The Conversation

I was in the pool. Ranting in my head as I swam lap after lap, all of it of the "Don't you know who the fuck I am" variety. And it wasn't just while I was swimming, I had been doing it for days and it was getting to me. A feeling of not being valued hanging over my head like a cloud. Actually, it wasn't hanging over my head. It was radiating from within.

I know not to trust that voice, but I forget. I forget that every time I go into "Do not disrespect me" mode, it's not about the disrespecter, it's about me. Whatever ugly thing I think they’re saying is always something I've been saying to myself, usually for years. In this case it was, “You're small time. You don't really know what you're doing, you're just playing around." It didn't matter that we had traded heartfelt emails and cleared the air, and that I know that there is deep care and respect between us. The initial interaction had lit my not enoughness fuse and it was going to burn 'til it blew.

To be perfectly honest, I just didn’t like how they were acting. We had made something beautiful together and now I wanted to make another beautiful thing and they were not nearly as excited as they should be. So, what if it was ten years later and we were both at completely different stages of our lives, this was another chance to get back in the saddle and do our thing, yet they seemed more concerned with credits and career advancement than the quest toward underground cinema glory.

I think I just wanted them to love on me like they used to. To hold me in the same golden cloud of esteem they did ten years ago, but so much had happened since then. There had been resentment. Resentment they had copped to, and which had been discussed over the years and I tried to make my discomfort all about that. But it wasn't about that. It was about me and what I had done with my life and what I hadn't. But I couldn't see it, and so I kept my furnace warm with the coal of self-aggrandizement. I'm the one who makes things happen. I am the organizing principle. I've been doing this for thirty years. I'm the one with the talent and ten thousand hours. Me! Me! Me!

Oh, that poor little unloved boy. That he would need the protection of all that bluster. But, as I said, I couldn’t see myself, just the problem, and so I decided to write an email and resolve things one way or the other.

Thank God for twelve step programs. Thank God for all the trouble I've made in my life and the dumb shit I've said and written. Thank God a part of me knows to not give voice to the wound and write “Hey motherfucker, are you in or are you out?” Thank God some version of an adult showed up. "Why don’t you come over and we’ll watch the movie and remember what we did and what we do and I'll make you some food while we're at it?"

At this point I was still convinced they would rather not be involved and when I didn't hear back for a day, I called the third in our trio to say I had a bad feeling. "Calm down,” he told me.” It’s all going to be fine.” “I’m a person!” I wailed. The whole saga of my life in thumping my chest.

A few hours later the phone rang and there they were on the other end of the line. Whatever uncertainties I was convinced they had I couldn’t hear them now. It was all-hands-on-deck and what’s the best way to go about it? We had made something we were proud of before and would try our best to do it again, and spoke for half an hour in the way we always had; with a shared artistic understanding and our trademark self-effacing joy.

A few minutes later I texted the one who had told me to “calm down.”

“You were right. Everything’s fine. We just had a great talk. I’m insane.”

It felt so good to know that, and to remember that the conversation I had been having in my head for the better part of a week was between me and me.