It’s cold again. I needed a smoke, it’s not my house, I must smoke outside. Coming home isn’t always easy, isn’t always fun. I love my parents, but meeting them is always an odd experience. I love them to bits and they do me, but as much joy I derive from seeing them and being back in their sanctuary is underlined by the immense sadness I feel realising that they’re fighting against time. They’re growing old. Succumbing to the ailments of old age. I hate to see them having to compromise to the realities of time.
“What? Do we look that old? We’ve just reached our half life, we have a long way to go son.” Is all my mother said to me with a comforting smile when she read the thoughts right off my mind.
It’s not like they’re old and losing their battle against life. Nor do they suffer from any sort of disease or terminal illness, it’s not like they can’t walk gracefully or stand upright without help. But at this stage, not as upright or as graceful as I remember them through my childhood, or as I’d like them to remain throughout their lives.
I’m such a kid when I’m home. Lazier than a lion. I still get the utmost comfort with my head on my mother’s lap with her hands gently stroking my hair. Helping dad around the house with minor modifications, repairs and carpentry. Still being his assistant although I could do the job myself. I do love being home.
Catching up with friends of course is another story altogether. I get to know details about their lives that they omitted in their correspondence with me while I was away. Because it was too tedious to type all the details or for it was too important a detail to be put in words and was better told as a long tale over the phone. Its fun listening to these tales though, especially when they involve a story that began just before I left and is about to end just as we speak. I have the rare opportunity to study their change (sometimes a total 180 degrees) like the before and after pictures one sees on TV or in magazines; without my mind having to process the transition from their point of view in the beginning to that at present. For instance one of my friends had just gotten into a relationship with a bloke (whom I thoroughly disapproved of) and at that time she was head over heels for him, within a week of them going strong she’d been discussing with me long term plans about their relationship and its ultimate culmination in marriage. She’d been going on and on about all the feelings and all the other bloody bollocks that pollute peoples minds when infected (even temporarily) by the poison on the tip of Cupid’s cursed arrow. When the initial infatuation passes a normal person usually sees the world for what it is and notices this arrow sticking out of their bum. And one thinks, ‘Hello? That’s not supposed to be there is it?’ and yanks the bloody thing out. Now that she’s pulled that stinker of an arrow out of her bum (not sure which cheek it was though), she suddenly sees and senses the real world. She sees the inadequacies, the imperfections the incompatibilities the et cetera et cetera that is to be seen by a clear minded person. Now I get to hear all of the bloody bollocks that she suddenly realises about her present sweetie and their dying relationship. I’m always tempted to say, ‘I told you so’ because more often than not, being seasoned in all this bullshit and totally disillusioned with life, I know where the tale is going to end up by reading into the making of it, the characters involved and its beginning. This one wasn’t destined for a ‘….and they lived happily ever after’ climax. So now I hear the rant, of a woman who feels she’s been wronged, expressed in all the fury of a woman whose mind is now infected with so much anger and scorn that I can feel the speaker of my handset burning under my ears. I never did tell her, ‘I told you so’, I didn’t have the heart. But such is my state after just a short tenure on this earth, that rather then feel genuine empathy, sorrow and pity for a friend in distress, all I feel is a smile inching up my cheeks waiting for the phone connection to die so I can flip my head back and laugh at life and its rules that never seem to change no matter who the players are. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not laughing at my dearest friends or at their state, just at life. I guess no matter how hard you try or what you do, you will end up in the groove that is etched for you on this playground of life and you shall ultimately follow it till its end.
Just when I thought life was going to be just as simple and relaxing as it is every time I return home I had a dose of classic tragedy slung at me. It involved none other than the unnamed heroine of my first post (Chaos). She and I haven’t spoken in a long time. That is of course until yesterday, when after a series of e mails that she initiated we got back in touch. I don’t mean to say that I regret it, just that I hadn’t expected myself to react the way I did.
