Finding Feet

jeudi, le 17 septembre 2009

Tonight was the last night I was obligated to spend time in my former shop according to the sale agreement. I cringe at the special the new owners are running. I cringe at the tacky advertising on my once sophisticated notice board.

The Gallery Owner and his soon to be divorced friend drop by. I’m delighted to see him. I could always rely on his support on exhibition opening days. Some other friends join us and it’s a fitting last night in the shop for me, sitting around the round table, laughing and joking and clinking glasses of red wine.

The Gallery Owner and friends leave. The soon to be divorced friend stays behind. We have a lot in common and talk about books and music but not about our hearts. Conversation is difficult above the music, which is much louder than I ever allowed. I consider inviting him home for another glass of wine. I remember the last person I dragged home with me was L’homme and decide against it. I get up, pay for my drinks and leave. I go home alone.

I phone L’homme. He tells me he can’t come back to me. He needs to find his own feet. I ask him whether he ever stood on his own two feet. He says he did when he was a diplomat in Paris That was many, many years ago. In fact, before he met me. So what he is essentially saying is he never stood on his own two feet in our many years together. Nor did he therefore when he was with The Ex-French Girlfriend. I cannot be held for cutting his feet off and being legless most of the time, was his own doing.

I doubt his need to find his own two feet or his need to stand on them, should he find them. I suspect he’s simply looking for new feet to stand on. Feet that adore him, feet that send him gifts, feet that whisks him off to exotic destinations, feet with money. And in spite of what he says, I think he has found those feet. And I pity those feet. They too will develop blisters on their corns when they walk for miles crossing the great divide between his words and his actions.

When I put the phone down, all I hear is his heinous laughter in my ears about a day he lied to The First Ex-Wife about how ill he was. She phoned me tearful with concern, but fortunately, before I contacted him, I found out he was alive and well and in a bar. Funny that. But tonight he reduces The First Ex-Wife and me to the laughing stock of his comic book life as he delights in his deceit.

He blames me for falling ill, for having to use a deodorant his skin reacted to because I threw his perfume away. I never did. I merely moved all the cruel reminders of him left behind on my dressing table the day he left without a word, without a goodbye, to another cupboard. If he had the common, garden variety, decency to contact me before sneaking into my house a second time, I would’ve told him about the perfume, the photo’s, the remaining bits and pieces. But he didn’t. And now I stand accused. It deeply annoys me that he measures me by his vindictive, malicious standards. I was many things to him, but vindictive or malicious I was not.

I blink to rid my mind of the image of feet and callouses and L’homme’s callous abuse of feet that are not his but that he has used to stand on for so long.

(On our barge trip through the South of France last year, the barge broke down on the second day. L’homme and The Engineer tried their best to repair the diesel engine, to no avail. Thankfully there was a restaurant within walking distance that served excellent coquilles Saint-Jacques, one of L’homme’s favourite dishes.)

Flying away

mercredi, le 16 septembre 2009

The Princess and I ’Bien joué’-ed our way narrowly over a green traffic light to the park today. Her favourite friend was waiting for her and she ran and played and smiled broad dog smiles and wagged her candle-wick tail with delight.

I stop outside the shop and L’homme is sitting on what he used to call his beach-front couch. I reverse slightly to make sure that my eyes are not deceiving me. But they aren’t and it is him in all his colours.

I’m not sure what to make of his presence. It looks so right, so completely where he belongs, comfortable on a leather couch with a glass of red wine, yet it looks so terribly wrong.

I sit next to him and hold on to his hand desperately, to make sure it’s real, to make sure it’s him. He tells me he heard I was no longer involved in the shop, he didn’t expect to see me there and he wanted to spend some time with his own nostalgia. My own nostalgia wells up and spills over my cheeks and I clasp his hand tighter.

He speaks softly and I strain my ears. We talk about his hacked broadband, he tells me about his precarious situation at work, he tells me about the mail of Kafka’s The Trial he sent his boss whom he used to refer to as god, he tells me how he battled to eat, he tells me I was angry with him. And he has another glass of wine. He lets go of my hand.

