Hopping Mad, So Very Sad

lundi, le 21 septembre 2009

It’s rush, rush to The Physio, rush, rush to The Shrink. It’s stumbling in, it’s falling down, it’s breaking down. It’s sob, sob. It’s mad, mad.

I hate giving one step forward and taking ten paces back. I had too much L’homme contact last week. I’m mad at myself for ever falling for his charms, his lies, his deceit. And if it was only once, I could probably have moved on, but it was over and over again. I’m sad for myself for being cheated, betrayed, intentionally lied to. I hate myself for allowing my heart to do the thinking, for moving from comedy to tragedy in one swift, tiny error of judgement. Worst of all, I’m down right angry about the arrogance, the malice and callousness with which L’homme orchestrated all of this.

I tell The Shrink that he’s looking for himself, that he needs to find his own feet. I wonder whether he misses me while he’s looking for himself out there. In the past that may have been true. L’homme was always the one that followed me around. He moved to be with me. He moved to be near me. Looking for feet to stand on.

Then the pattern started of moving out, moving back in, moving out, moving back in. Over and over again. Every time I let him go. Every time I took him back.

’ I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way.’
~Pablo Neruda

But as time wore on, his charm made way for his callous unconcern for my feelings, his lack of capacity to have empathy for my situation which became our situation. He became persistently irresponsible towards our relationship, with my love. He was the one that established the relationship in a hot tub with drunken sex and laid down the law. But as time wore on, the ease with which he established the relationship made way for his inability, his incapacity and his unwillingness to maintain it.

When I finally ran out of money, his frustration with the strains this put on his self-indulgent lifestyle boiled over. Without a shred of guilt, without a shred of remorse, he callously stepped off my feet and maliciously ended our relationship. And straight to the bar and the booze and to rationalising how none of this was his fault at all. Shifting all the blame on me. He took the clothes I bought him and left a large heap of blame behind. Dressed like a rake, he went off in search of his next target. One with money, one with feet he can stand on.

What infuriates and saddens me today is his total and utter lack of honesty. Towards me, towards himself. His declarations of love were lies. His intentions of establishing a relationship were false. He would choose to call them momentary truths, but I am with Friedrich Engels on this one: ‘An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory”. L’homme loves to theorise, rationalise, philosophise, to think that he thinks. In fact that’s what he was doing on the night that he, with his distinct flair for irresponsibility, decided to snub me and the special dinner I had cooked and I retreated into silence.

If he presented himself as a cad, I would have been spared the hurt and pain. But he presented himself as an honourable man, basically an honest person. Like a love-struck fool, I fell for it. That tiny error of judgement. The Clever One would laugh at me with all her might. We always warned each other against people who said they were basically honest. We rated it as possible as pigs that could fly. But for L’homme I was prepared to make an exception. That tiny error of judgement.

What makes me truly angry is the blame L’homme is trying to shift on me to absolve himself. I never stopped loving, I never stopped caring, I only ran out of money. What makes me sad is how he shifted from being charming, witty, intelligent, warm and caring to being cold, calculated, arrogant, callous and malicious.

L’homme continues to lure women into his life, into his bed with the same pack of charm, lies and deceit and when someone likes him too much, he arrogantly steps back, accuses her of being insane. The vicious circle of his desire to establish relationships and when he realises that he needs to do some maintenance on what he has established, he cold-heartedly shifts the blame and slinks off to rationalise how none of this was his fault.

It is with sadness that I realise my role in this. In the years L’homme was with me, I provided him with the space, the time, the places and the means to apply more and more layers of veneer to a personality he so badly wanted to hide. He would loose a job, I would provide, he would be ill, I would nurse him back to health, he would loose a job, I would employ him, he would have nothing to wear, I would dress him, he would need a break, I would whisk him off on an exotic holiday, he would have nowhere to stay, I would let him move in. All I asked was love. Every time L’homme would add another layer of veneer until thirteen years later he must’ve felt invincible, unimpeachable. And then the arrogance, callousness and malice boiled over.

Of L’homme, with his PhD in con-artistry, one of the nicer things that could be said is that he married well.

The last thing I’d like to give L’homme is the blame he shifted onto me. He can take that blame and put it in his wardrobe. Every morning he opens his wardrobe, he can be confronted by memories of me and memories of how he is to blame for the hurt and pain he left in his wake. I’d like to give L’homme responsibility.

(To find some calmness, I bury my nose in a book and shut L’homme and the world out.)