Crossing bridges

lundi, le 07 septembre 2009

Today The Shrink asks me how I felt about talking to L’homme and seeing him. I tell her that I’m pathetically proud that I managed to voice a condition of my own. I tell her that it was the most exotic food for my soul to feel his arms around me.

I tell her that my head and my heart went into full-scale nuclear warfare. My heart defended giving in to his demands because that is the person I am, my head accusing that I should have turned his demands down and sent him away, the way he did with me.

She asks me to make a list of what is better for me without L’homme and what worse for me without him. I doodle in my journal and come up with:

I stare at the page with some disbelief. I close my journal and walk away.

I sense very faintly that I may fear to let go of L’homme, I fear to really SEE all his colours, to acknowledge them and to admit that many of his colours are simply not good enough for ME. Is this what happens when you start shifting from not good enough to the cutest, the best, the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most precious and most miraculous gift you were when you were born?

(On our barge trip through the South of France last year, we had to steer under many beautiful little bridges. I wonder whether it is time for me to start burning bridges, building bridges or simply crossing bridges.)

The plug that broke the camel’s back

dimanche, le 06 septembre 2009

Last night I did an unbearably stupid thing.

There I was, moving things around to cram myself into a corner to take, what I expected to be, a great artistic photograph. Camera in hand, I crossed my legs and dropped to the floor. Only to scream out in the most excruciating pain.

I’d been focusing so hard on the picture I wanted to take, I didn’t notice the power cable and dreaded three-prong plug of the heater I had just moved, right in the path of where I was about to sit. And with my full body weight, I dropped down on the three-prong plug, right on my coccyx.

Today I cannot move without the pain shooting through my body.

I remember a January long ago when I’d also hurt my back. L’homme was kind and caring in those days. He was concerned and supportive. Most days he’d go with me to the chiropractor, each night he’d pass me pain killers so that I could carry on working. Eventually I landed in hospital, on a valium and anti-inflammatory drip, for forced bed rest.

On the first morning in hospital I opened my eyes to find two beauticians next to my bed. My first thoughts were that it was just more of the most wonderful valium hallucinations. But I was wrong. L’homme had sent them to give me a French Manicure.

To this day it stands out in my mind as the kindest, sweetest, most gentle thing L’homme had ever done for me. And I loved him so.

This time there will be no French Manicures, no passing of pain killers, no accompanying to the chiropractor, no concern. At least not real, and if I stumble across them, it will be from pain hallucinations.

Today I cannot move without the pain shooting through my body, I cannot see through my eyes without the tears welling up and I cannot feel with my heart without being overwhelmed by sadness.

(The plug that caused the pain, the remembering, the yearning and the longing.)

The windmills of your mind

samedi, le 05 septembre 2009

When you knew that it was over,
Were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the colour of her hair?
~Alan Bergman

A bitter anniversary. It is three months to the day that L’homme walked out on me, without a word. Three short months that have changed the course of a lifetime plotted over thirteen long years.

In December things got a bit rocky. L’homme upped and left, allured by the fool’s gold of the dark night, on a five day bender. When the hangover set in, he came back. And through a cricket test series, we found closeness and connection again.

L’homme found work a day or so a week and things become lighter. He became more enthused about a friend’s software program on the surface and started dreaming about the riches he was going to reap and the kindness he was going to bestow on me. He’d tell me that he’d buy me a house in the French countryside, I’d tell him that all I want is for him to love me. He even felt that all was well in our relationship, albeit that ‘his’ bar was simply surviving from month to month.

The bar was never his, but that detail he was not going to divulge to those not in the know. But as the bar was not his, he also didn’t know to what extent the bar was floundering from month to month, to what extent it was draining what little access I had to money. To what extent I needed him to take responsibility for himself, and how I, for the first time in our lifetime together, needed him to ease some of the household financial burden.

At the end of February we attended a relative’s wedding and an epileptic fit thrust new possibilities upon his software project. But the software project remained limited to a few phone calls a day, endless ‘meetings’ in bars and little promotional effort to match the potential it held.

By early April L’homme spoke kinder about our relationship to others. He described our lifestyle as that of an old married couple. But meanwhile back home, there was a direct correlation between the glasses of wine, the pages of online porn, his absenteeism in the relationship and a household spiraling deeper into a recession. The wine, the porn and the absenteeism increased while the money ran out. But if he saw us as an old married couple, surely his absenteeism would soon become more attentive?

By mid-April our vehicle with our sensitive relationship in it, battled up steep and rocky mountain paths, with no 4 x 4 capabilities. And I yanked the steering wheel this way and that, and L’homme fell more and more quiet, became more and more distant.

The most bitter, hurtful conversation of our lifetime together was had. He voiced his regrets, that he had no desire for me, that he had always been absent from the relationship and his biggest regret of all, that he could not be better for me.

In the same conversation he also told me that I had no choice but to endure this, to endure his lack of desire, to endure his absence and to endure the way he treated me, because, should I decide to end it, he would sue me. And he would sue me to maintain him in the lifestyle he had become accustomed to, the lifestyle I offered him.

I limped away from that conversation heartbroken, angry and hurt beyond comprehension. For months I’d been trying to wriggle from the burden of his dependency, to get him to take responsibility for himself, and he rewards me by taking total control over me. By threatening me with legal action I cannot afford, he ensured that I had to abide by a life with him, with his lack of desire and deepening absence.

And so our vehicle with our sensitive relationship in it came dangerously close to a precipice. I slowly and carefully negotiated the downhill.

In early May L’homme goes away for the weekend. Leaving me alone, scared and confused. He realises he doesn’t have the infrastructure to leave, ever dependent on not the person that I am, but the lifestyle that I offer him, albeit now stripped bare of all luxuries. And for light comic relief he is the clown of Friday night’s party.

A few days later he announces that we are about to get divorced, that we are buckling under the stresses and strains of life, that he said things in the heat of the moment that he shouldn’t have and all of this the result of economic pressures. And he has the warped insight that we could maybe patch it all back together again if he one day made some money.

On Mother’s Day, my mother, as countless times in my life before, rescues me. She invites L’homme to join us at a concert. He sits next to me, he holds my hand, he hugs me from time to time, he buys me a little black cat. And tears roll uncontrollably over my face. At least for now I have all I have fought for and asked for so desperately these past many months. I feel a vague closeness from L’homme, a glimmer of his presence. And with his closeness and distant presence, I could move forward, I could move on.

A few days later our fortunes turn. L’homme gets fulltime work. I jump up early in the mornings, load The Princess in the car and take him to work. At lunchtime we take him home cooked meals and though things are still shaky, I revel in yet another corner we have turned.

I now do not have the burden of L’homme on my back for financial well-being, I can feel somewhat less guilty about his financial predicament. I can breathe lightly again, not deep, satisfying breaths, but shallow, short breaths. We will survive the recession, we will break through to the other side, hand in hand, arm in arm and we will grow old together.

L’homme admits that he feels much better about himself, that he treats me better and that things are going better. Not great, but at least better. And for me, better is good. He again talks of us as a couple, of us as together. He tells others about our love of France and things we have in common, the fact that we are both snobs, him intellectually and me stylishly and intellectually and that’s why we’re together.

But then I realise L’homme is only going to use his financial gains to satisfy his ego, his life in bars with no relief to the household pot and the kindnesses he has bestowed lightly on me, has only been to justify his self-indulgent lifestyle. On a Friday night at the end of May I tell him about a meal of favourites I’m going to cook, only for him not to come home at all and to stagger in from the bars in the early hours of the next morning, with the meal of favourites dried out and cold.

Tired, beaten down and exasperated by the fighting, the struggling of the past few months, I simply fall silent. And in my silence I search for new approaches to bridge this gap.

I stumble across a therapy program that offers:
‘What we need to understand is that conflict is supposed to happen. This is as nature intended it. Conflict needs to be understood as a given, a sign that the psyche is trying to survive, trying to restore what went wrong, to get it’s needs met and become whole. What you have experienced during the romantic stage of your relationship is an indication of the potential of what your relationship can be like.’

I have never in my life been as happy as I was during the romantic stages of my relationship with L’homme and if this is the potential of what our life together can be like, this is what I want.

But then, before I can share this with him, he announces that he is going to move out. Just like that. Later that night I ask him to hug me. And I cling to him with the same desperation I did on Friday.

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
~Jacques Brel

(And as Charles Baudelaire knew, my and L’homme’s world only went round by misunderstanding. Wind turbines totally fascinate me, even though they aren’t as pretty as windmills. It’s one of those contradictions – a man-made thing that blemishes an exquisite landscape, but I find them very gracious and elegant. And I wonder what the windmills of L’homme’s mind generate.)

Lingering liabilities

vendredi, le 04 septembre 2009

Not long after Wonder Woman arrived this morning, L’homme is on the phone to find out whether the two of us had cast all our usual chores aside in favour of single-mindedly and with determination search for the invoice he so desperately needs. I tell him our search yielded no result, no invoice.

And then the old, familiar L’homme jumps to the fore. The L’homme that lives the parasitic lifestyle, completely devoid of remorse or guilt, who will, with superficial charm, manipulate resolutely to fulfill his own self-indulgent needs. He now needs a favour from me.

I listen in stunned silence. I make a clumsy and vague attempt to tell him that, tragically, he has always discarded the person I am in preference for the means and abilities I have to pamper to the needs of his parasitic, self-indulgent lifestyle.

I need to provide him with written and authenticated proof of my independence, my competences, my capabilities and, in so doing, cover up a lie about his, in order for him to secure a loan to repay the debt he has incurred watching girls masturbating sensuously, desperately seeking uncomplicated sex and relentlessly pursuing a life of make-believe. Now he needs me to substantiate the unsubstantiated belief he holds of himself, that he is reliable, dependable, stable, honourable and upstanding and for this he expects me to lie with the same glibness, guiltlessness he knows so well. As always, he is expecting me to create a reality for him that he is wholly and totally incapable of creating for himself.

And all of this I need to do on his terms. I must fabricate stability for him and leave it in the mailbox. He couldn’t possibly face me, The Princess or the home we once shared.

