BottomDrawer

Husband sat down in the chair opposite me yesterday and said, "I'd prefer if we talked today. Can't wait till tomorrow. Let's get it out of the way."

So we spoke. I told him how I had been feeling for years now, about five years in the least: lonely, despondent, depressed, hopeless. I told I used to think it had to do with New Zealand, the distance from my friends and family but since nothing had changed on our return here, I had to face the fact that my misery originated in our miscarried marriage. I could not take his negativity and gloom any more. I not only wasn't able to dispel his dark moods but I also fell victim to them and descended into despair of my own. Our child was now on the receiving end of the loveless, stony silence between us. It was time to call it quits.

He must've thought at first that I was trying to discuss ways of repairing it so he went on about his expectations and disappointments, and how I should try to change my ways... I had to stop him there. We were beyond trying. I was beyond trying. This was the end. I would either end it now or we would start hating each other very soon. There was still a chance that from a distance and because we have H. we could still preserve civility and perhaps build some form of friendship between us.

He then suddenly and calmly said he understood. There was no point fighting, my mind was made up. He wanted to know what timeframe I had in mind for him to move out, what practicalities we had to look at and most of all how we were going to deal with H. I assured him he was the best dad a child could have and I was happy for us to have equal shared custody. I was a bit unprepared for his technical questioning, after all I am an idealistic air-head who never thinks details through but ... the first step has been taken. A small step for mankind, a huge step for a woman.

This morning H. and I had a pillow fight and laughed our heads off. First time in weeks if not months. Colour is beginning to return to life.

I have been a coward for long enough and consequently my life, my soul, my brain - all went into a state of suspension. I am neither dead nor alive.

I have tried to deal with it but I started from the wrong end - looking for love whilst still carrying my comatosed existence in my heart without cutting off the life support, without letting it die properly, without giving myself time to grieve for it.

I have been dreaming up scenarios, lovers, possibilities... I have built a whole world of fiction; I have lived in it hoping that somehow everything would fall into place without me doing anything about it, without any hurt, any confrontations.

Now it is decided. I spoke to my husband, told him I could not do this any more, I could not go on. I asked him if we could sit down and talk the end through on Sunday. He said he had been expecting it for a while.

I will keep a diary here as, if I could not talk about it, my head would explode. The life support will be terminated on Sunday. We will see what then.

I sit in my snail shell which I have long outgrown. It is tight, dark, cold and oppressive. It has shaped me into something that is inwardly bent and cowering - not me, not me at all. I stick out my anntenae and feel the sharp breeze outside, a pinch of frost, a burning touch of heat. It is a scary world out there.

Yet I will crawl out of my shell and take a risk of being snatched and eaten by a big, hungry seagull.

Did I mention that I am not really a snail? I am a fair maiden of the yester day. A wicked witch turned me into a snail and put a spell on me. My only hope is that before that nasty seagull has me in garlic and parsley sauce, a brave Knight kisses my long, snaily neck thus bringing me back to myself.

I managed to turn nostalgia and sadness into a smile. I picked the good out of all sort of doubt, memories and disbelief, and found a reason to be happy because I am capable of loving and of trusting and of hoping.

I could've otherwise gone over-analysing and rationalising realities which are beyond my control. I could've otherwise hammered myself into self-pity. But I am smiling instead. Can a dream last forever? Is it like a good wine - maturing, getting better with time?

...or is it just a rainbow-coloured bubble - an illusion.

How easy it is to forget, to erase memories, bleach them out of one's mind like a stain out of a table cloth. How easy it is not to allow memories back into the present tense. How easy it is to start life all over and over again with a clean slate - bleached, disinfected heart of a smug do-gooder...

How easy, I wonder, for I don't know. It isn't easy for me. It is impossible to forget. And yet memories of mistakes teach me nothing at all. Nothing at all.

People find companionship a substitute for love. It is safe, it is peaceful, it is guaranteed of survival it is a place where you can retain yourself and simply share the space around you with someone else.

I can't do that. The intensity of my feelings is all consuming. I give all I have, I surrender and I take all of the person I love so that he becomes part of me. I weave myself into his fabric of being and I can't exist without him. It is a state of symbiosis and there is dependency so deep that, when severed, I begin to disintegrate.

It scares those who assemble a voodoo doll of love out of few random words, sex and thrills and then pierce its rug body with needles of fear and retreat. They get dizzy peering into the depths beyond their comprehension. I can sense those people from a distance and I pity them though without inteferring into their sad, frenzied lives.

But there are those of us whose love survives madness, companionship, reality... those of us who come back to each other from the land of the dead, bruised, bleeding, with broken bones, and hold each other in their arms. There are those worth waiting for - if for eternity. There are those who in giving love, receive it. There is he and I.

If only I could detach myself from my fallible emotions I would make a very promising individual: a well educated, articulate, intelligent, professional non-entity. I would have it all, know it all as I have always had it all going for me. Ah... those straying emotions! They have ruined my life. Damn them!

You see... I'm getting emotional again.

Perhaps I am better off squashed and suppressed under the weight of pills and self-doubt. At least then I stay meekly under the table and only bark when there is an intruder at the door.

The moment I regain (briefly as it were) lucidity I want nothing more but a change. I become restless. I want to run. Escape. My brain hops from idea to idea, from one distant destination to another. I look at him - I wonder how much longer I can cope staying by his side as he watches football on TV and drinks beer, his face flushing redder and redder with excitement and alcohol. His voice irritates me. I squirm.

The four walls of our house oppress me. They seem to be moving closer to the centre every day. The old towels and bed linen repulse me. I wan to chop the furniture to splinters and make a huge bonfire. Burn it all to a crips. Start with an empty, clean, white space. Take my daughter and run. Give her a higher ground to embark on her life from.

And yet I know I can crash any minute, half-way from here to there, and then I will crawl under the table and pretend I am not here. Again. Or perhaps it is only the meaningless distractions that I allowed to lead me astray, perhaps if I am focussed enough, I can reach that place over there where I always wanted to be. To be myself.

I have always pitied myself for not being able to engage in detached, casual sex life, the cold-blooded fornication where pleasure is derived solely from physical sensation and mechanics of intercourse.

I almost envied those who could indulge in random sex and receive some sort of thrill from it that gives them a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction. For me there has to be emotional engagement, the feeling of love and tenderness, the yearning for his scent, his skin on mine, his desire for me, me and no one else, me as a whole: body and soul. There have to be feelings to release lust, but then the feelings go so deep that they touch the nerve. And it is bound to become damn painful. I guess though that is the whole, yet very subtle, difference between lovemaking and having sex. I'd much rather - only - love and make love, leaving simulated reproduction to emtionally neutred human rabbits.

And another quote from "Lady Chatterley's Lover": "I believe especially in being warm-hearted in love, in fucking with a warm heart. I believe if men could fuck with warm hearts, and the women take it warm-heartedly, everything would come all right. It's all this cold-hearted fucking that is death and idiocy."
I couldn't agree more.

I have been wondering today how much of my own feelings I superimpose on others thereby mistaking my feelings for theirs.

Such is the art of self-delusion.