It seemed that everywhere I look there are couples holding hands, laughing, engaging in something off-hand and intimate. The pairing off was ongoing. As the Ark was once again imminent, looming…
His enthusiasm for his fellows is limited, finite. And when it evaporated, I register what I've came to call "The Stink Off the Swamp." And when the smell would come, when his ability to be with others almost happily would end, I simply try to hightail it out of his sight. If you're caught in his sight once the stink comes, you could see the critical light go on behind his eyes. He is a solitary man who comes among us from time to time to favor us with his presence. But in the end he wanders back to his one-some, leaving us in his watchful wake, reeling.
Having as he did a solitary life, eventually his use for others ebbs, then run dry. And when the dryness sets in, I have to get out, though I frequently miscalculate and get contaminated in the chaff of his disfavor, then I sense that I had somehow done wrong. I had either spoken too loudly or too much, arrived too late, overslept, watched too much TV, received or made too many phone calls, had too many friends, so-called friends who called too much. I used to say that when he answered the phone and it was for me, he looked at me as if she had just shot a someone in his living room.
I don't know why people love each other sometimes. Maybe it was simply that if you were ready, there was an opening and somebody walked through it, getting into your system, his pheromones mingling with yours, and suddenly you're undone and only that somebody can put you together again. You grow toward his sunlight, live according to his law. You're strung to his tuning, come to his dog whistle that no one else can hear. And all because your ever-closed flower was open that day when his sunlight poured into you and you haven't been able to grow towards anyone else since (or ever again). It's unfair, it's inconvenient, demeaning, dependent, inane. I am now ever-after obedient to the fact of him, a whim of his, a heat he had. Obedient and bowed.
He thinks that if he can get someone to love him, then he doesn't have to love them anymore. Love for him is a one-sided thing- having to do with pursuit and entrapment- not a state of rest. Once someone loves him, he thinks his job is done, and he must move on. It was as if he largely loves only in order to be loved. The great thing, the essential thing about him was that I can never win him entirely. I once said to him, "I want to win you over." To which he replied, "Hon, you won me a long time ago."
All I ever wanted from him was his approval- a thing he is incapable of giving. Consistently. Enthusiastically. Genuinely. And confusing love with approval as he did, it has became an endless arena for him to act out his dysfunctionality in. Regardless, I will love him until he visibly approves of me, regardless- will love him forever.
"You seek too much approval," he informed me. "I'm not a person that over praises. I don't bullshit. You can really believe it when I give a compliment. I stand by my word..."
"I've only known on some level that you care," I said, "even if I don't actually see it."
"Of course I care. Besides, how can you trust what you can't see?" he asked. "Someone wearing their feelings all out in the open like that? I'll never trust that..."
"No," I replied sadly, knowing I was only agreeing to end the conversation.
Since I will probably never feel loved anyway, it is a lot easier to feel that it is a result of his behavior toward me, rather than some deficit in myself. But finally, however indirectly I perceived it, he is my biggest problem...
I look mournfully at the empty space left behind. And think, "don't ask for more or you'll get less than you have already. Don't rock the boat." But then, what boat am I on if I can't ask for anything?
The love boat.
I now sit out at the other end of the world, IN HIS WORLD, yet still an outcast from Loveland, an exile from Loveland. Banished. I have given up and find myself on the other side of that decision, longing to go back with him under the shade of any conditions...
My insides feel jumbled and dark. Over the years when I've felt like this, I have written my way out of the darkness, untangled this jumble with my pen, scratching my itch out in ink. Why now does it feel so different? Should it feel different? Or is this all the same- something I'm used to...
I have something for you.
I don't know what it is, but it knows itself and it knows you. It waits for you. It's yours, I think.
I noticed it soon after I noticed you.
It fought its way across my life and lay in waiting for some way you are, something you say, a heat you have.
This thing knows you, it names you, it longs to be near you.
Oh, I tried to give it a piece of my mind, but it ate that piece and smiled.
It has me and it wants you.
I drive it around, try to lull it to sleep, but it refuses to listen to the strange music of reason.
Instead, it sings your praises, looks for you in other people's faces.
Recalls you, involves me.
It's all very distressing.
I have something for you.
A big corny thing with me inside it, stunned, waiting for the shoe to drop.
A thing for you that has taken me hostage
and asked for you
In ransom.
It made me write this note...
As I finish and pretend to feel much relieved, having gotten this parcel of words off my chest, from out behind my chest where it was lurking in this garden of the horrible flower.
I simply wait now, for the truth of my predicament to be reviled to me. An un-mistakable insight to bubble from below, and into my brain.
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Forgive meee -puppy eyes-