Archives for January 2010

A new insertion for Fragments of Fiction:

“In a world of doubt and fear
I wake at night and reach to find you near
Lost in a dream, you caught me as I fell
I want more than just a dream to tell”
Happy– Bruce Springsteen

The telephone call came from out of the blue. I can’t tell you how long it had been since we had last spoken, could have been months or it might have been years. People get busy and live their lives. It is not personal, it is just life. Hell, most days I have trouble remembering my own name.

Our conversation began in the usual manner with small talk about our jobs and other little things about life. Slowly it progressed into some more serious matters sprinkled in with a couple of jokes here and there and then she hit me with the bombshell.

“I don’t love my husband anymore.”

For a moment I was silent, unsure of how to respond I let the words linger in the air. I said that I was sorry and asked her what she was going to do. She told me that she wasn’t sure. She thought that she’d try to hang on for a few years, until her boys were older.

I said that sounded like a good idea. This time the silence was her doing. I felt an obligation to try to help so I asked her a few questions about how she got to be where she was. She told me that he wasn’t a bad guy, that she had made a mistake in marrying him. I told her that I didn’t want to be rude but I didn’t understand why she had children with him.

So she explained that she thought that they were going through growing pains and that she always figured that they would work through them, but they never did. So here she was ten years later wondering how it was that she had come to be trapped in a life she no longer wanted to live.

When I suggested that she consider getting out sooner than later she grew agitated and told me how it was different for mothers. Mothers have different standards than men. I wasn’t sure if I was being insulted but chose to remain silent.

So I asked her a few more questions and suggested that maybe it wasn’t so bad. He sounded like a decent guy. She snorted and told me that I was being a man. I asked her what that meant.

“You don’t understand what it is like to be intimate with him. I feel like I am being violated. I hate kissing him, it makes my skin crawl.”

I was more than a little surprised by her candor and told her that I didn’t understand how she could equate intimacy and kissing. She snorted again and told me that I was a man and that I probably wouldn’t understand. I agreed with her, I didn’t quite understand how it was easier to have sex than to kiss him.

In an exasperated voice she told me that men could just stick it in anywhere and that most of us saw kissing as a means to an end which was why I didn’t understand.

She probably wouldn’t have liked the way I rolled my eyes, but she couldn’t see that. I told her that they would take my man card away for suggesting that she not be intimate with him and she laughed again. It wasn’t a happy laugh.

He wouldn’t put up with that.He didn’t demand it constantly, but he was a man and if she didn’t work to meet his needs he might try divorcing her. I told her that was the most backwards thing I had heard in a long time and received another long sigh.

“Mothers are held to a different standard than fathers. And I would feel such guilt if my children were hurt by me doing this. They love their father.”

There was more silence and then the conversation resumed, but it was different.The moment of sharing was gone and I knew better than to bring it back up again. We said our goodbyes and hung up the phone. As I sat there cooking my dinner I thought about what she had said, echoes of “I don’t love my husband anymore” playing through my mind.

A new insertion for Fragments of Fiction:

Somewhere in the distant recesses of my mind are the memories of a woman who made me happier than any other. Some would refer to this as romanticizing the past. They’d argue that I had made her into more than she really was and that she had flaws and faults. No one could be that perfect.

And they would be right. She had plenty of flaws. She was judgmental and at times hot tempered. When she was angry the words would fly from her lips with little to no regard to the damage they might inflict. Sometimes if she felt insecure about things she would start a vicious fight because it is always easier to say goodbye when you are angry with someone.

All this and more. But when I think about her I see so much more. I see dark eyes that I loved to stare at, full lips that begged to be kissed and long legs that were best wrapped around me. And her smell, oh it was amazing. She just smelled like a combination of love, lust and home. Or is it lust, home and love. Who can remember.

It sounds like it should be the beginning of an incredible love story, the kind of syrupy sweet thing you hate to read. It really should have been that kind of thing. Really you should be reading about a house full of kids everywhere and family meals that would have inspired Norman Rockwell.

If life were fair that is what would have happened. That is how the story would have gone. The blanks would have been filled in with lots of anecdotes and euphemisms for how she kept getting pregnant. Their friends would have wondered what their secret was and they would have laughed because love is not rational and not easily explained.

That is what should have happened….but it didn’t. Years later it still seems inconceivable that two people who were so perfectly matched could have screwed it up so badly. A modern tragedy that has haunted me for years. The scenes have been played out inside my head so many times that I almost wonder if I have lost touch with reality, or I used to.

