Saltines

Long break.
I'm better, but I'm bitter.
Better bitter. Butter on saltines. That's how my grandmother always said you could tell we were really white trash at heart....we liked butter on our saltines
"Poor food." Jay says, watching me eat, shaking his head.
No, silly. Poor food is ketchup on saltines. For supper.
Butter is expensive.
If the butter is organic, does that raise the socioeconomic level of my favorite snack?
What if the butter is organic, and the saltines are made with free trade organic wheat? What if I recycle the box afterwards? Does that raise the spiritual level of my white trash snack? Am I still white trash?
Is being spiritually conscious strictly the provenance of the upper middle class?
Maybe if we weren't so fucking insular and snotty, we crunchy granola east coast educated hairy armpitted stinky peacenik buddhists, we'd have more people on our side.
Do the wide butted crackers slowly water buffalo-ing their way through the aisles of Wal-Mart looking for deals, my oh-so-secret brethren, buying their non environmentally conscious dollar dishwashing soap even have a right to enlightenment?
All, all, all, all beings.
Why are the poor of other lands so picturesque, while ours are just distasteful?
But these people fill the ICU's, they sit by the sides of their dying loved ones and they pray and pray and pray and hope against hope and whisper in their ears. These are the people who are riddled with cancer because they worked in factories that didn't provide basic protections, or drank themselves into liver cancer because their lives were so circumscribed that liquor was their only horizon, or they stayed with brutes who beat them up. These are the people whose diets have been so poor because of poverty and overwork and lack of education that their bowels are obstructed and have perforated, or they're morbidly obese and diabetic and losing limbs and on dialysis. It can kind of get you, if you let it.
"What are you eating?" the wife of one of my patients asks me. She is tiny, in her mid thirties, skin leathered and lined already by smoking. She looks 45.
"Butter and saltines." I reply.
"That's my favorite thing to eat!" She says.
Mine, too.
I've been walking the dry brutally lit hallways of the loveless this last week. I've just been doing my chores in order. Setting my timer. Taking my adderall. Last night the band came over, and my fiddle softened me a little bit. I started crying again yesterday. Of course, the breakup or whatever is going on is messy. My shrink told me the relationship isn't salvageable and I needed to get out of it right away. So why am I still sort of in it?
I'm still sort of in it. But I'm doing creepy things like checking up on him and reading his emails and checking his voice messages (he told me all the passwords). I don't believe a single word he says about anything. I'm waiting to see if this feeling goes away.
I think the way out of this is right action.
You know, the good old eight-fold path.
But don't you have a right to defend yourself against lies? I ask myself.
I think, now that I'm regaining some sanity, that there's still a "best" way to do things, and I think checking up on him is self-destructive.
So I'm going to stop.
His lying is his responsibility. That's too bad for him, that he lies. That's bad karma. I'm sorry he feels he has to do that. I have compassion for him. (Well, I don't yet, but I'm going to pretend that I do. Fake it till you make it.)
My anger though, is my responsibility. It's better. It flashes up, then it recedes. It's like a wave.
Difficulties are really opportunities for spiritual growth. They are a chance to practice hard. It is amazing that I can find any peace in the midst of this, but I truly have been able to. I'm really not derailed. Kind of shaken up. And I fall back into ugly habits, but then I recover after about a half hour. It's been kind of interesting. Sometimes I feel like I'm watching the whole thing from a distance.
"I take refuge in my own good nature!" I yell, in the car, doing the dishes. "I take refuge in my own good nature." And then I laugh hysterically.
I don't know what to do. I really thought this guy was the end point for me. I don't want to touch anybody else. I'm not attracted to anyone else. But I'm so darn pissed. We have sex, I don't climax. I can't sleep when I'm over there.
Do I stay? Do I go? Do I stay? Do I go?
I, I, I, me me me. What in terms of buddhism, do you owe yourself? People lie. Men lie. Do you throw them out? Does having compassion mean just laying down for this? Is it even bad treatment?
Do I just want him out of craving and addiction, or do I really love him?
That's my 1/2 hour.