As always when I see L’homme with ache in my heart I neglect to do what I have to do. I order another cappuccino and leave the new owner behind his laptop in his empty shop and I avoid making contact with his eyes. I take L’hommes hand and inadequately tell him how hard it was to sell the shop. I let go of his hand.

I sense L’homme letting go of some of the distance he’s put between us. I take his hand. He tells me about his new friend. He has another glass of wine. I have another cappuccino.

And I listen to his life that seems troublesome, he tells me he has become less sensitive and I despair. I touch his neck. He takes my hand away. I hold onto his hand. He tells me he has not met someone new. I hope with all my heart that it is true.

He gets up to leave. He wraps me in his arms and I hold on to him tightly. I want to tell him that his being there tonight eases the pain of letting go of the shop so much, but I can’t find the words. I had so hoped to just see him there one more time, just to talk to him, just to feel him close and unwittingly he made it happen.

He let’s me go. He kisses me softly on my lips. I lightly kiss his neck and fill my nose with the smell of him. He walks away. I call him back. We hug once more.

With strength I drew from L’homme I sort out the remaining financials with the new owner.

I come home and hug The Princess and tell her all will be a bit easier now, a bit lighter, at least for a while. I read the opening line to The Trial. I think someone must have been telling lies about me, I knew I had done nothing that terribly wrong, but, one evening, I was arrested by pain and heartache.

Oh my love, my old, my sweet, my gentle love, my darling L’homme, I was not that angry, I just didn’t know how to fix anything and I needed you to help me, to love me. And please don’t blame me for your leaving. It was not like that, you know it. You left because you wanted to. You spent months withdrawing to prepare for you physical departure. Stand naked before yourself, and be honest, L’homme. If it were true that I was angry and you had no intention of leaving, if you had all intention of staying and seeing the tough times through, you would’ve found a way to make me laugh and to make the anger go away. You always did that.

On the day L’homme left, on a short Facebook chat, I told L’homme that leaving was his choice and he said that he knew and he said it was all his fault. Does he still feel that way? Was that a momentary truth and has he in the in-between months shifted the blame to me?

If I hugged myself long and hard enough, could I turn into an angel and fly away from all these tormenting emotions or would I always remain cast in sandstone with flowers at my feet?

Meeting with inspiration

mardi, le 15 septembre 2009

I rush back from The Physio, thankfully with no more bags of pills and promise that my treatment may soon be over. These frequent trips are becoming tedious, but I understand their importance in keeping my back straight and strong. The last thing I can afford now is to buckle under a broken back. I already am buckling under a broken heart.

The Actress and I walk our dogs early today. We bump into The Poker Man. Not only has he been kind and generous with his support over the past few months, but his warped sense of humour and oblique take on life amuses me.

The Actress’ large black hound and The Princess play boisterously, with teeth exposed and paws wildly clawing the air. The Poker Man’s dogs run along, noses to the ground, looking for treasures under every blade of grass. With a loud yelp The Princess comes running from the bushes, straight towards me, pointing with her nose to her bum. The Actress’ dog in hot pursuit. The Princess, yet again, has a nick on her bum. Thankfully this time only a surface wound that will not require any stitches. I give her a huge big hug and a few biscuits. After walking calmly next to me for a while, she can’t resist the play invitations from her friend and bolts off into the tall grass at high speed.

The Actress has a called a meeting with a couple of artistic friends to discuss an idea for a creative centre she has been carrying around for some time. I’m not entirely sure why I was included in the meeting. I have little of artistic value to contribute. I nonetheless enjoy the enthusiastic chatter.

On my way to the shop after the meeting, I realise the importance of enthusiasm. The importance of finding a dream, of sharing it with others and of working towards it. Right now my life is not full of very realistic dreams, but it will be again, one day, maybe.

(The Actress’ large black hound leaping out of the water like the Loch Ness Monster with a stick in the mouth. The Princess enjoys playing with him, though he can be rough and overbearing at times. She mostly carefully watches her back to avoid an accidental nip from an exposed fang. She is a princess, after all, and plastic surgery has its price!)

