Hope Dies Last

August 23, 2018August 24, 2018 ~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

I did not make the 100 days mark. Today it has been 98 days since I last saw my beloved Englishman, and I had to see him again when he texted me to have coffee.

Over the past few months, and especially during my holiday, the pain of missing him gutted me. When I surrendered to my longing and texted him he sounded off, unhappy, worried, or even apathetic. In our acquaintance, it had always bothered me that so many things were left unsaid, and although I am sure he knows how I feel about him, he never really heard the full story. So I wrote a simple love letter that I sent as an attachment through a messenger application. Whether he reads or not, it is his choice.

The last time I saw him, we met at an LGBT event where I gave him a rainbow flag. This love letter is my proverbial white flag. I am done with hiding from him, deleting his contact and blocking him on social media. I am also done with meeting him frequently over coffee as normal friends do. In my letter, I just made the simple plea that he write to me or text me every once in a while, to let me know how he is doing. I promised to see him a few times every year, if he wanted, because I feared that my heart could not handle more of these public meetings.

We exchanged some texts after I wrote the letter. He knows that I sent it, but I now doubt that he will read it. When I arrived back, I told him that I had a little package of chocolates for him. He texted me today to ask if I would have coffee, and I acquiesced because the pain of missing him and worrying about him was greater than the risk of unsettling my heart again after meeting him. My heart was already unsettled over his strange and melancholic texts.

So we met today, and we talked. I did not pass out, I did not cry, and I did throw my arms around him. I deserve credit for at least that. I lost control over my train of thought and speech a few times, but I managed to demonstrate my capability for restraint. He talked about his expensive hobbies (good ! I disliked his acquired snobbery), and his family travels and activities with his wife and daughter (also good, keeps it real). We lightly touched on emotional issues, which were apparently all mine. Perhaps I will finally believe this?

I have done my part. I loved this man for the past year, and I loved him well. I cared enough to let go. I still love him, and will miss him for some time in the future. This time, I am not promising to cut all ties with him, I will leave the lightest of connection between us, just in case the longing grips me again by the throat.

There is a Spanish proverb that goes: Lo ultimo que muere es la esperanza – Hope Dies Last. A tiny flicker of that treacherous sentiment still resides deep in my heart. My beloved found me once when I did not want to be found. And although this event unleashed deluges of tears and many days and nights of emotional torture, I am grateful he did, because ultimately he helped me find my true self, my heart and my capacity for love. Perhaps one day he or someone like him will find me again, if by then I still did not mind being found.

Why ?

August 7, 2018August 22, 2018 ~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

Why is it, that when I think of my beloved, it feels like my love for him combines all the love I felt for all the boys and men in my life, their past and their present? Why do I yearn to comfort the fatherless boy he was, like I embraced as a girl-child the remembered sorrow of my dad, who lost his father at eleven? Why does my heart channel towards my beloved the painful sympathy I felt for my brother when he burned his soft baby hands on the stove? and the ache I felt with my son when he cried bitter tears at losing a beloved toy I could not replace? Why is that man now my ocean, towards which flow all my emotions of love, longing, and tenderness regardless of origins.

And why is it, that whenever I see him, I feel bathed in the warmth of full sunshine? And no matter how many people are around in a room I only have eyes for him.

And why is it that even when I am thousands of miles away, and haven’t seen him, spoken to him, nor texted him for weeks, I still feel my love for him and the space he occupies in my heart ? And why is it that he is the first person I think about when I open my eyes in the morning, and the last one I remember before I drift off to sleep?

And why is it that I now cry at love stories and love songs, as I have never cried in decades?

And why is it that I have to suffer this heartache, when I was not even looking for love, and have long given up on romantic relationships and rejected casual hook-ups? And why is it that my heart chose him when my mind knows and accepts that he is possibly terribly unsuitable as a partner, even if he were free?

And why is it, that even after I abandoned social media, erased his phone number and blocked him, I still stalk his accounts, know his number by heart, and return to contacting him, when the stranglehold of missing him threatens to suffocate me?

And Why is it, that on a hot day when I could hardly breathe and feel like I am about to die, I have an overwhelming urge to speak to him just once before I exhale my last breath?

And Why ? When I neither want nor need him to belong to me, I feel that I still belong to him, and want him to know this? Why do I still yearn for his company, his presence, his voice or even his texts?

Why doesn’t my heart follow the script and listen when my mind is honestly and sincerely set on letting him go ?

