She Was.

I’m listening to songs of longing again. I found a whole lot of mix tapes I made years and years ago. The rubber bands around them are all but disintegrated. They are old. The songs are old too, but, not changed. I don’t collect things like I used to. Don’t hold them, store them, keep them, save them. I let them slip and fall and leave. Once, on a dirty pavement I found a playing card. It used to be keys. That I’d find. Today I found another. The four of clubs. One red, one blue. I don’t know what they mean. I hold onto the used things I find. I think that they mean something that will be clear sometime. He is angry at me for something and I don’t know what that something is. I think it will become clear in time. I wonder if it is possible to be something to someone like him. I think it will become clear in time. There is no warmth in the sun today. The winter sun, no matter how much I sit in it, does not warm me. I wanted this winter, and I thought that things would be better in the rain, but there is no warmth in the sun. Though it is there. Warming nothing. It doesn’t warm me. The things I find are things someone else has lost. I wonder if someone has found him yet. After I lost him. After all this time. I wonder if I care less because it hurt so much. Somewhere, I reason, that if it doesn’t hurt so bad, if it isn’t violent, then it can’t be that bad. And I like this. But then I wonder, perhaps I don’t know how to point home anymore, and I worry. Blue eyes don’t lie. I can see the shades change between pissed off and wanting. I can read them. At least. I know you. I know you. I know you. I know you. My heart is a weapon, baby.

I realised today, watching people together, in their relationships, that there’s such safety in that way of being, in that being two. In being able to say (if not knowing) – this person here, this person will love me. They will care for me and they will notice me and I will matter. And – here, this person here, is the one that I will share my life with, that I will tell my shit too, who will understand. The minutiae of my life will matter to this person. And I will love them. And I realised, that I am alone. I do not have that person. And then, I thought – but I have me. And I am here living this life. On my own. And in some ways it is a bigger life than I ever imagined that it would be, and in some ways it is smaller. And at first I was deep breath frightened by my oneness, by my mid-thirties on my own-ness and then I was exhilirated. I have me. I will love me. I will care, and I will bear witness, and I will love me. And that’s ok. And it’s enough. I will be enough. I am enough.

I am taken by surprise (almost always) by the emotional reaction people have to me. I think that if I am honest, if I make things simple, if I formulate rules and ways of being, if I seek their agreement, finetune the parameters, if I am clear about what I want and what I am willing to offer, then there can be no surprises and no disappointments, no accusations, no recriminations, no ugliness. And I am cautious, I really am. I check and check again and I stress my position and still there is the expectation that I am changeable, malleable, fixable. And I am not. Any of those things. I am honest. From the very start. And then I am humiliated by his drunkedness at work, infront of co-workers, infront of others, I am followed through the city, I am yelled at, I am accused – I do not know how to love. I will not allow involvement. What is wrong with me that I will not love. Why will I not open my heart. We should be together. Why will I not be together. Why wont I just let him love me. (None of these are questions. They are statements of fact.) And my face is grabbed, over and over, my chin, my arm, look at me, why won’t you look at me. And I’ve been here before. What is wrong with me? And don’t I understand that he just wants a simple life, to be happy, and then he slaps his own forehead and yells ‘I am not complicated – like you’, and a tear rolls down my held cheek because this is not the first time that this accusation has been hurled at me – this complicated person, and I am not crying because I am sad in this moment, I am crying for all the other times that this hurt. And I say nothing, because what is there really to say, I want to be safe and I need to find someone to be next to, I need to not be alone with this person, and only then can I say, that this, this is why I am not open, this is why I will never be with a man like you. Again. I do not know why I provoke this reaction. It is not the first time. And I feel stupid for being open, even the little that I am.

I am taken by surprise by my own reaction. I do not feel fear. I do not feel hurt. I do not feel sad. I recognise that this is a situation that I must fix. That’s it. I seek out the person who can help me, the person that I love, the person who I want, and I tell him. I see his eyes narrow, and I am not sure if he is angry because I am sleeping with someone that isn’t him, or if he is angry because I was hurt, because I was frightened. He puts his arm on my shoulder and tells me it’s not my fault. I am not surprised that he knows what I need. I am not surprised when he asks me to leave it to him. I am not surprised when the situation is resolved within minutes. I am not surprised that blows are traded and I am protected. This is the nature of our relationship. He protects me. I protect him. Our understanding of one another allows us anything. Everything. We hurt each other and we fix each other and we never, ever mention the hurts. This is real.