I am torn between my self-flagellation of the past nearly three months of the ease with which I have always given in to L’homme’s demands and a desire to leave his needs unfulfilled with the same callousness, coldness and cruelty he always reserved for mine. But for me to do the latter, I would have to prostitute my soul for him, yet again. And L’homme has never had any use for the prostitute in me.

The compromise? I’ll give L’homme what he wants, I’ll create a reality he has never dreamed of doing for himself, but to get that reality, he will have to meet with me, eye to eye.

He ends the call without the courtesy of a goodbye, why should he? He’s about to get what he wants and if I did imposed any discomfort on him, he’ll ease it with bars, booze and the broads that hacked his band or not even notice it at all. Again, I am his meal ticket, he my lingering liability.

Giving in to his needs, I wonder why he is turning to me. Where are his so-called friends, where are all the sensuous girls that landed him in this predicament in the first place? Or would he be complicating sex by standing truly naked in front of them?

He arrives to get what he needed. The Princess rushes out to meet him. With dog-like innocence she assures him of her devotion, her forgiveness, her adoration. I walk up and give her the space she needs.

L’homme steps forward and folds his arms around me. I cling to him and am overwhelmed by a warmness, a comfort, a familiarity that flows through my body. Every fiber of my being soaks up the world of make-believe of L’homme.

I give him what he came for. I demand a trade-off. Creating a false reality for him, means he is indebted to me for a future need I may have of him. He agrees. I smile wryly. In a bitter argument we once had, L’homme told me his honesty was only momentary. I then pointed out that his honesty carried no weight, had no meaning, because once the moment had passed, so would his honesty. He then snapped that he had expected more intelligent thinking from me. Funny that, I expected more honesty from him.

We hug again. I softly kiss his neck, I draw the smell of him so deep into my nostrils that I hope it would live there forever. I walk him to his car. I babble to hide my emotions, to make the moment last.

And as he drives off, I know so does the undertaking he made to be available if I needed him.

As the garage door closes behind me, my intense emotions of the past few hours overwhelm me. I tearfully walk into the kitchen. Wonder Woman turns from the lunch she is busy preparing and gives me a hug.

Of the hugs I got today, I know hers is the more sincere, but for now I trade sincerity for the world of make-believe I create in the arms of L’homme.

(L’homme reminds me of a Meatloaf song: ‘I want you, I need you, but there ain’t no way I’m ever going to love you. Now don’t be sad, because two out of three ain’t bad.’ Except he only wants me and needs me to support his life of self-indulgence. Barging on a canal in the South of France, I would dream under the equidistant trees and bright yellow sunflower fields of a life I could create there for L’homme and me.)

Thieves of the night

vendredi, le 04 septembre 2009

In the early afternoon I came home after running some real or perceived errands just to find an armed response vehicle in my drive way. I checked my phone to make sure that I hadn’t missed a call from them. I talk to the armed security guard outside my lounge window. He cannot give me sufficient proof that there had in fact been an alarm activation that he had responded to.

Annoyed I make sure he leaves my property and walk into the house, very surprised to find The Princess happily sleeping on the double bed, blissfully unaware of the stranger on the property, blissfully unaware of the anxiety in my voice talking to the security guard a mere five meters from where she lay.

When The Princess and I came back from the shop in the early morning hours, she pottered around for a while with the mysterious things that dogs do and I distractedly fiddled with a bit of this and a bit of that, slightly unnerved by having spoken to L’homme earlier for the first time in nearly 3 months.

Eventually we stop our pottering and fiddling and wander off to bed. With huge big sighs, she cuddles up next to me and I wonder whether she read the ‘Puppy size’ e-mail over my shoulder according to which the more you love, the bigger your sighs. I read for a while before turning out the light.

And in that split second between dream and sleep I have a vivid flashback to the man with the balaclava and the gun and the man with the dreadlocks and the screwdriver that stood at the end of our bed about two years ago and who stole my and L’homme’s Christmas in Paris.

I sit up and prick my ears but all I hear is The Princess’ rhythmic breathing. I slowly lie back, my entire body taut. Then I hear a possible cat making human like noises somewhere on the roof or is it a human making cat like noises? I double check that all the alarms are set, that the cage is locked. I try and convince myself that my fortress is impenetrable, but my mind just cannot get a grip on that thought. The leaves in the tree rustle and a cat loudly plonks to the ground. I listen to the silence but my body refuses to release the fear, my mind refuses to accept the knowledge that we are safe.

Is the me living on my own more scared, more paranoid, more petrified of the deafening sound of a single gunshot that so easily can slice through both legs and leave the stench up gunpowder forever clinging in one's nostrils? No, while L'homme lived with me, I stared down the barrel of a gun on three occasions and my house was burgled once.

As with most other things, I wholly depend on myself to diffuse the fear and paranoia. What I wanted and needed from L'homme was to fulfill a very reasonable expectation in the context of a functional relationship, I needed him to love me, I needed him to be present in the relationship. It occurs to me whether, while he calls himself a functional alcoholic, he is not possibly a dysfunctional human being?

With brown and paranoid eyes I sit on the edge of my bed, peering through the cage over L’homme’s empty chair, into the garden covered in the soft grey light of the full moon.

And I know tonight sleep will not come.

