Minority Report

I knew years ago, I'd be sitting here now.
The same as I knew I would break up with my ex I dated before I got married and that we would not be married. I knew I would hurt her and walk away and hurt others.
I knew that I was not ready nor was I certain I ever would be. I also knew there would be other women.

I look back on that moment, sitting at a bar, probably working on living the material I needed for the novel. I ponder and reach and consider the feel, the piece, the fragmentary exact moment in time and space when I felt and knew its truth and supposed a fraction of its immense weight.

I sat and knew whenever I took the plunge of marriage it would later come to an end. I knew then this end was coming.

Naked. On my apartment floor. Divorced. The place looks ransacked.
It's obvious a woman left recently. The kind of leaving that you know was hurried and permanent.

Starting over at 30.

I had this absolute sense of it.
This self-fulfilling prophecy.
Fitzgerald talked about it.
Thompson said you got 10 years.

Well, here we fucking are, bro.

Here we motherfucking are.

I shake my head at the stupid and needless and unavoidable predictability of it all.
I don't know how much blame to place with myself, with the expectations of others, and with the institution of marriage: the system designed to fail for a man like me and know that if the choice is not "A" or "B"...then perhaps there exists a "C".

I knew from the first time, like always....that there would tears and mascara streaks.

I regret some of the personal cost in having done what is necessary to cross the things off my list of accomplishments to complete before I die. The novel. The fights. The broken relationships. The cheating.

But, perhaps it's the sociopath in me, and perhaps its the selfishness or the narcissism.....I don't regret those people and questionable decisions enough that I'd honestly take them back and be the person I'd become in the absence of those experiences.

The thing which has plagued my personal life, the part of me that pushes the envelope....is the same tragic flaw that presses me forward on to success.

"Or perhaps that's just a lie the Dark Passenger tells me."

I wonder if I'll end up alone. I know I can only leverage my young-ish looks so many more days. So many more nights. So many more years.
The last few months have shown I still leverage, and I still have appeal and even if I didn't....being content has never been my strongsuit.
I will eventually reach the tipping point....but like with everything in my life, it is a zero sum game. I know and understand my having or not having depends on another having or not having.
My altruism has its bounds.

---------

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
    - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald