Ground zero Fridays

vendredi, le 11 septembre 2009

Eight years ago with the September 11 attacks L’homme was again in one of his living with me phases. Huppel, a stray that sought shelter on my bed when his front leg was shattered by a small caliber bullet, had moved in permanently. And we spent the night glued to my TV screen, witnessing the Twin Towers collapse.

L’homme and I were good at spending nights watching events that leave indelible marks. And I drew parallels between the senseless attacks on innocent people in a land afar and the senseless shooting of an innocent cat roaming the small hill behind my house.

In an uncanny turn of events, Fridays have joined Sundays as hard days. It was on a Friday that L’homme stood up my deliciously prepared dinner and I stopped talking to him, it was on a Friday that he callously left wordlessly and I fell apart, it was on a Friday that I saw him again and he folded me in his arms and I swore the world shifted on its axis and the catastrophic events of the last few months were righted.

But now I run errands on a Friday and I see his car is firmly parked in front of a bar. Unmoving. Was that why he needed me to give him access to money last Friday? So that he could remain firmly in a bar?

There were times when I tried to figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg? Did L’homme start drinking to silence the madness of his mind or did his mind become silenced as result of the drinking? Or will it forever remain the unresolved debate: L’homme’s drinking, L’homme’s madness. That is it?

His inability to commit, to be present, to be involved, to care about the feelings of others, to accept responsibility and his increased irritability and frustration when his easy, comfortable, self-indulgent lifestyle is threatened – are these the results of years of excessive, abusive drinking? Or are these the madnesses of his mind he is trying to silence? Deep down he is so sensitive, so soft, so caring but over the years these characteristics, which I so fell in love with all those years ago, were reduced to mere glimmers.

L’homme fears boredom and craves stimulation and a bit like Leonard Cohen he will perform for anybody who will applaud him. And he craves acceptance and adoration, yet despises it. And with a loan he secured on a lie from me, is he again today performing in a bar for applause from anyone?

The ease with which he extracted a favour from me a week ago, easy come, easy go in and out of my life, does that mean that he literally rode roughshod over me in order to get what he wanted and was I yet again an innocent bystander caught up in his madness? A distant memory?

The funny thing is, I mostly accepted his madness. On some level I even understood his madness. Am I just deeply saddened at how little discomfort his madness could endure.

As I drive past later to drop things off at the shop, his car is still firmly in front of a bar. I shudder at his ability to torture me from a distance. And I resolve to discuss with The Shrink how I can empty this cup of guilt that was thrust in my hands while I was innocently standing by as L’homme stormed out the door, on his way to a bar, for good.

My only guilt is that I ran out of money. The blood of a dead relationship is on L’hommes hands. Does he feel any guilt or remorse?

(An artist’s rendering at ground zero in New York of what is to come in the place of the Twin Towers, scheduled for completion in 2013. When will my rebuilt heart be completed after it was destroyed by L’homme’s nuclear attack and what will it look like?)