(Caged in by burglar bars, by trellis doors, by fear, by paranoia, guarded by a sleeping dog, this photo was taken at 04:28. When the light came, I could get a few hours’ sleep)

It’s the broads that hack your band!

jeudi, le 03 septembre 2009

This afternoon I was feverishly trying to rustle up some park playmates for The Princess. I heard a text message beep on my mobile phone. I thought it would be confirmation of a play date.

It was a text message from L’homme. I fumbled with sweaty palms to open the message. No words of undying love, no words of regret for the way in which he left, no words of gratitude for what I had done for him in the past, no words of praise for handling his departure with dignity and decency at every juncture. No, he urgently needed an invoice which he thought had been mailed to my address and he needed me to leave it in the post box for him. Just that.

I slipped into my walking shoes, flicked through the pile of mail stacked on the kitchen counter on my way out the door. The Princess was already sitting outside, anxiously waiting for our daily trip to the park.

It would appear that this year spring had arrived with all her luggage in tact. She is not going to need to plunge us back into the grips of winter to fetch some forgotten essentials. The trees in the park are busy covering their branches with their crispy new clean green leaves they carefully hid from the bitter winter cold. And the fruit bearing trees are proudly waving their arms, covered in their best pink blossoms.

Back from the park, I gave The Princess her supper and chatted to her while she ate, as is our latest custom. Not that she says much through the hungry mouthfuls.

I made more of an effort to find the invoice L’homme so urgently needs. It was nowhere to be seen. I decided that I’d ask Wonder Woman about it in the morning and gave it no further thought. Wonder Woman is the amazing person tasked with, essentially, running my household. I think she has a better idea of what is going on in my cupboards and my life than I have.

At the shop, The Princess curled up comfortably on her Ottoman, fast asleep. I buried myself in some paperwork that had been piling up so high that it now required my urgent attention in order not to topple over. The shrill sound of a call coming in on my mobile breaks the peace.

It was L’homme. I stand accused that I didn’t react to the text message he had sent earlier. It wasn’t that I wanted to stonewall him, I tell him, and that I would check with Wonder Woman whether she had perhaps filed it under ‘U’ for ‘Urgent attention: L’homme’. I didn’t even bother to ask him whether he was aware of the postal worker strike. He should be, but he needed something and he needed it urgently and no small time strike was going to stop him from getting what he wanted.

In the days before he snuck out of my house under cover of The Princess and I walking in the park, he had entered into a contract for a laptop, complete with built-in web cam and 1 Gig of broadband, for what sounded like a real basement bargain deal. Now his bills for broadband used had grown exponentially. His claimed broadband was being hacked and the total cost thereof was by now reaching astronomical proportions. He’s got the editor and the consumer desk of the largest newspaper in the country working with him to expose this injustice that is being inflicted upon him.

The longer I listened to his ranting the broader my smile grew. My broadband is mainly used for e-mails, playing innocuous online games with friends near and far, posting daily blogs and reading blogs of interest and 1 Gig hardly ever lasts me longer than nine days. There is no downloading of music or movies and I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than watch live streams of girls sensuously masturbating or raunchy sex scenes with canned breathing!! Let alone wanting to chat to friends here or there with the eye of the cam beaming my face or my crotch into cyber space. I am many things, but narcissism has barely found a foothold in my vocabulary, let alone my character. The same cannot be said for L’homme.

But what amazes me the most is that L’homme, the armchair specialist on every topic from art to x-rated websites, so firmly believes that he is the one being scuppered. ‘Really, L’homme, you so often claim ownership of intelligence, I honestly expected more intelligent thinking from you than to think that your broadband is being hacked. You hacked your own broadband by broadly hacking into porn sites, by hacking into live streams where broads sensuously arouse you.’

It deeply saddens a large part of me to realise that he has probably spent more money on roving through cyber space with the one-eyed cam of the web and with his hand on his one-eyed trouser snake than he has probably spent on me in our lifetime together. A small part of me revels in the financial discomfort caused by his escapisms of choice. But the pain suffered from financial hardship is in no way comparable to the pain suffered by a heart, body and soul torn apart.

Now he claims to be sorry for putting me through the search of an invoice for him. I tell him that this is the absolute least of what he is putting me through. I can adequately cope with rummaging through my unopened mail. He tells me that he doesn’t want to hurt me. Not once, but three times. If that is what he truly doesn’t want to do, why does he do it? I undertake to report back tomorrow on Wonder Woman’s findings. And as so often in the past, I shake my head in amazement at how diametrically opposed L’homme’s words and actions are. He says he doesn’t want to hurt me, but he’s going to dive straight in unreservedly and do it, regardless.

Of course he is, he depends on me to take his phone calls, he depends on me to assist him with his problem. Scarcely a month ago, he bluntly ignored a text message and mail from me, both solicited by his actions. He could not scrape together the common garden variety decency to thank me for wishes on his birthday. But I do think that the cumulative effect of many years of abusively heavy drinking is increasingly shrinking the areas of his brain where higher cognitive faculties are found to such an extent that he actually thinks that his behaviour is beyond reproach. He will with the same eloquence defend his ignoring of me a month ago as he would his depending on me now. The thought does cross my mind that is probably a good thing that he started life out more intelligence than most, half way through his life he is being overtaken by most.