Thousands of questions why, and not a single logical answer.

An Onscreen Love Story Gets Me

August 4, 2018August 4, 2018 ~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

I am spending my holiday with family in Germany. My father is retired and my mother is semi-retired as she only does a few hours a week, helping out a lady who cares for her severely disabled partner. I enjoy my parents’ company and therefore I readily join them around the television to watch the offerings on German television.

The programming seems to be specifically designed for retirees, with long-running German telenovelas, and dubbed American series from the 1980s and older. I usually get into the telenovelas quickly, occasionally asking about the fate of some characters that have disappeared since I last watched. And I always manage to catch episodes I have seen before when I watch old American series such as The Twilight Zone. As for the repeated movies, my father said jokingly “We only watch the movies we know” and so it happened that I caught a glimpse of one of my favourite movies “Die Brücken am Fluß” which is the German title for Bridges of Madison County. I was not in the mood to weep so I did not watch it in its entirety. Unlike my father I am not a fan of watching a movie I have seen before, least of all the ones that open up the wounds in my heart.

My mother talked me, however, into watching the movie Love is All You Need. I watch very little television, and I probably see less than half a dozen movies per year. I acquiesced this time because my mom praised this film so much and said she had seen it twice already, once as recently as last week. Also, the male lead was played by Pierce Brosnan, a handsome actor I had a crush on back in the 1980s when he played the mysterious detective Remington Steele, and I followed almost every season of that series. And while Remington Steele appealed to the romantic minded teenager I was in the late 1980s, the older Brosnan, is definitely more attractive to the middle aged woman I turned into now, and the character he played even more so.

The movie is simply a love story in the stunning setting of an Italian villa surrounded by lemon orchards, beautiful blue skies, and clear turquoise waters. The female main character Ida is a Danish hairdresser who has just finished a course of chemotherapy and has lost her hair to the cancer treatment. To add to her woes, she walks in on her husband having sex with a younger co-worker. The couple were supposed to attend their daughter’s wedding in Italy, and Ida decides to travel there alone. She runs into different problems on her way there, and is further humiliated when her husband shows up with the young airhead he is having an affair with.

The wedding location is a villa that belongs to Philip, the father of the groom, who also owns the lemon orchards surrounding it. He is a widower with a sour disposition, and he has several run-ins with Ida, who is brilliantly portrayed by a Danish actress Trine Dyrholm. I have never seen her before, but she was utterly convincing as this optimistic, and gentle soul, whose indomitable spirit shines despite her suffering and perhaps as a result of it. Philip finds out about her illness and has seen the bald head she hid under her blonde wig, but he is attracted to her optimism and thirst for life. This was my undoing in this love story. A man who is attracted to the woman’s soul rather than her body. A man who reassures her that no matter what her prognosis is, whether they will be together for ten minutes, a few month or many years, what is truly important is that he has the pleasure of her company for the time they are both given.

I have felt like this, so I know. I was married for almost nine years, and I remember very little from the decade I lived beside my ex husband since we first met in 1998. The years of my marriage seem like a vast empty space punctuated by decisions on home locations, careers, business, and finances. Except for a few words uttered in anger, there is almost no trace of left of the intensity of feeling we shared, if we ever did. I was living in an emotional wasteland. By contrast, if I added up all the moments I spent with my beloved, and included even the occasions we exchanged texts, the temporal will add up to a few days. The physical will amount to me kissing him on the cheek, and him kissing me on the forehead. We joined hands a couple of times, and I think I put my lips or cheek to the surprisingly soft skin of his palm. Yet the emotional intensity of these few encounters was, to me at least, worth years of methodical and loveless spousal couplings. I remember nuances of speech, and whole conversations exchanged without words. I have lived a lifetime of feelings, in a few texts, in mundane details exchanged. When he once lent me his jumper I felt it as an embrace, and when our eyes met and held, I felt him holding my very soul.

Life is not about how many breaths you take, or how many years you live, it is about the moments that take your breath away. I now treasure those moments, whether lived, felt or remembered. Some love stories capture such moments, and those are the ones that get to me. The movie ended with that love declaration. I am sure that everyone who has ever loved understands it. Whether for a moment, a month or a few years, true love deserves to be treasured. I wept at the end of that movie too.

How to Read a Love Story

July 12, 2018July 12, 2018 ~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

In my quest to exorcise the thoughts of my beloved from my mind, I started some months ago to read all the books that he raved about. I thought that once I finished them all, I will finish with him too.