Healing Mondays

lundi, le 14 septembre 2009

This morning The Shrink asks me how my I-am-not-good-enough persona manifests itself. I know this persona so very well. I call her Nora and describe her as: Not good enough, under-achiever, guilty, bad, avoiding, delaying, sabotaging, non-starter. Moody and broody. Resentful, revengeful, dissatisfied, unfulfilled, begrudging, obsessive. Dark and black.

Through anger, I tell The Shrink, through fighting with the person that brings Nora to the fore, through lashing out at those who tease her whilst I pretend that Nora does not exist. She wants to know if it’s always been that way. I tell her it’s gotten worse with time.

Another drop falls in the bucket of how misconceived Nora has always been. How badly I need to find a hole in the bucket where the not can escape through, I am beginning to understand that I am good enough, even that I’m mostly more than good enough.

I tell The Shrink I need to let go of my anger over the way in which L’homme left me. I have to get my heart to understand that he did not leave me because I was being Nora. To L’homme, on the whole, I was good. I was more than just good. I was exceptional.

But L’homme knew so very, very well how to lure Nora out. When Nora comes out, she loves to drag a friend along. Her best friend is Timid Trudy, who is: Dowdy, plain, dull, boring, suburban, stupid, uninspiring, fat, ugly, undesirable and frumpy. A wall flower. Nothing to contribute. Needy, seeking approval, seeking affirmation, desperate and doubting. Nora seldom goes anywhere without Timid Trudy in tow.

Timid Trudy would seek L’homme’s approval, his affirmation and L’homme would respond by making me feel not good enough, fat and ugly. Hand in hand Nora and Timid Trudy would fight with L’homme, lash out at him.

Of all the personalities that split me, Nora and Timid Trudy really need to get off centre stage. In fact, they can only come on again at the curtain call so that they can be applauded for their large role in my life, one they played very well. But they’re old, tired and haggard now and I need to write them out of the remainder of the story of my life.

I admit to The Shrink that I still thrive on L’homme’s hugs of some 10 days ago. I tell her that I worry about him so very much. I tell her I hate it when I know his life is difficult.

Walking home I think that I also need to let go of my anger towards myself for not telling L’homme in my quiet days before he left that conflict was not necessarily wrong. In spite of the conflict, the very good times we had in the various romantic stages of our relationship only alluded to the potential we collectively and individually possessed to make our relationship strong. To make it endure good and bad and to make it bind us together.

I come back from The Physio this afternoon with a bed rest read and bag full of pills and walk into delicious smells tumbling from the kitchen. When I went to buy meat for The Princess’ meals this morning, I eventually caved in at the sight of the lamb chops. I haven’t managed to even consider lamb chops as part of my unable-to-eat diet since L’homme left. His greatest cookery skill was to braai the most succulent lamb chops on the Weber. But today I am brave and strong and true.

I find Wonder Woman in the court yard, watering the plants. I realise she has in her quiet, efficient manner bravely taken over some of Brave’s duties.

Brave is the man who tends to my garden, in person and in name. But Brave had the misfortune of being struck off his bicycle by a bus. Brave spent weeks in hospital and his recovery is painfully slow. My usually neatly topiaried bushes are reaching out to Brave with long arms of longing and everywhere weeds are carefully coming out of hiding. Wonder Woman hasn’t taken to sculpting bushes into elephants yet, but she is making sure that plants stay alive and that the paving is swept.

I set the table beautifully for one, dish up for myself on my favourite floral plate. I take small mouthfuls of memories and chew slowly on each one. And I wipe a tear from the corner of my eye. Today I am meant to be brave and strong and true.

(On the night of my 39th birthday. L’homme and I had dinner in Paris at the Les Élysées restaurant under the exquisite panoramic glass ceiling, a gray-and-green translucent dome designed by Gustav Eiffel. It was the most extraordinary dining experience of my life. The culinary passion, the excellent service, the intricate beauty of every dish and the sublime taste of each course will remain with me forever. As will the laughter and joy L’homme and I shared that day.)

