Going to the River

It's not just that in the last 4 weeks I've been busy forgiving the monster I loved from 96' to 99', but I've been ending a relationship that began after that, and spanned the last 11 years; a long, drawn-out relationship with an incorrigible womanizer that I've been trying to end for the last 5 years unsuccessfully, until three Saturdays ago...when I definitively and quietly walked away.

It's not that I was physically 'with' him during that time, but we always kept in touch, as he would say. With the exception of the day I fell on my head, November 1st, 2009, there's been no physical contact. And even then, as far as I was concerned, we only kissed. He felt bad for dropping me. He allowed that to segue into comforting me for how much I had longed and pined for him over the years. I'd even gone so far in the past 11 years as to imagine I would someday be with him as his wife, that one day he would stop his incorrigible womanizing.

But it was not to be, and I knew it on November 1st, 2009. I knew it with a certainty that was chilling, as he segued once again, this time into an attempt to transform my angst, grief, confusion and literal excruciating pain in my neck into an opportunity to extract more pleasure for himself from me. As it was, I refused to participate. I did, however, unfortunately, remain as an uncomfortable observer, while he transitioned from comforting me, to dropping his pants below his knees and disrespecting me on the very day I almost snapped my spine and died at his hands.

You might ask, dear reader, why did I wait until February 5th to walk away? Why, for instance, did I not walk away on November 1st, 2001, when he dumped me as an acknowledged girlfriend? Or in the ensuing weeks while I lay lovesick with strep, mononucleosis and chronic fatigue? Or maybe, why did I not walk away all those years during which he came to me in the interludes between his other women, even after I finally refused to sleep with him anymore? Why not have left him in August of 09' when he suckered me into going to see a play performed by his most recent ex? Why not hang up on him as he proceeded afterwards to tell me of their love and how much more beautiful it was for him than ours?

The answer partly lies within the pages of two favorite books of mine, a song, and, well, just sheer stupidity and blindness. Blindness, primarily to the fact that, though the man I dated prior to him was a monstrously cruel human being, this man was quietly cruel. Where the monster had me for 3 years, and then stalked me for the next 10, this man had my heart for 11 years. 11. What a waste.

I still have the hideously ugly set of pearls with a ridiculous ruby like a drop of blood that he gave me for Christmas 2000, in lieu of actually inviting me out with his friends. He thought then, I suspect, that he could buy a night of sex with me, the crazy girlfriend, and still go out with someone else. I found the necklace today. Odd that I've forgiven the monster I dated before him, but can't seem to forgive him...or myself. Why did I let him keep my number in his 'little black book' all these years? Why didn't I crush those pearls into dust with a mortar and pestle, literally?

Well, I was busy living the fantasy that I was Fermina Daza in Gabriel Garcia Marquez' book "Love in the Time of Cholera", a book I'd read in 1994, long before the movie "Serendipity" came out. Thank God I never gave him a copy of Marquez' book with my number scribbled inside. And while I was living this fantasy I was ignoring the fact that this womanizer was less like Florentino Ariza, and more like Tomas in Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". But Tomas, Tereza and Sabine eventually opened their hearts.

I never dated either a 'Tomas' or a 'Florentino Ariza'. No, I dated a man, who told me when I asked why I always felt exhausted after sex with him: "Because there is no love." A man who said he thought I made him out in my mind to be better than he was, who actually gave me hints that I should walk away. A man who, in reality, by the sheer quietness of his cruelty and the number of years which were allowed to hang like a string of ugly pearls attaching me to him like a marionette...did more damage to my love of men than the monster.

I should crush those pearls under my feet. Drop those fetters completely too...

This man followed 'the rule of threes', described early on in Kundera's book. And I know that he'll never want to see me traipsing into his apartment with a copy of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" under my arm like Tereza from the Kundera book. He'll never make a life with me. And I really haven't wanted a life with him for years really. Now I see, I was just holding onto misery because it felt familiar.

I should crush those pearls under my feet.

Three books, actually, have deeply touched me. And three others have defined my understanding of life. The first three I don't mention here. The last are the two mentioned above, and also Margaret Atwood's "Cat's Eye". What's so special about a marble? Another story for another time.

It is Kundera's book which is gripping me again now. I see, for other reasons, than this idiot I dated, how in the intervening years since I read it at the age of 26, why I could not have read it without weeping and getting sick. It reminds me of my mother's death. It reminds me also of a happiness and a joy that I keep touching upon, if only for moments.