First I read the English Patient. Perhaps I was not in love with the imagery and language as he was. He said he usually read it slowly to savour it, and always went back a few pages to re-read them when he dipped back into it. However, I did relate to the brokenness of love and heartache. I fully understood it on an emotional level.

Next I read “An Equal Music” by Vikram Seth. My beloved is a musician, or at least a former musician, and he shares some common traits with the protagonist of the book. It is true that they play different instruments, but they are both of working class background, and hail from the northern parts of England. The book character also finished his music studies at the Royal Academy of Music in my love’s hometown. Without even reading the story, I suspected that he also related to the character on an emotional level, in the tragic and besotted way he fell in love.

The book was never a bestseller. Perhaps it did not find a large audience because chamber music is a part of its plot. But strangely enough it was one of the books I owned. One that survived the cull of several moves, from Johannesburg to the Eastern Cape, to Cape Town to New York until it finally settled on a bookshelf in Nairobi. It was still on my To-Be-Read (TBR) list, when he mentioned it me, as one of his favourite books. I was amazed that we managed to agree on this obscure title too, one of many subtle connections we shared. Please stop here if you intend to read the book because I will speak about it next, and might spoil the plot for you if you read any further.

In a nutshell it is a love story. One that does not have a happy ending. The protagonist, Michael Holme, meets the woman he loved and never managed to forget. The chance meeting happens ten years after they part ways and lose touch with each other. Next comes the resurrection of their love, which is a bittersweet interlude that threatens to unsettle both their lives. Julia is married, and is trying to conceal the fact she is going deaf, a terrible ordeal for a pianist who relies on her sense of hearing for enjoying music and presenting it to the world. Micheal himself is an accomplished violinist in a chamber music quartet, but I got the sense that he was still drifting aimlessly in his artist’s life, when he found Julia again. I accompanied him on his journey and understood its suffering and inevitable resolution.

Some books take you on a journey of knowledge and discovery, others on a roller-coaster ride of nonstop action, and the third type are the ones that invite you to accompany the characters on their emotional journey. This book is one of them. Since I discovered my own emotional intensity, I can appreciate and commiserate with the feelings of similarly broken characters. Michael and Julia are not perfect, each of them is flawed in his way, yet their responses are raw and real. Michael especially struggles with accepting Julia’s decision to stop seeing him, and this drives him into self-destruct mode, with a few tantrums thrown in for good measure. The book does not end in total disaster, there are small measures of joy, acceptance and redemption in Michael and Julia’s life. They survive, in their separate lives.

It was quite interesting that both love stories my Englishman recommended featured a forbidden love affairs that ended tragically or miserably. In both stories, the emotional bond survived separation or even death. At a previous point in my life I might have mocked either or both narratives. But today I know that those who wrote about love from first-hand experience never lied. The genuine descriptions of love whether in poems, songs or novels always speak to human feelings, and go on to become bestsellers. Love is essential to our lives. It is shared and expressed universally across cultural, spatial and temporal divides. At its best it is like an internal sun, that illuminates from within, lends glow to the eyes, and gives lightness to the steps. At its worst, It is a heavy piece of flint carried under the ribs, or a giant’s fist wrapped around the throat. Days, months or years might pass where the offending objects diminish until they are almost forgotten. Then, something shifts and the flinty stone would expand, hot and sharp to stab your insides and stop your breath. The fist would tighten its grip to choke the throat. Anybody who has ever grieved a lost love would relate to this pain, as I related to the heartache in the English Patient and An Equal Music, and to the emotional turmoil in half a dozen other love stories I read since I was similarly afflicted. The scars will always remain.

Such is the sentiment of a poem quoted in An Equal Music. You part from the one you love but they always leave their mark:

But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining –
They stood aloof, the scars remaining.
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between,
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been.*

* Fare Thee Well by Lord Byron.

The Shadows of My Past

July 11, 2018January 31, 2019 ~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

Some time ago I came across an undated handwritten text in my papers. Even though I relocated a dozen times in the last two decades, I find it hard to get rid of anything handwritten. I have with me all the letters I received since I first left my home country, and every single draft I wrote. There are some of my lovelorn laments, my poor attempts at poetry and even exercises I did from a book on creative writing.