My beautiful, beautiful shop

dimanche, le 13 septembre 2009

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
~Winston Churchill

Today I arrived to do the last stock take I will ever do in my shop. From today my shop belongs to somebody else and I am just here to lend advice, to explain procedures and to hand over what I had invested so much of myself in.

An acquaintance walks past. She’s surprised at the weight I have lost. She’s stunned that L’homme had walked out on me. She comes in for a glass of wine.

She tells me she always thought I was so confident, so brave and so strong. She tells me I created real beauty on a street that didn’t offer much beauty. She asks about my home – is that beautiful too? I tell her it is. I tell her it is full of beautiful art work and full of things that are beautiful and special to me. She tells me how much beauty I created for L’homme, the beautiful holidays I made possible for us. She tells me for her I created a haven she could escape to from the madness of the street.

For once I listen to this and I know it is true and deep down I begin to feel beautiful about me.

Suddenly everything feels right and in place. It’s been a very long time that I’ve known that the street has lost its beauty for me, it’s been quite some time that the shop has lost her beauty for me. I need beauty, it sustains me.

Back home I know I can create beauty again. Perhaps this is the end of the beginning for me. I’m not beginning to be the creator of beauty any more. Perhaps I am the creator of beauty and I can now move on to create beauty elsewhere. Maybe in another business. Maybe in another relationship. Maybe even between L’homme and I again.

Tonight I will slide between the sheets and I will be beautiful for me.

This was one of my favourite shop photo’s (again not taken by me) and it was used in many marketing campaigns I used to run. We served delicious cocktails in beautiful glasses.

Contemplating obsessively

samedi, le 12 septembre 2009

Contemplation
~Charles Baudelaire

Thou, o my grief, be wise and tranquil still,
The eve is thine which even now drops down,
To carry peace or care to human will,
And in a misty veil enfolds the town.


It’s Saturday and that usually means rugby day. Today being no exception. I absent mindedly watch a game in which we win the trophy in a Southern Hemisphere competition.

As much as I enjoy watching sport, I haven’t really been following the competition. Rugby is just too closely associated with L’homme in my mind for me to bear this season. But this was an important game, after all, and I felt obligated to see it being played.

Watching L’homme watch a rugby game, was watching the L’homme personalities I desperately needed to see for real after the final whistle blew. L’homme is passionate about rugby, he’s involved, he’s present, and he’s dedicated, he’s committed, he will never walk out on a rugby game. Touch, pause, engage. He’s all 15 players on the field. He scrums hard, he hooks the ball, he passes it to the back line, and he runs fast, he kicks high, he scores tries, he converts them, he attacks, he defends. He touches, he pauses, he engages, with every muscle in his body. And then he is the spectator too: he curses, he screams, he delights, he despairs.

Earlier this week, I spoke to my dear friend, The Sorted One. I told him L’homme had walked out on me. He told me he knew. I asked him why he hadn’t mentioned it in any of our many conversations over the past few months. He said he knew I would discuss it when I was ready. I appreciated that.

I often turn to The Sorted One for advice. Before L’homme came along, I was intrigued by The Sorted One’s mind. He seemed to have many answers because he had contemplated many questions. And he is kind and soft and gentle.

This week he told me he had often wondered how L’homme managed to sustain my passion. And he had the simple answer: through intermittent and wonderful reward.

I think about this. On a level he is right. When I experience L’hommes soft sides, I feel content, I feel strong and I feel grounded. When I experience L’hommes spiky sides, I feel insecure, ungrounded and not good enough.

L’homme is not very generous with his soft sides. He hides them deep and far and seldom lets them out. But I know they are there. In thirteen years I have seen them from time to time. And I believe in them. And the more he raises his spiky sides, the more I fight for his soft sides.

