Love
Posted by Boo , Friday, April 2, 2010 12:29 AM
I have never loved a man who was not difficult, and I have only once loved a man who loved me. I have never loved a man who could be very nice to me for very long.
I know a lot of that is on them. Some of it is on me.
The transition from my ex's wife to Mercury's significant other was seamless. He was not the reason I left my husband. The reasons are detailed in earlier posts, but there is some shame in the idea that, while my daughter's health and well-being was a huge motivating factor in my decision to end my marriage, it never really occured to me to consider my own.
Then I had this friend. This brilliant, fun and funny man. Sweet, sensitive and strong. He took an interest in me. He thought I was also brilliant, fun and funny, sweet, sensitive and strong. He loved to talk to me and write to me and he did it all the time.
I would say his emergence as a factor in my life was like water to a woman who has been lost in the desert for 40 years, but I was so dehydrated and disoriented I didn't recognize the drink. I was just happy to have someone to talk to.
I had a friend.
This friend, it turned out, loved me. One day he wrote...
As if how I feel about you isn't obvious by now, I just want to state these things so that you know them and I don't regret never saying them to you in a serious way.
You're the one I think about all the time.
I miss you when you're not around.
You're the bumblebee I'm looking for in the Blind Melon video.
You're the most loving mother I've seen.
I just want you to be happy, and I don't know that I've ever really seen you that way.
To say I was stunned would be the understatement of eternity. It wasn't obvious to me. Not in any way. I was a woman in the desert who didn't recognize water, for goodness sakes. That such a wonderful man would see anything in me but a way to pass empty hours in conversation was just beyond my comprehension.
I began to think maybe I was worth something, after all.
Over time, with the love and support of this man and a circle of sisters-of-my-heart, I managed to get my daughter and I out of the potentially deadly physical and emotional no man's land in which we lived. My friend and I were now a couple. That fast. I am neither proud nor ashamed of this fact. It just is, and here we are today...
And I think it's over.
I don't even recognize him anymore. He surely doesn't see in me the bumble bee he once wanted to steal away and marry, as he told a mutual friend before I had any idea. If he does, he doesn't say it. I'm pretty sure he doesn't see it.
How did this happen?
There is no denying these years haven't been easy ones. He carries with him some very heavy burdens and faces great challenges that are his and only his to share. I won't talk about them here. But he is not an easy man. He is ridiculously easy, yet impossible, to love. For me, anyway.
As I told him yesterday, loving him is a very lonely thing.
But this is the thing. It wasn't always lonely. Once it was as fullfilling as carrying a baby inside of your body. It was nurturing. It was joyful. It was just bursting with possibilities. I believed in him. He believed in me. I had forgotten that.
I was going through old emails tonight and remembered when we were truly friends, partners, lovers, confidantes...
Where did that go?
...and I read my side of the conversations and wonder where did I go?
I was so much more interesting then! I like the way I talked. I like the way I thought. In my mind, I like the way I moved and sounded and was. I like me, then. You know what's different?
He liked me then. I don't think he likes me anymore.
There is no doubt that the last year of my life has been the most difficult year ever. Terrible things happened in other years, but I wasn't "there", remember? So I've been reliving all of those things -- but "here" this time -- transitioning to a new city and into a challenging graduate program and fulltime single motherhood and finally trying to integrate these shattered parts of myself into a coherent identity and trying to be the mom my truly amazing child deserves...and sprinkle in a car accident that could have killed us...well...
I'm always poor and I'm always scared and I'm always trying so hard.
I don't think I've been all that sexy or smart or interesting.
I think I've been a wreck of epic proportions.
I know I've been demanding and demeaning and difficult and needy and awful, really.
NOW...I'm not going to do what I do and let him off the hook. He's been distant and silent and secretive and cruel and angry and aggressive.
There was a period of time last year during which I believe we tried to destroy each other, and nearly succeeded, actually. I can't tell you why. I don't know why.
But these things are not who we are. These things are certainly not who we used to be together. We made each other better. We gave each other hope.
We made each other happy.
This, however, is what we have been to each other for far too long. People who love each other but are scared to death of each other because we push and hurt each other.
I think we can't save it. I'm not sure either one of us wants to try. I don't trust him. He's given me every reason not to, which doesn't work well with my basic disposition toward mistrust.
But God dammit I love him.
How do I stop loving him?
Maybe I'll just ask him how he stopped loving me, and try that.
