined or even deliberate, but rather practiced, not rehearsed, but practiced. Not like practicing hockey or baseball or the "I think I can, I think I can" of childhood practicing to get better, but more like the way we've gotten better at standing on two feet because we've done it all our lives and, excepting any tragic circumstances, will continue to do for some time. 
"This is what's wrong with America" they'll think and say and blog about. They'll think our love is the reason for the divorce rate because it doesn't have any thought behind it, because to them, the lack of consideration seems wrong. But they're wrong. Divorce and "what's wrong with America" and marital affairs are all for the adventurous. It's for the people who consider love and marriage and relationships a toy that can be broken. It's for people who consider their love at all. And maybe we thought about it in the beginning, we questioned why it was there and what it's purpose was, where we were going, where were we going, so many W's with question marks. But that time is long gone.
When we tell each other we love one another it is so automatic it could potentially be delivered by a telephone operator through static cracking lines twice a day like abandon machine operated church bells keeping the neighborhood awake and giving them the feeling of guilt despite knowing that the church is empty and even if they wanted to could not attend. Could not show up early to and take their seats at the front row out of some unconscious desire to fit in that these types of people have felt since grade school. This is our love. It is not our conscious decision to sit in the back of the classroom so we can goof of nor is it our conscious decision to sit in the front to the classroom to better take notes, but rather a built in seating chart that has been constructed over the course of years.
Years of waking up at the same time every single day to do the same things every day to meet the same people everyday to eat and drink the same things everyday to fall asleep next to the same person every night. Our love is thoughtless, but it is felt. Felt in such a way that it is automatic and requires no thought. Everyone else seems so lonely, trying to think and understand their love, like fireflies, who have always seemed to look so far away from ever finding one another. It is not automatic like God's love, which at times feels so automatic and unconditional that it might almost cease to feel special for some people. But an automatic a tax calculator, taking in every aspect of your life as though it's affect on your life is the simple addition and subtraction of a number. 
That's what it feels like, overwhelming. So thoughtless because to try to consider the mathematical trajectories and economic theories alive in your taxes, the mind numbing crap your CPA goes bonkers over, is so impossible that it is best to just stop thinking and let the enormous effects wash over you while you continue on with your life. This is how I love you, so recklessly thoughtless and automatic that to even consider what it is I'm doing and saying is so irreversibly more reckless that I would rather just let you wash over me, like a tidal wave unconcerned with the fiscal emergency budget of the top five most likely to respond industrial countries as it washes away everything we have built together.

       

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