The deeper L’homme withdrew into this cave, the more desperate my search became for his soft sides. And when L’homme was certain that he had hidden his soft sides in the deepest, darkest corner of his cave, he bolted when I left the door of his cave to go and walk The Princess and left for good.

A statue I bought of a monk gazing upwards and I wonder what he contemplates and I wonder if he finds any answers and I wonder if he finds lightness and I wonder if he will tell me if he does.

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?)

Bags of sorts

jeudi, le 10 septembre 2009

When I was at university we went through a riddle phase, as wanna be intellectuals do. Tonight I recalled: ‘A man lies in a field with a bag of sorts next to him. The man is dead. What happened to him?’

Tonight I feel out of sorts. I cannot actually recall when last in my life I felt this out of sorts. It’s a very different feeling to feeling happy or unhappy, to hurting or not hurting

It’s not an emotion, it’s a feeling that runs through my body with nowhere to settle. It doesn’t stop in the pit of my stomach or get a hold on my heart and none of the paths in my brain leads to a place it can nestle.

Even The Princess was out of sorts tonight. She barked at the parking attendant when we arrived at the shop, she barked and ran after a dog that walked went past in the street, she barked at people walking by on the pavement and she even barked at the odd customer that came into the shop. This is not like her at all. She usually lies regally on her Ottoman, fast asleep.

Did she sense that I was out of sorts or did I pick up from her to be out of sorts?

Tonight was the last night that I put an appearance in at my shop. I don’t go over weekends and on Sunday I hand over the keys. My friend, the World Traveler, came by for a drink or more. In the days when we opened the shop, he always joked that he would drink the shop profitable. In those days he drank more Long Island Iced Teas than his body could hold. Now he drinks more whiskeys than his body can hold. In a strange way it was befitting that he was there.

His presence was neither comforting nor uncomfortable. There was a strange assortment of people in the shop. None that I cared for. None that impacted on my decision.

But now The Princess and I are back home. And I feel strangely unsettled and I do not know why.

(Even I will admit that I got a bit carried away shopping in New York. But there really wasn’t much else to do. And sitting naked surrounded by bags of sorts, all I managed was to incur the wrath of L’homme. And after all these years I still do not know what to do to gain his acceptance.)

Sitting on doughnuts

mercredi, le 09 septembre 2009

Unfortunately not freshly baked, delicious doughnuts sprinkled in bright hundreds and thousands or chocolate vermicelli, or better still, those shiny silver little balls that masters of confectionary decorate their creations with.

No, I’ve taken to fixing my back just to find out that my coccyx is cracked. And now I have to sit on a round doughnut cushion made of memory foam covered in a boring beige fabric to alleviate the pressure!

The Physio sent me off the chemist with a seemingly endless list of things to ease the pain. For consolation I added some bath delights to my shopping bag. This time their will be no pampering treats from L’homme, so I have to grab my own.

I linger in the bookshop for some bed rest reads and stop at the delicatessen to stock up on some delights that will make the medicine go down.

As I walk out of the delicatessen I realise that I have no idea where my car keys are. I suspect I left them in the chemist between pills and cushions, but alas, they are nowhere to be found. Hot flushes of panic flow over me. In my pain induced haze, I left home without my mobile phone and now I’m stuck in a mall without my car keys. The only number I can recall from memory is that of L’homme.

But I can hear his irritability, I can feel his annoyance and delete from memory that he could possibly rescue me. I limp back to the bookshop, but there are no keys on the shelves where I browsed. I ask at the desk and offer to reward the man who hands me my keys with a quick cup of coffee. I’m infinitely relieved when he smiles sweetly, but declines.

I walk into the parking lot in the bright afternoon sun and suddenly there is no recall in my mind of where I parked my car. I achingly walk this way and that, but all I find is my car. I stand around sheepishly for a while, imitating The Princess in the park. At least I do not have a ball in my mouth. But the thought does cross my mind that I’ll soon have a zimmer frame and a colostomy bag! And then I see my car.

Note to self: when in excruciating pain, take a taxi or phone a friend, and, if you can’t get that together – don’t forget your mobile phone at home!