I walk back into the shop with a wry smile and a myriad of feelings flowing through my body and mixing somewhere near the pit of my stomach. My ears somehow register that La vie en rose is playing. As I sit down I can so clearly see myself lying down on a romantic bed of red roses with the thorns pricking my heart. And I look up at the beachfront couch where L’homme is not sitting and a thorn of emptiness, of longing and missing pricks my soul.

But there were always three of us in our relationship: me, L’homme’s words and L’homme’s actions and by times it got uncomfortably crowded.

(A photo taken in the park today of the beautiful pink blossoms. I want the pretty flowers to formulate a belief deep somewhere inside of me that they are a sign of better times to come.)

Strange how things happen

mercredi, le 02 septembre 2009

For weeks now I’ve been sitting in a virtually empty shop, playing virtual games with friends near and far to while the time.

No sooner had The Princess and I arrived at the shop tonight, and the crowds start pouring in. And no, this is not courtesy of establishments that recently closed down, it’s a group of Belgians touring the county.

They marvel at The Princess lying so gracefully and regally on her Ottoman, happy to be patted and stroked by all who walks past. Out come the cell phones, the cameras and The Princes smiles widely at all the attention.

My Famous Friend loves referring to The Princess as a super model – exceptionally beautiful, but equally dim. I don’t whole heartedly agree with him, but I sometimes think he may have a point.

I remember a trip abroad and I was snapping away at L’homme, definitely with a lens, but possibly verbally as well, in a train on the way to nowhere or from somewhere. L’homme remarked to fellow passengers: ‘I’m famous, I’m the most photographed person.’

That may hold true when I run out of objects to happily snap away at in places afar. But back home, The Princess is far more famous and far more photographed, by me and all who enter the bar. And she is my super model, dim or not!

I’m infinitely relieved to see the number of cocktails being passed over the bar. As the glasses are poured fuller, I see my debt to my liquor supplier running emptier.

(A French Dane in a bar opposite Tour St Jacques taken on our first day in Paris in July 2008. The Belgians in the shop tonight taking photos of The Princess reminded me of myself taking photos of dogs when The Princess is far away.)

Celebrating a new season

mardi, le 01 septembre 2009

Today is marked on the Southern hemispheric seasonal calendar as the first official day of the season that signifies a time of rebirth and renewal, a time to grow and to prosper.

Behind cottage pane windows on a once quaint street in the once bohemian suburb that I live in, lies a sophisticated lounge venue for open-minded people, rich in decadence and full of live.

Today is marked on the calendar of my life as the first official day on which I am taking the soon to be announced steps towards a life season without ownership of the keys to the doors of the sophisticated lounge venue behind which lies as much my heart, my soul, my dignity, my pride, my love, my hate, my joy, my tears, my dreams, oh and of course, the obligatory sums of money as I unreservedly gave to L’homme.

Today I sent out deliberately worded invitations to everybody who had left their names in the guest book of this establishment to join in the celebration of a new season. L’homme’s name is carved indelibly in the guest book of my life. He was not there on the night the doors were first flung open many years ago, nor was he there on the night the doors were shut firmly for the last time.

Today my need for L’homme was desperate. This significant day I most desperately needed to share it with him. I needed to hear his voice, I needed to cling to his body in desperate embrace, like the night he announced his departure. I needed to draw strength from him. Whether it be from his clumsy, incompetent ability to provide comfort or from his inimitable ability to provoke anger.

When opening night drew to a close those many years ago and I lay unseen on a couch, filled with dreams and possibilities of what was to come, I heard L’homme’s voice in the doorway. Resplendent in all his colours. I closed my eyes and drew warped comforts from his presence.

Later I discovered that while I was absorbed in my opening statement, L’homme had found his muse that not only held the promise of uncomplicated sex on a regular basis, but would also mean less time in bars for him in the hope of getting laid. The muse I was not.

When The Princess and I arrived tonight to open a symbolic night of closure, filled with the realities of what had come to pass, I thought I saw L’homme peering from behind sash windows. Resplendent in his same colours. I momentarily closed my eyes and drew warped comforts from his distance.

And I strongly sense that while I was absorbed in my closing statement, L’homme had probably found a muse again that holds the promise of uncomplicated sex on a regular basis. This time she has to be in a bar or maybe somewhere afar or distanced by the deceiving cam of the web, because I see more of his car in front of a bar. The muse I am not.

The once quaint street has fallen prey to neglect, the once bohemian suburb to gratuitous crime.

The once sophisticated lounge venue for open-minded people has fallen prey to neglect, the once decadent life to gratuitous decay.

(This photo was not taken through my artistic lens, but it none the less is a statement of light and of being light.)

Buying bargains, again!

lundi, le 31 août 2009

This morning I set out to go and see The Shrink with a bunch of flowers under my arm and freshly baked muffins in my hand.

In the good times, L’homme and I often discussed how we battled to live with each other but how we couldn’t live without each other either. I’d joke and tell him that if he left me, I’d get myself a shrink to see me through.

