A car slid across the icy road near Truckee into the back side of my Jeep on Sunday. We were leaving Tahoe. The cars in front of us had stopped suddenly. I braked and saw the car behind me spinning out of control. I pulled into the oncoming lane, trying to get out of the way of the car that was now sliding sideways towards us, but no luck. It smashed into the back of my car and then went off the road into a snow filled ditch. A four wheel drive pickup truck behind that car did the same. Like a good citizen I made sure everybody was okay. Tow trucks were going to be involved, at least one to pull the two of them back onto the road. Though once the unlucky cars were back on the road they were probably both drivable.
The piece of cracked plastic that constituted the broken part of my car costs $1100, unpainted. I found that out the following day, just before letting my insurance company know. I was going to reach out to the driver and see if he just wanted to pay for my car to be repaired, rather than have me claim it against his insurance. But you know, I didn't feel like calling him and selling him the idea. I didn't exactly like the idea either.
We talk a lot about the rising costs of healthy care in this country, but that's not the only problem. Something, something, something.... late stage capitalism.
You learn about the nature of partnership in these moments. When the refrigerator has gone out we needed a new one. Though by all conceivable definitions I am just a renter here. When there were fires roaring through the area and taking out power grids we needed a generator for "the house." Though again I was not sure why a renter would need a generator, even though I like specific use-case machinery. When the car that I pay for exclusively gets hit from behind on a trip that we regularly take to a place with dangerous driving conditions then I will need to decide how I want to handle it. Well, the pronoun "I" was never used. Everything was suddenly couched with a series of "you (will need/want to)...." There was no talk of partnership when my things get damaged doing something for us.
I have been feeling in some deep inward part of myself that something is over, and has been for a long time now. Facing difficulties alone - not necessarily financial ones - makes me feel this even more pointedly than I might have felt it otherwise.
What is the point of labeling a relationship a partnership? We are co-parents that sometimes cooperate, and who sometimes conjoin our bodies for the purpose of copulation. Itus means "a going, a departure" in Latin. When you put co in front of itus, you create a departing together.
Propositus, I. All part of the tinnitus, detritus, and and vomitus of love.
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