You see the woman I saw as the love of my life left me or I left her. Maybe it is better to say that we left each other. Whatever the reason the fact is that we split and took two separate roads. It was the most painful loss of my life. The women that followed her were judged by how similar they were to her. It took years for me to realize that until I stopped comparing them I would never be happy.

Eventually I found a way to let go of her. Don’t know if it was time or fortune that did it. One day I woke up next to someone else and realized that I hadn’t thought about her at all. Not only hadn’t I thought of her, I was happy. For a moment it threw me, this unexpected happiness. I remember smiling and going back to sleep with feeling more relaxed and content than I had for years.

And I was, relaxed and content. For years I lived a very happy and peaceful life. All was good and then it wasn’t. My partner decided that I wasn’t right or enough for her. I was missing something that she needed and that was enough for her to decide that we were through.

It was all rather shocking, but not nearly as shocking as my realization that I wasn’t bothered by her departure. For a moment I was dismayed and more than a little concerned by my laissez-faire attitude. When she left I let her go, no begging, no arguing, no second guessing. It was done.

I didn’t cry or feel a sense of loss, just relief. It did make me wonder if I had settled for something less than I wanted and or needed.. It didn’t make sense to me, but like I said I didn’t care enough to do much more than shrug my shoulders.

I reveled in my new found freedom and took great joy in leaving dishes in the sink and socks on the floor. I did as I pleased without regard for another and I loved it. There was no reason to be worried. All was good.

A new edition for Fragments of Fiction:

I remember things. I remember places, events and people. Little moments in time that stick out in my memory. As I walk through my past they call out to me, like carnival barkers they beg for my attention. Some of them are warm and inviting, echoes that are worth looking at again.

Others are less inviting. Dark moments of places that I’d rather not see again. Memories of pain and loss that still prick my skin. Their siren like cries beg for my attention. And though it is against my better judgment I sometimes stare through their window and watch the past unfold again.

I see a happy boy/teenager/man fully engaged in whatever it is he is doing, unaware of the darkness that is about to be unleashed upon him. And though I know it to be impossible, I try to gain his attention and warn him. I cry out and beg him to stop. If only he’d listen to me he would be spared untold hours of disappointment and misery.

Of course the warning goes unheeded and I watch him be overwhelmed by the waves. In spite of this I fight to break the door down. I look for an object to smash the window thinking that if somehow I can get in there I might still save him.

The cavalry never comes. He is alone and it is up to him alone to find a way to survive. He must be his own hero and he must find a way to rescue himself. It sounds like a very lonely existence and at times it is. He often feels as if he lives alone and apart, but he knows the warmth of love and friendship too.

That warmth and love is extended from him as well. He is well loved and has friends who would die for him just as he would do for them. He isn’t conscious of how this serves him. He isn’t aware that this is a life vest that keeps him from drowning.

But can you blame him. He has been nothing but a fighter his entire life. He doesn’t know any other way. Sometimes you can hear him scream in rage and frustration. The feelings are palpable and radiate off of him. There is no misunderstanding his emotions, no poker face. In a different time he might have been a warrior.

A mighty warrior who would have destroyed all enemies or died trying. They say that there is an honorable death on the battlefield. He wouldn’t have sought death, but he wouldn’t have feared it either. He likes to think that he would have always fought for the underdog and that he would have been the one to save her.

It is not your typical hero or savior complex. He doesn’t care about being acknowledged by others, doesn’t want that sort of praise or attention. His primary focus is upon taking care of those he cares about. She lies there in the back of his thoughts, her presence is inextricably linked to his.

And that is part of the strangeness of it all. She and he who once were everything to each other are not any more, at least not in the traditional sense. They do not speak or communicate by traditional means.There are no telephone calls, no text or email. No handwritten notes to share.

Now they walk different paths. Their roads do not intersect and they wonder if they ever will again. In the still and quiet of the night they remember. They close their eyes and feel the presence of the person who filled their soul with quiet and contentment.

Sometimes in the dark they cry silent tears of regret and stare at the ceiling wondering what the other is doing. Two souls that are still linked, that is what they are. Two souls who share a connection that was never broken and probably will never be severed. At times it is painful to feel the empty places. They close their hands and are surprised not to find the other holding it. No fingers intertwined and no easy breathing next to them.

But in the great contradiction of life that connection also serves to give them hope. The pain is mitigated by the sense that their life partner is out there still. So they stare at the moon and silently whisper about lost love and feel an unbridled optimism that the empty space between them will not always be so.