I am surprised to find myself saying that I love him. But I do. He is so wholly of my own, though he isn’t, not at all.

The old man stooped and shuffling lifts throws and pillows, dust trails his shirtsleeves, tired eyes watery. He runs his bent fingers down the length of the back of the couch, collecting yellowed slips of paper. In the kitchen he empties drawers. On the floor, garbage bags, take-out menus, a wooden spoon blackened from years of her cooking, bobby pins, he pauses as they tumble out. He wonders if he looks, hard, against the light, maybe a strand of her long gray hair. No time for looking back, resolute. Batteries, used, unused, the recycling calender. Yellow pages, out of date, so much paper. Three more. Let the rest fall. In the bedroom he doesn’t walk over to her side. He knows itemised what  he’ll find in her cupboards. The smell lingers. His side. Nothing’s ever really ours. The bible. Useless bloody bullshit. Pauses to smile. In his bottom drawer faded photographs, don’t look, young legs dance twirled. His tobacoo, one last time, a cigar, yes. Lay it aside, return. If he returns. Loose change, cufflinks, a RSL badge.  Another five. The halltable, the hatstand, unopened letters, the phone blinking. More drawers. He has his pile now. Time to cash it all in, take the keys, drive, slow, careful, get there, hold them over his head, thin hair, unwashed, let them flutter over him and let them wonder at the old man. The old man. The second chance draw. He wants his second chance. Demanding. Whoever heard of a third? After all this time.

There is an almost unbearable sweetness in holding hands, bare legs entwined, in the afterwards, in the decision that this is not right for either of us. This is the first time, really, that I’ve allowed myself to be open to relationships, short-lived, burning. To knowing and being for just moments. It is right and not at all not. I’ve always looked towards permanence and not the transient and now, I find myself in the inbetween, in the yes, please, for this night, these nights, these few weeks. And it is lovely and less lonesome. There is comfort in friendships forged in bed, in hearing the whispered words another women has taught him, in uttering those things about myself that I am scared may be truths. Things I would not say to someone that was anything but my liquid friend. It is almost unbearably sad to lay in too young arms, to fall easily into past loves. Is this all I will ever do? To tell stories to wide open dark eyes. To speak of shared languages and the missing always the missing. And to feel the too close past and the too distant. Lovers bring me back and they bring me forward. The hurt makes me better.

. . .

In being soft I think of you. It isn’t your hands that held me last night, the night before that, this week, this month. And you, you knew me better than anyone in this here and now, in the current. And now you don’t and that makes me sad. I wanted you to know me best. I have new friends, people you don’t know. I hold their secrets and you see them but you don’t know. They hold mine and you don’t know. I trust and laugh and love and share and drink and dance and I am happy. For the most part. Until your cold blue eyes rest on mine and you steal touches that are not yours to take. You wrap your hand around my thigh in that way of yours and you speak to me and the bass beat pauses but you don’t know and I will not tell you more than this: you are hurting me. Something was open when I met you. It’s clicked shut with only you inside and no one else can get near that place. Even when I want them to. So let’s just say whatever we like, we’ll be angry, fuck up, lose, fight, win, give in, withdraw. You can ignore me, touch me, love me, want me, yell at me, watch me softly, watch me hard, crash and fall with me or without me, hurt us both. I will be there. I will be here. I will let you hurt me and I will let you love me and when you’re done saying those things that hurt me, when you’re done being everything I don’t want you to be, everything that I hope you are not, when I am crying and I don’t see that my hands are bleeding, again, and we are crying together and apart and you are finished with your hurting and I am finished with mine, then when we’re done smashing our hearts against each other, for me, for you, for her, for him, then when I am only me and you are only you, then baby, then you can touch me better. We can feel each other better. We’ll make each other well.