More recently my sister in the old country told me that my old teenage diaries are still there in one of the attics, surprising survivors of damp, neglect and war. One day I might be reunited with them, and I will be surprised at how far I strayed from that awkward romantic teenager I used to be.

Discovering old handwritten notes is very exciting. Sadly, rummaging through older blog posts does not have the same magic. The text that I uncovered predates my oldest blog posts, but is not that much older. It is from around 2005. My ex husband and I were running a Shell Service station in East London, South Africa. We lived in the beautiful seaside suburb of Gonubie. I think the questions and answers come from a self-help book I was reading at the time to try and fix my life and my ailing marriage. I believe I went for my first counselling session shortly after I wrote it. And in that same year, I made my first attempt to extricate myself from my unhappy marriage.

I would like to think that the quality of my writing has improved since, then but I am not sure my handwriting did. I am surprised at how nice and different it used to be. I now write more forcefully, my letters loop more downwards (according to what I read this could mean I am more aware of my sexuality than I was then), and I have some more assertiveness to my Ps than I did then. I still have the ambiguity about my I in pronoun, sometimes it is a fat big I and other times it is just a plain vertical line. But that ambiguity and insecurity was way more pronounced in the past, and I can safely say that I have done away with my inferiority complex that was so clear in what I wrote about myself in the past.

Here is the text reproduced with all bad metaphors, deleted words and errors. I will keep the original, as I always do. I will comment on it after the note. Keep in mind this was 13 years ago, signalling the identity crisis of my thirties that ended with choosing motherhood, followed closely by a forced separation, and subsequent divorce. To preserve the identity of the protagonists, my ex-husband’s first name has been replaced with his current status (Ex). At that time, obviously, I did not know he will be soon exiting my life, but now that he is out, I don’t want to put him back again (as husband) even in historical recollection.

Q1: what is a happy relationship?
(A) It is a space where you are allowed to be yourself where you
are loved for what you are, and where you do not need to make 
apologies or excuses for the idiosyncrasies* of your behaviour.
(B) It is a place where you give and take in equal measure and 
where nobody ever feels taken advantage of
The first part is probably what I lack. The second part is what 
(Ex) feels is missing.

Q2: Do I feel that I have a right to happiness?
Everyone has a right to happiness. Why do you assume that it's 
me who has the short end of the stick? you haven't heard his 
side of the story. However it became clear to me today that (Ex) 
is doing what he wants. 
Perhaps he is not getting what he needs on an emotional 
the relationship level but neither am I. At least in his mind 
he is going in the right direction, in the direction he wants 
to go. He feels that I am just tagging along, hitching a ride 
on his steamtrain without paying the fare.
I don't blame him. I have never given him a reason to believe 
that I want anything other than what he wants.
Yes everyone has a right to happiness, but you cannot create 
Happiness is just a fleeting moment, it never lasts for long. 
When I walk along the beach I am happy. When (Ex) and I share 
a meal in pleasant surroundings I am happy. When I get an email 
or a letter from home I am happy. When I come home after 
a good run I am also happy. I am where I want to be. I love
this place, I don't want to trade it for anywhere else in the 
world.
(Ex) can be a more pleasant person if he wants, if he quits 
trying to beat mould me into his standards. 
I am not a business person. I am too emotional to have leadership 
characteristics. I can't handle stress! 
To him it is all a walk in the park. It is very easy. He is 
the navigator who leads the stranded ship into a safe harbour. 
I am just a panic stricken saylor (sic) who is reduced to a wreck 
at the first sign of trouble and yesterday we really had bad 
problems. I was lectured for the umpteenth time to take get 
a grip. 
I keep feeling so useless and spineless. I am just a weeping 
Next time I will just step aside and let him handle the crisis 
until the storm passes. 
Funny thing I remember just now that I had a dream last night 
-prior to all this problem- I dreamt that I received news that 
(Ex)'s son had drowned in their house's swimming pool. I really 
wish that someone could give me an interpretation for this dream. 
I was trying to break the news to him. 
Maybe I should seek counselling.

