what can I say?

I seem to have a serious hole in my head.  Not the literal kind.  Maybe a "hole" is misleading although that is what it feels like but perhaps I should say "glitch".  There is no reason to talk around it if I'm going to write it so... as I started feeling better (I mean BETTER, back to good, genuine ME, 7 years later) I also started a new habit: I started calling BC by the wrong name, the name of an old boyfriend.  It started in my head then slipped out of my mouth.  The first time it was funny, the second time horrifying, and the third time... we are way beyond three now.  I was so busy trying not to do it I didn't stop to investigate why I was doing it.  Or perhaps I was afraid of the answer....

But despite trying to ignore it I've sort it out.  Last night I made elk burgers with a slaw of warm ginger, grated carrot, thin sliced yellow bell peppers, grilled onions, and bean spouts to go on top.  BC was busy messing with toasting a bun for his when I plated mine so he didn't see how the whole thing should go together. Being kid-less for the night I took our movie and my plate up stairs for our version of dinner and movie.  From downstairs BC called out, "So do I put these vegetables on top of the burger?"  Now BC is a vegetable guy,  actually way too much for my taste but I have learned to live with it so he was really asking if it was okay to do it.  I heard him and I understood what he was asking but I also heard through that hole in my head something else said to me a long time ago, "Heeeeey, why'd you put vegetables on my burger?" I burst out laughing but still managed to clear BC for his vegetable love and then I had some explaining to do.

I told him the story of 'the other man' (that sounds shady, and in ways he kind of was) the one who used to sit on the hood of my car eating donuts and reading rag magazines while I ran the park, the man who would hunt me down on campus to bring me a sweet-roll, an orange carved like a jack-o-lantern, and a coffee ever morning but only after he ate the exact center out of the sweet-roll, the man who drove me more nuts than a man ever has and also in a strange way is the man who set me up to survive my own short comings.  The man who refused to leave me even long after our "us" was over (ended by me) until he knew I would truly be okay.  That man and the defiled burger with vegetables on it was a burger with a slice of iceberg lettuce.  And as I was retelling the story it hit me what was going on in my head.  In a lot of ways these two men are very alike.  In a lot of ways but for different reasons they both have the same effect on my outlook of the world.  Now that I am feeling like ME it I can really feel it.  The crazy wacky part of BC reminds me of wacky part of the Other and when I am not so scared I can see it for what it is: something I love, crave, and thrive beside.  It would be part of the overall package that was BC that I feel in love with but when I got sick I lost the taste for. Probably even feared a bit.  I drifted towards other parts of him that made me feel safer but less alive.

This is like waking to find us sitting on the back deck of the sugar house house drinking coffee and recounting my night spent working the ER.  It's like falling in love all over again. And not with just BC, or even a small part with the Other, but with myself too.

 It feels like living used to.

There is also a darker side to this but something spectacular: I no longer have nightmares that I am still with my ex as I have for the past 11 years and it is no longer his name that skims the surface of my consciousness.  I do believe I prefer the hole and the replacement past is certifiably a sanity upgrade although I'd like to get the "name calling" under control.