Tonight The Actress, her daughter and The Artist stopped at the shop for a drink. And we talked about Paris and making movies and poetry and things that are soft on the soul.

And as I tell my staff that an era is about to come to an end, I see L’homme drive past, peering into the emptiness of my shop and my heart but I see my soul in all its splendour sitting in the passenger seat next to him.

(The Actress brought some flowers to brighten the dullness of my doughnut cushion.)

Sick in bed, sick in the head

mardi, le 08 septembre 2009

It is unfortunately very true that, without leisure and money, love can be no more than an orgy of the common man. Instead of being a sudden impulse full of ardor and reverie, it becomes a distastefully utilitarian affair.
~Charles Baudelaire

Today The Princess and I have taken to bed.

The pain in my back makes movement near impossible and I decided to force my back to rest. The Princess delights in my decision. She doesn’t have to lie on a narrow, hollow couch to be close to me, she can curl up right next to me and do what she does best: heave huge big, sighs in the big, big bed.

I try to force my mind between the pages of a book, but it keeps hopping from colour to colour of the carefully painted stripes on my bedroom walls and from there it jumps to the ceiling to play lavish games amongst the ornate designs.

And my mind wanders til it finds the thing it likes to wonder about most: L’homme.

In the fighting weeks of earlier this year, I’d often accuse L’homme that he drinks too much. He told me one day that a very clever and important geneticist once diagnosed him with Tourettes Syndrome and one of the disorders associated with Tourettes is an excessive desire to drink. I think he called it being a hydrophiliac. But that means getting sexual excitement from water. Is that maybe why L’homme often wanked in the shower?

Anyway, at the time I did some rudimentary searches and didn’t find anything to substantiate his claims. Besides, to me this just reeked of shifting responsibility, of finding a way out. If he was that concerned about the Tourettes diagnosis, I would’ve heard about this years ago. And like he blames his broadband bill on hacking, he could blame his excessive drinking on a syndrome that resulted in involuntary actions.

What is true though, is that individuals with Tourettes often experience a host of additional behavioural problems and herein I think may lie more truth.

I’m not going to try to label the personality of L’homme. He is too much a mixture of sensitivity, of caring, of intelligence, of wit, of an ability to make me laugh and then an ability to be unbearably cold, distant, cruel and even malicious.

I wonder whether L’homme felt that while I provided all the money, all the comfort, all the ease of a beautiful artistic home, I also gave him a sense that he was in control. No need for him to take responsibility, not need for him to be involved, no need for him to participate. Easy come, easy go, he can just go with the flow. But when the recession hit our household, he needed to take some control over his own life, some responsibility and I very strongly sensed that he resented me for that.

Does the easy life suppress his own disorders, and when unease sets in, does he become diseased? His inability to maintain enduring relationships has in the past surfaced in times of unease, as has his marked proneness to blame others, the others usually being me.

Yes, I was partially to blame for the financial recession we were in, but so was he. And his irritability with me increased, it became palpable and I became the reason for his unease. And he cunningly and manipulatively blamed me for the satisfaction he was finding in his increased drinking, increased porn site surfing until I believed I was not good enough.

And given this belief about myself that I’ve carried around for so long, I find it hard to make the mental switch that L’homme’s leaving had nothing to do with me. I did not loose my mind, I did not go crazy, all I am guilty of is of not being able to maintain him in the lifestyle of ease he had become accustomed to. Surprisingly, eventually even he realised his ongoing threats to sue me for that, were wearing a bit thin.

Is it true then, that in the final analysis, when financial discomfort replaced financial comfort, it gave rise to all L’homme’s unease and he fell prey to disease and he lost his mind and he went crazy and with callous unconcern and with total lack of empathy for my feelings, he simply had to leave?

My poor darling ill at ease, riddled with disease, L’homme!! And the saddest part for me, is the constant refrain in my head: Oh my love, my old, my sweet, my gentle love. From year to year as all the seasons fall, I love you more you know, I love you … still

(The Princess happily sharing a day of forced bed rest.)