When I hadn’t heard from him for almost two months after he stole out of my house with the trained stealth of a commitment phobic in his disguise as a cat burglar, I could no longer bear the pain and suffering. I took myself off to a shrink on my doorstep. And we’d agreed that this had to be an outcomes based process, a process that I could learn and grow from.

In the empty hours after L’homme’s departure, I’d gone through various notes and scraps of writing over the past few years. The underlying theme of my dilemma was always feeling insecure and self-doubting, essentially because I never felt that I was good enough. I’ve now lugged this baggage with me for way too long. This is also the baggage that mostly prevented me from looking at L’homme objectively, of dealing with him from a position of strength and it caused me to want and need his love and presence too much, much more desperately than necessary or healthy.

Last week The Shrink forced me to open a can of worms that spiraled me way past depths of despair, straight into hysteria. When I literally thought my body and being was going to be dissolved by the anguish, I saw a larva amongst the worms slowly morph into a butterfly. I gained a sudden and startling insight into myself. Now I need to start the arduous task of reprogramming the misaligned beliefs about who I am and what is real to form the real me and my real realities.

The not good enough me swam easily and freely in the stream of insecurity, of self-doubt, lacking confidence, but knowing where to hide and mostly go undetected. I now need to take an amazing journey upstream, against strong currents and rapids like a bright red, beautiful salmon to the spot where I was born, so that I can spawn the new me, resplendent with the wisdom, venerability and acceptance I often sensed, but mostly surprised.

I take flowers and muffins to The Shrink, to thank her for opening the can of worms and to remind her that she needs to guide me on my journey. Only once I’ve completed this journey, may I review my deep and true feelings for L’homme and reconsider whether possibilities of a future together remain. For now he has been moved to simmer on the back burner. 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

On my walk home, there’s a fleet of security vehicles and the odd police van parked outside the neighbour’s house two doors away. The day time burglars were disturbed before they could make off with too many earthly possessions. But fear grips my heart and paranoia hastens my step home.

On my way to meet prospective buyers at my shop later this afternoon, I buy the newspaper. When I see the advert for a bar for sale, it occurs to me that it is such a ridiculously cheap bargain, I think I should buy it!

Fumbling with the shop’s locks, I notice that the source of overbearing and hugely annoying noise from the establishment next door is being unplugged, loaded on the back of a trailer and being silenced forever. I sigh a huge sigh of relief and feel mildly guilty about my continuous role in the closing of the business, particularly now that I am taking steps to sell my own.

When The Princess and I arrived at my shop this evening, I am surprised to learn that even the buzz that used to be on the corner, has moved on. Suddenly I instinctively know that the dealings I am busy with are the right ones. I’m just wholly unprepared for the emotions that come tumbling out when the purchasers I met with earlier in the afternoon, confirm that they will be taking my shop over.

It will be the closure of a huge chapter of my life, but, like the bright red, beautiful salmon, I will make the amazing journey upstream, against strong currents and rapids…

(Bargain properties for sale in the South of France I once dreamed of buying. The dream is still there, but has been moved to the back burner plate next to the one L’homme is simmering on.)

Jealousy, paranoia et Les Femmes

dimanche, le 30 août 2009

I will openly admit that I am a spendthrift with little parallel. And I spend on myself, on L’homme, on extravagant holidays, on exclusive weekend getaways, on luxury train journeys. Spending for sex, for love, for closeness, for acceptance, for approval, spending out of control to sooth the pain caused by the emptiness left by spending for all the wrong reasons.

Not long after we came back from France in August last year, it was evident that the spending spree had to be curbed and quickly. My shop was now licking up the cream in dollops that it once spread lavishly on my life. And access to funds was diminishing fast.

I had no choice but to thrust L’homme from the shelter of his wage the shop used to generate into the cruelty of an economic recession that offered little to aging white males with gaping holes on their resumes. And I expected him to accept this enthusiastically.

And disrupting the rhythm of the comfort I had provided him over the past more than two years, drove him straight back to the only rhythmic comforts he knew how to create for himself. The comforts of booze, of bars, of porn and of searching for uncomplicated sex. And then L’homme started putting his plan in place for his sudden, malicious and surreptitious departure from my life in June this year.

In mid-April we had a fight were L’homme debased me with one sentence: ‘I have no desire for you.’ My knees buckled, I steadied myself into a chair and tried desperately to control my raging emotions. He continued to accuse me of being paranoid about what he does and about continuously suspecting him of chasing after other women. And all my ancient insecurities about never being good enough, never being sexy enough, never BEING enough, fell nakedly to the floor, staring back at me, accusingly.

Am I paranoid? Yes, I do sometimes have bouts of paranoia, but about one thing and one thing only: about being assaulted, about being attacked, about being slapped through the face continuously by someone wanting money from me and bearing a gun. That is the beginning and end of my paranoia. I’m paranoid about being a victim of crime.

Am I jealous? Yes, I can be jealous. But only with reason, only when my insecurities are laid bare.