But it also reminds me of how much this book, more than any other, even books by Marguerite Duras whom I dearly love, defined how I wanted to write myself. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" was the format of philosophical exposition and narrative that I crafted my first manuscript around. The one my boss at the strip club in 1996 said was incredibly beautiful and should be published. That man with a heart big enough to leave a dozen roses on the table as he left his own girlfriend in his bedroom with another man. That blessed soul encouraged me to write, but I did not do it. And so that memory is with this book also.

More than all of this though, is a new memory that I will forever associate with this book: that of getting sicker than I have been in years, literally, it seems, at the very thought that my heart has fallen in love with a man who exists in my life right now, and whom I cannot, for the sake of propriety, and possibly also because he may not love me back in that way, be with now. I say that, but I feel his love. The way his hand will reach out sometimes to lightly touch my back. The way he calls my name out. My birth name. I have not heard anyone say my name like that in years. And what little I know of him, his love of music, his sense of humor, his awkwardness, his kindness to others, the hugeness of his heart, makes me love him all the more. I long to rest my hand in his, and walk with him.

I tried, unsuccessfully, to turn my love for him into lust, but thankfully it didn't work for long. Not that I don't want to make love to him, but it's more that I want sleep with him. More accurately, I want to sleep next to him, with my hand in his, or his hand on my hip or belly, holding me lightly, with that unbearable lightness and love. Then to feel the weight of his body above mine. Then to just quietly putter around the house with him. Maybe ruffle his hair a bit as I think of spending a lifetime with him until he and I are so old and gray that all we can do is smile at each other while the sun sets, knowing we've eaten the apple and loved every minute of it!

I know that I love him. But my fear of loving him is making me sick.

How do I transform that fear into a deeper love? A love for myself and for the world so rich and unshakeable that I never pin all my hopes and desires on a man again and can just share the beauty of life with him? How do I do that? I know what I must do. Keep living and growing and loving myself and everyone else. Walk away forever from holding onto the pain of those awful relationships I had before. Even the minor ones along the way...but especially the monster and the womanizer. The monster I no longer hate. The womanizer...

When will that go? I need to crush those pearls under my feet...

Then I am free! Free to be sick until my fear of loving subsides like a fever. But oh, how I wish that I were like Tereza, arriving with a book under my arm, on the doorstep of the house of the man I love, and sleeping beside him as I get well.

Every night since last Sunday when I cried myself to sleep because I knew I no longer wanted to cheapen my love for him with lust, I've since then lulled myself to sleep imagining his body curled around mine, his right hand on my hip, and the other in my hair. His lips saying "Thank you", and whispering my name. His thoughts wishing me well. I want to know that he loves sleeping next to me, resting with me, cradling me in his arms, as the deeper world cradles us both. Just resting in the lightness.

I read these words when I first cracked open Kundera's book to read it again after 17 years:

"Tomas came to this conclusion: Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman)."

I differ from this view only in that I want to both make love to him and sleep next to him in his arms.

But were that to never happen, I will love him anyway, even if he loves another besides me or instead of me, because he has, by his very presence and love and kindness, renewed my love for men, my interest in men as both human beings and lovers. He has renewed my faith in men to be good men, and in God, and this whole wide beautiful world made of love. In that sense, he represents a manifestation of the divine to me, exalting me to the level of a woman in love with how beautiful, though also ugly, our world is...that beauty exists in spite of the pain, maybe, even, because of it.

When he touched my shoulder a week ago to wake me from my musical trance of listening to Yael Naïm singing "Go to the River", and pretended to be talking without sound as I fumbled to remove my iPod earbuds, he made me want to jump up, link arms with him and skip out the door, and just kidnap him away from all the world's rules and regulations. My fantasy included a big umbrella to protect us from the rain. Last week there was no rain. As it rains now, I wish that he and I were walking in the park, jumping into puddles and laughing. Going home to my place or his for a pot of carrot and roasted red pepper soup made by me. Going to sleep in each other's arms. Waking up and going to the river to bathe in the golden healing water, like Amrit, like Amrita, my spiritual name. Does it matter if that river is one near the holy Golden Temple of Amritsar, or any other river? All rivers flow into one, whether physically, or through the raindrops that fall on our faces.

I see myself now as the child I was once, face upturned to catch the raindrops on her tongue. Hailstones falling all around, or just the rain that I have always loved so dearly. I want to love indiscriminately like the rain. Love like the water loves the city of Venice. Float on a boat like the owl and the pussycat, maybe, into a tomorrow that may or not be filled with memories of this man who says my name Heather so sweetly, as if it were dripping with the honey of Amrita, as if he were the bee buzzing around my lotus flower, laughing about my last name, Beebe, which means beekeeper. Maybe he is the flower and I am the bee?

Does it really matter? I need to just Go to the River and let it flow...wherever it goes from here........