The first e mail that she sent out of the blue one day caught me so off guard that I couldn’t stop shivering. Seeing her name in the inbox alone had engulfed me in that unforgettable feeling that I’d get every time we were together. Everything and I mean everything just came back in one flash. It felt good in the beginning with the happy moments, the love the intensity of our relationship, the warmth of our every caress. Alas, this feeling was soon laced with sadness and longing and eventually complete and utter hopelessness. I was helpless, almost paralysed sinking into the chair with the whole world vanishing from view and just this feeling, so intense that I can’t explain it in words. I have no counter for this, no defence; I never had and never will. After what seemed like an aeon, my hand, still shivering with this feeling running through my body reached for the mouse and opened the mail. The contents of the mail made my heart sink. All the sadness that I’d thought I’d never feel again in my life, I felt at that moment. For about a day I was in a daze. A world of my own where I’d see and feel life like I did back then. She’d opened up a deep wound that had just begun to heal. I replied to that e mail which was a question, with a true and straight answer, resisting the urge to mention anything else than what was asked. Eventually the mails became more frequent, each friendlier than the last. She wrote to me like she would a friend. Like everything was normal. I couldn’t do the same, but I did. I didn’t want to be unfair to her and load her with my issues. “I still love her that is true, but she probably doesn’t, hence the normality in her tone of the words she types. She’s happy, the way you want her to be, leave her be that way and help her be that way”, that’s all I thought whilst replying to her. Each correspondence digging deeper and deeper into the past and unearthing the thoughts and feelings I’d thought I’d forgotten and was incapable of feeling. It effected my days and my work; it affected everything I’d do. She still was the only person, thoughts of who were capable of occupying my whole body and soul. No one other than her. I saw where I was heading and I didn’t want to go there, not again. So, I asked her politely to leave me be till I get back on solid ground, till I get back home. She did.
I called her when I got back. My hands shivering more with every number I pressed on the keypad. I composed myself as best I could. I didn’t want her to hear my heart and what it was yelling out. As we spoke I got to know a lot about how she was and how her life was going, not from what she told me, but from the tone of her voice and her inner voice that always spoke to me without her permission. I guess I pulled it off pretty well. I was normal through the entire conversation that came to an abrupt stop thanks to my phone minutes running out. But the message that needed to be delivered had been delivered.
If you’ve read my first post (Chaos) then you’ll surely know the villain of the post. Well as it happens in the twisty ways of life now the villain is the hero and I the villain. How?
Well she told me they’d broken up, no actually, she’d said they were not together anymore and that she’d called it off temporarily. When I inquired as to why, she said that she felt she was being unfair to him. Upon digging deeper I was told that he was a little upset that more often than not she’d end up mentioning me in her conversations with him. I’d keep popping up everyday. In the beginning he was understanding since she’d just broken up with me and hoped it’d wane away eventually but apparently it never did. I ought to feel happy about this but I didn’t. She wasn’t happy about it. Her inner voice had already spoken to me, it said that she truly loved this guy, she’d been with him longer than she had with me. She’s probably been happier with him. And she doesn’t need to go through the extreme highs and extreme lows that was the essence of out intense, short lived, yet unfinished time together. She was comfortable with him, happy with him, she loved him and his company is what her inner voice screamed out to me and the memories of us and the memory of me that stuck onto her mind had ruined it. She was unhappy because of me. I was responsible once again, for making her sad. I wasn’t a happy person when the phone cut off. I derived no pleasure from her sadness, I never had, never will. Her slightest dissatisfaction would worry me, she wasn’t meant to be anything but gay and merry. Now I was really worried. How, without doing anything at all or being directly responsible had I managed this? I needed to help her. I needed her to stop thinking about me, to help her forget me, to erase me so she could be happy with him, the hero of her present life. I am the villain; I’m the culprit of her currently ‘on-hold’ relationship. I’m the thorn imbedded in the sole of her foot that pains her every time she walks.
Good God! I have to work against all my feelings for her that still prevail. I have to suppress my heart that wants her back so badly and go through the ordeal of making her successfully inert to my existence. To make myself, our love and all we’ve been through and all I’d done to make our relationship work, a totally insignificant chapter of her life. Such is my plight, such is my responsibility such is my duty since I can’t bare to see her feeling anything other than happy.