When I met L’homme, he boasted about the more than 150 women he had slept with in his then short life. With all his charm, his worldliness, his experience, I imagined him to be quite the lover. For the first two years I knew him, we didn’t have sex, we were just friends, a façade I managed to maintain, despite being in love beyond reason. But when together, we were always very tactile. And I can’t recollect how we managed to drink so much wine, smoke so many cigarettes and tell so many tales because I cannot remember us not kissing, not hugging, not touching each other. He’d come to visit and we’d roam the streets, hand in hand, arm in arm. And we’d fall asleep, mouth to mouth. But then one day he brought another woman along. They hanged on to each other, hand in hand, arm in arm. And I realised I was not as special to him as I’d thought I was. It hurt, but we were not involved and I hid my pain.

When the job he had was no longer viable, he moved to his parents. From there I got mails from him, telling about girls he had uncomplicated sex with and girls he wanted to have uncomplicated sex with. It hurt, but we were not involved and I hid my pain.

And then 18 months later, L’homme moved in with me. He was an aspirant author, writing his debut novel. I rushed out to buy him a computer, complete with legal software. At night I’d lie in bed and dream dreams of one day, maybe, while he was pounding away at his keyboard and pouring experimental concoctions of alcohol to awaken his muse.

It was at this stage that I should have realised that I liked him way too much for my own good. And that after liking comes wanting and needing that’s when somebody gets hurt. I fundamentally understood that people were neither heroes nor villains, they’re just human beings. They make mistakes, they fall in love. But I was far too naïve and infatuated to realise that I had fallen for one of those ‘I’m only human’ guys who go cadding after every sex pot who gives them the eye. And that after knowing the count of women he had pursued. But that I thought that was only exaggerated boasting. How on earth do you keep track of more than 150 different sexual encounters in any case?

And a month later he declared his love, laid out his conditions for the relationship, refused to give into any of mine and consummated the relationship with drunken sex. In the beginning we’d go to strip clubs, go off in search of girls, three-somes being one of his then fantasies. And we’d make love when we got back home, never really finding the right girl. And the sex was not the kind that I thought it would be, it did not make dam walls burst, the earth shatter nor the Eiffel Tower topple over. But being a conventional girl and sexually inhibited, I never had the courage to speak out, but had a strong desire for more passion, for more daring, for proving to this worldly, experienced man that I could shift my boundaries.

A year later we moved to a different city. The trips to strips clubs continued, one night dragging another couple home with us. His inability to perform set alarm bells off, but I ascribed it to the amount of alcohol we had both consumed. And that night I felt vulnerable and his distance was tangible. And I felt our by now shaky intimacy had been cheapened.

Shortly after moving into the house he liked and I paid for, L’homme started staying out late in bars without me. With the history of always searching for other women together, I was sure this is what he was now doing on his own. Our sex life had for all intents and purposes come to a grinding halt. Sitting on the kitchen counter one day, I plucked up the courage to discuss this with him. He glibly replied that he couldn’t have sex with me because it always looked as if I was six months pregnant. And all my ancient insecurities about never being good enough, never being sexy enough, never BEING enough, fell nakedly to the floor, staring back at me, accusingly.

We went to the Sewing Machine for sex therapy, the first of a few abortive joint counseling efforts. But before the real therapy had begun, L’homme had moved out of our home and into the bars, the streets, chasing skirts and pursuing promises of uncomplicated sex and getting the uncomplicated sex he so desired and finding women who desired him so much, they drop their pants as soon as they came through the door. This is not a figment of my imagination or wonderings of the jealous mind. This is fact. As told to me by friends, both his and mine, by himself and gleaned from his own writings at the time.

We once had an arrangement for him to house sit the many felines we had chosen together while I was off on a business trip. My house was being renovated by a wanna-be builder L’homme had met in a local whore house. On the day L’homme was meant to arrive, I got a call from him. He was in another city and had misread the dates or times or both on his train ticket, I don’t recall, but he would not arrive as agreed. It later transpired that he had followed a potential French love interest there for a few days of fun in the sun, the promise of uncomplicated sex and, it would surprise me not, the hope of a life back on French soil.

For the next four years we did not really live together, but saw a lot of each other. He often stayed over on weekends and every now and then would move back for a month or more. We had a closely distant, distantly close relationship. When L’homme was desperately ill, he’d move in, depending on me to nurse him, when his financial situation was precarious, he’d move back depending on me to tide him over, when he was hungry, he linger for a while depending on me to to cook him a delicious meal. When he was well, when he had two coppers to rub together and when his tummy was full, he’d leave as suddenly as he arrived.

L’homme was dependent on me for the comfort, security and stability I provided. And I did this unreservedly, because I love him.

Through all of this L’homme told some of his friends that the two of us were one day going to grow old together. And to the many who didn’t like me, he’d say they just didn’t know me. And through it all he always had profiles on internet dating sites.

In June 2005 I took L’homme to France with me on my Lucy Jordan holiday. I rented a convertible and drove through the streets of Paris with the warm wind in my hair. In the weeks before we left, but after I’d already bought and paid for the tickets, he behaved strangely. Some nights he’d be kinder and gentler. Some nights he’d be biting and angry. On these nights he’d tell me he’s no longer going to France with me. On the kinder and gentler nights he’d make holiday plans with me.

