Some people are really embarrassing. They can’t contain their emotions; they tell you all their troubles (which are never as bad as all that); and no one’s suffering is ever as profound or as deeply felt as theirs. And they will insist on airing their laundry in public.
That’s me.
Sorry.
Well, old dogs and new tricks are never happy bedfellows, so you can skip this one if you like, because I’m going to try on a new collar in public (while mixing metaphors).
There has been the most glorious young woman in my life for the last five years - loving, wise, intelligent, troubled, exquisite and imperfect. I’ve courted her in every way I know how, but if you know any I haven’t thought of, please phone or email... We’ve lived together off and on, and had long periods of separation, which I’ve always found trying. But always we’ve come back to each other, compelled to do whatever it was we had to do.
Recently she has found some new clarity about her life and our relationship, and the upshot is the inevitable (and this time permanent) parting. The timing coincides with big changes in our respective working lives, and the finances force us both to seek new and more modest accommodation. Excruciating, unnerving, and irritating in that order.
And I’ve been one of the embarrassing people.
Friends and family have held my hand and offered advice. (Why, by the way, is there never any new advice? Does advice of any kind actually work?) They feed me when I can’t face food, give me Reiki, listen patiently at the end of the line while I try out some new doomed mental plan to avoid the facing of the fact. They all know she’s gone, that I’m wasting my time and tears, and really I should know that this is the worst case ‘embarrassing person’ scenario. But I continue to abuse their kindness.
The Beloved Woman herself has tried to cushion me from my own melodrama and self pity, with the predictable lack of success. I’ve been rude to her, conciliatory, infantile, supplicatory, apoplectic with rage, and sniveling with unforgivable extortionate sorrow. Often all in the same day. And I’m probably not finished yet - this misplaced and unwelcome longing will not obey my bidding.
Nothing works, by the way. She’s on her way elsewhere, somewhere I can never travel, sadly beyond my experience.
So in this brief moment of relative calm*, I want to tell you quickly of a wonderful woman.
When we met, no sparks flew. I’m twenty years her senior, cadaverous, twice-divorced, father of three, crooked-toothed and broken-nosed and genetically financially handicapped. Not a lot to help kickstart a love affair...
She’s American, cultured during my least favourite decades, child of a complicated and prosperous family, never married and scarcely co-habited, modest in dress and manner, and an accomplished musician. Of a physical type outside my usual preferences.
But somehow we looked each other in the eye. We were able to speak about things that mattered to us from the outset, and have continued so until this recent breakdown. She gave of her love in her own unstinting and unpredictable manner, and I came to be so attached to her as to be embarrassing sometimes even to myself.
The beauty of her character reversed the usual movement of relationships from initial excitement and infatuation to terminal irritation at mannerisms, habits, and contrary opinions. With her, the sweetness of her disposition even at her most neurotic moments made everything seem to grow in warmth and comfort and quiet passion. I began mildly intrigued, and grew stupid with devotion. And still am. In my own distinctly un-Job-like way. No heroic stiff-lipped exits for me...
This last summer she took on the creation of a garden in the builders’ tip which was the approach to our flat. She had never had a garden before. With the most delicate and childlike enthusiasm and joy she created a short-lived Eden : varied, comical, surprising, deep and rich.
A startling affirmation of Life and Love in an unpromising situation. I watch it outside my studio these days wilting, failing, a ruin of still ravishing richness. And of course the metaphorical reflection of our relationship isn’t lost on me...
I’m inconsolable at the moment (being melancholic to the point of neuroticism at the best of times), and I will be bursting at the seams with my unpredictable salad of emotional excess again tonight and tomorrow, and probably for months into the future (stupid, I know, but that’s what I’m like). But I need to tell you this, in these times of exploitive relationships of all sorts and at all levels, when Beauty and Truth are hiding their faces for shame.
There is this beautiful woman on the Earth, and she has loved me.
I wish such joy to all, and pray God spare you such sorrow.
* 8:37 to 9:25 pm as it turns out - and now I feel the imminent werewolf’s approach
Saturday, 24 October 2009