Q3: Do I think that I wasted my life
No. Where do I see myself in the next 5 years?
In five years time I will be fourty ! Scary thought ! Ex's 
version of the answer: (The Service Station) will be running by 
itself or with the help of a manager and we will have time to 
relax, travel and generally put our feet up.
My answer: The pessimist in me would say: We will be still working 
at (the Service Station), earning a good but not great income. 
Things will improve, perhaps the house would be furnished by then
and perhaps I will have a corner in the house to write or to 
translate and generally do things that I sometimes like
The problem between our two answers is that his tries to be 
inclusive while mine is exclusive -it is always just me-
This is one of the major things that are held against me in 
this relationship.
The first question (Ex) asked me when I told him that 
I wanted to go back to school was: -where does this 
fit in our future plans? or was it that No
I lied I read about a competition for Arabic translators 
for the UN and suggested that maybe I should apply ! 
I don't recall the incident that sparked this reaction. 
It is either one of the two !
No, I don't fancy working in the UN. Especially not in 
New York City or Geneva. But it might be interesting say 
to work in Kenya, Addis Ababa or Beirut. I have never been 
to Beirut can you imagine?

I think part of the problem in our relationship is that (Ex) 
is much older than me. In his words he has "been around 
the block a few times". Me I have Just rounded cleared the first 
doorway! It is not that I don't want to settle down, 
It's only that I feel that I will never get a chance to see 
all these places with him. He'd already been there, done that, 
worn the T-shirt.
So, this still leaves the question unanswered. 
Where do I see myself in five years time? 
That depends largely on whether my vision or his will 
come to pass. I have been proven wrong many times before, 
so maybe this time it will be the case as well. 
I would really like to raise my intellectual level 
up a notch in the meantime. 
Not that I have anything against the people I work with. 
They are real people, with real problems, which make 
mine seem very insignificant trivial. 
Yes, just imagine my complaints against that of our 
cleaning lady whose husband is always drunk, 
has no job and will probably give her AIDS before
too long. Yet she is still blessing her life and taking 
to reading the bible in her lunch break ! 
Faith is a wonderful thing ... If you have it !

Q4: Do I think I wasted my life? Do I want to 
waste the rest of it?
I will answer this one with a little bit of humour. 
The last time I checked I wasn't on the roster for any 
divine mission. When I go to sleep, my dreams are the simple 
hallucinations of an overtired mind. 
I never had a revelation yet. 
My sister and most of my schoolmates are good wives 
and mothers. Compared to them I am a phenomenal breakthrough 
and probably an experiment that went horribly wrong. 
On a more serious note though, I will be thirty five on my 
next birthday. I would be lucky if I still have the 2nd half 
of my life to look forward to.
People my age are already where 
At my age people are normally where they want to be 
for the rest of their lives. The fact that I am not 
is not a compliment on my character. It is actually 
a disgrace; I am thoroughly ashamed of this.
Still, my history has been one of lagging behind. 
Perhaps I will catch the last train out?
I don't know ! I have lost the way to the station. 
Why can't I just be content with running a petrol 
station? Why do I have to so snutty (sic-want
to say snooty) and think that I deserve better? 
You really shouldn't encourage this vein of thought.

My heart aches for the writer of these pages. She was surely trying too hard to be what she felt she was duty-bound to be, at the expense of what she truly wanted. She asked too many questions about what was wrong with her, and rarely questioned the attitude of her self-centered husband. She asked for so little, and even her legitimate desire for motherhood and family was kept well-hidden from herself. A psychologist would have a lot of material to work with with. Even a layperson can recognize the broad themes of denial, self-blame, lack of confidence and total unawareness of self worth.

Over 13 years have passed since I wrote those words. And no matter what life has thrown at me since then, I am grateful that I have left that insecure and self-doubting woman-child behind. My journey to a fulfilling life started when I finally recognized there was nothing wrong with me. It is true that separation from my spouse was forced upon me, but it was, after having my child at 37, the most fortuitous turn of events for my intellectual and personal development. When I read these words now, I can smile and be proud that I have outdone my poor predictions of 2005. Five years after writing these pages I was on my way to realizing most of my dreams, even the unspoken ones. Now I am finally where I want to be for the rest of my life. I work in Kenya. I translate, I write and I do the things I like. I also get to travel and see the world. Most importantly, I have a family of my own. I am a mother to an intelligent and sensitive child, and I raise him away from the prejudices and cynicism of his biological father. I teach him to appreciate the beauty of our diverse world and the joy of simple things. I aspire to give him the tools to lead a joyful life. I have found more joy in my own life since I left the constant gloom of my marriage. I am mostly content living on my own terms, and can take full responsibility for my happiness and misery. My present life has followed from the disappointments of the past, and I am glad to report that the unhappy writer of these pages has redeemed herself.