On the flight over L’homme managed to secure each of us a row of seats, an unheard of luxury in cattle class. Somewhere between dinner and passing out, he pleased me under the flimsy airline blanket. With pleasure rippling through my body, I knew it was the closest I’d come to joining the mile high club.

On our holiday L’homme was often distant, often aloof. Sex was unglamorously reserved on one or two occasions for tacky cabins in sex shops, always with some lesbian porn on the screen, L’homme zapping through the scenes with his toes. Most nights L’homme wanted to retire to bed early, very uncharacteristic of him. On the flight home I sat in a row of my own, shedding tears for a holiday which I had intended to pull us together, but felt had torn us apart.

Back home we somehow managed to keep the closely distant, distantly close relationship going. In September I’d booked a trip to a Eurocentric hotel in Mozambique. In the lead up to our departure, the ‘I’d love to go, I’m not going’ battles continued. Two nights before we were scheduled to leave, I pressed him for an answer and the truth came spilling out.

For months, since before our trip to France, L’homme had been hopelessly, utterly and intensely in love with his boss. On the Friday night in Maputo, we chatted through most of the night, him explaining the anxiety his infatuation caused and how, through sheer will and with brilliance of mind, he managed to overcome it. I tried to explain the hurt and confusion his actions had caused, but he ignored that in favour of his own perceived brilliance at beating the infatuation. The Sunday we had messy sex in the Eurocentric hotel before heading back home.

Three months later L’homme announced out of the blue that he was moving back in with me. Ostensibly to look after me and care for me, particularly after a recent burglary I had. He told me he loved me, he showed me that he loved me, he told me we were going to grow old together and he told me that no-one had ever been as good to him as I had.

I was deliriously happy. Oh la, la, my boyfriend’s back!! The shop was doing much better and life all of a sudden had meaning and prospects and I took his hand as he led me up the garden path. Only later did I realise that his decision to move back in with me was partially based on the fact that he didn’t like his digs at the time. But I was too happy to care. And those three long, hard years of desperately clinging onto a business through good times and bad times only to see L’homme on most nights, had finally paid off. I was so deeply content. I thought we had turned a corner and that no amount of hardship, would ever tear us apart again. And I never admitted to him that I never would just have closed the doors of my shop as I often said I wanted to do. In his time away from me, I knew as long as I had the shop, I would get to see him. Get to spend time with him. I would never close a door on that.

But in August last year we came back from France and the rot slowly but surely started to set in. There were always the bars and the booze, but now the porn started creeping in. Being forced to make decisions like a cat on a hot tin roof to avoid bankruptcy, I became needy of L’homme. I needed to feel his love, to experience his caring, to discuss options to hang on to a semblance of solvency. But L’homme was becoming increasingly distant, increasingly withdrawn. There were increasingly fewer sober moments to discuss matters at hand and the not so sober lashings out at me, increased. And my frustration grew. And the liking too much was turning into wanting and needing and it was evident that soon somebody was going to get hurt.

In these months I wasn’t concerned in the least that he was actively seeking uncomplicated sex in bars. In fact, in the past three and a half years I hadn’t given this a vague thought. By now his sex drive was so numbed by the effects of alcohol that it had been reduced to a vague possibility in the mornings only and then only with the help of little blue pills on the rare occasions that he drew enough desire from the girls on porn sites and felt obligated to penetrate me. On other occasions when he wanted to avoid the after effects of the little blue pills, I’d see him wank in the shower. And I wanted and needed. And by now he was again searching for uncomplicated sex, virtually, hidden under a Scrabble game he was pretending to play. It was complicating my life hugely. And all my ancient insecurities about never being good enough, never being sexy enough, never BEING enough, walked nakedly around the house, staring back at me from every corner, accusingly.

What L’homme never understood was that giving into my wanting and needing of him, of giving into sex with me, would uncomplicate my life and in turn, his. It would set me free of his dependency on me. And I was not able to articulate this then. And I increasingly could only see myself as the ‘Welcome’ written on the mat at the front door that L’homme wiped his feet on with every exit and entry and the glittering eyed, arms wide open, uncomplicated girl I once was, was gone.

What I didn’t understand then was that if L’homme had given into my wanting and needing in a really difficult time of our relationship, he would have had to overcome his fear of commitment. Pretenses of committing in good times is easy, it’s uncomplicated, because good times are by nature less demanding. Committing in tough time is what puts commitment to the test. Because then you need to stick with what you committed to. And when I put pressure on L’homme to act out the commitment he so easily verbally gave, the stable doors flung open and the horse bolted.

So, was I jealous? Yes, in the in-between times there were times that I was. You be the judge whether I had reason or not. Towards the end, I had enough work, business and financial problems of my own and only wanted and needed his love and these emotions ran so deep, that jealousy had no foothold. In the final analyses, jealousy was the furthest from my mind.

(This painting is lifted from a book L’homme gave me for Xmas in 1998. His inscription reads: ‘Dearest Ris, only dearest Ris, your beloved, L’homme.’ I love this artist and I have a painting by him we both referred to as ‘a painting to dream by’. This particular painting is called Les Femmes and the inscription beneath it reads: ‘You won’t find an image of yourself in running water. It’s the still waters that allow you to rest and find yourself.’)