Trying to Heal My Heart

June 26, 2018July 11, 2018 ~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

It is over a year now since I first met my beloved, and I now admit that I have initially underestimated the depth and resilience of my feelings.

The last post I wrote took a while to compose, I wanted to mention that on that day I met him again, but then the serious issue of the post took over, and I found it hard to bring its tone down by going back to the sore (and now sour) subject of my heartache.

Even though love itself lacks reason, there are certain qualities that first drew me to my beloved. The one I appreciate most is his empathy and his genuine desire to stand for what he feels is right and just, to champion the weak and marginalized and stand up for them. So it is natural that he shows up in an event against homophobia. I know from experience, that once I see him, whether face-to-face or in passing, the damage is usually already done, I know that I will be in for a day or so of sadness and despair, so I might as well speak to him and face the consequences. So I met him head-on, and gave him a little rainbow flag to stick in his shirt pocket. He kept looking at his phone and commenting that he was texting people and urging them to join the event. He also wondered about his Christian colleagues and where was their love for humanity. These are some of the small reasons why I love this man.

I do not remember much of what I said to him in return, but all I know is that in a room full of people I forgot about everyone but him. I was just lost in his presence. I remember he asked about my brother. A few days ago, and because my beloved would appreciate the irony, I had texted him that my brother was asking me for advice on how to make sure a girl likes him. I have found out since that my brother did not win his girl. But lucky for him and his clueless heart, he was not the worse for it. In fact he was quite amazed at how quickly he bounced back from the rejection. He was already on the mend that same day when his love interest told him she was not ready for commitment, how I envy him. I think I complained to my beloved how difficult it was for me to forget him. And even though he made fun of me and told me to listen to my mother and that there were “so many other fish in the sea” I could just look into his eyes and forget what he said and believe instead what his eyes were telling me. I might be delusional or clueless about the language of the eyes, but he told me that he was “bereft” that he did not have any books to read. If there is a word in the English language that would always remind me of my beloved Englishman it is this one, and it always brings back the feelings of loss that I lived with since I knew him. I am bereft too, and disassembled by loving him.

But since this is my life, where I am bound by some old-fashioned principles, the reality has to hit me even while I am fighting the depth of my feelings. I was standing next to him when his phone signaled an incoming call with the call ID of his wife, and in an instant I was brought back to the impossibility of imposing my presence into this script. I would never judge any woman who chooses to take a married man as her lover, if it is clear to all that the intention is to keep this as an affair, a love match that never gets formally recognized. But my feelings for the man are neither trivial nor transitory and I cannot degrade them in an affair that will inevitably taint my love with guilty and self-loathing. On the other hand, I know that an affair is all I could ever have, so I am done for either way. There will never be a “Bridges of Madison County” role for me, and it is best to walk and really mean it.

I have never loved anyone like I love this man, and I know my feelings for him are real, because I wasn’t out fishing when his love found me. I was not looking for a relationship and I will not even start looking now. It was foolish of me to think that an account on Tinder or OkCupid will help me solve the problem of accidentally falling in love with him. Because nothing will be solved until I heal my foolish heart. My problem is that love found me, where I did not want to be found. And as much as I am grateful for the colours it added to my life, for the depth of feelings that I became capable of since our first encounter, for the rebirth of my awareness of my appeal and sexuality, and for the renewed attention to my health, appearance and figure, as much as I appreciate and enjoy all that, there are times when I feel that I have given too much of my body and soul in return for a flood of tears and a load of heartache.

Maybe the happiness I had before was just an illusion, a sense of self-sufficiency that was thinly veiled by contempt, apathy, and cynicism. But I was content in my ignorance, and cushioned by my triumph over my past. Now I know that love exists, and I can no longer scoff at it nor deny it. But I cannot find full gratitude for its presence in my life. Given a choice, I might have wanted to remain ignorant.

So on the 17th of May this year, I decided to retreat into my shell. I wanted to disappear completely, and change my routine so that our paths never cross. I vowed to keep a low profile and not go again to any event where he is likely to be present. I intended to reclaim the empty and peaceful space within my heart, hold in it only those who are already there, those who love me or need me, namely my son, my family, and my closest friends. I wanted to read and write again and maybe go back to school.

I am carrying this through to the best of my ability. And I am sincere in my desire to break free from the Englishman’s spell. I never venture anymore to any place where I am likely to meet him. I never drink coffee on his side of the compound. I spend minimal time in common areas, and mostly take my lunch at the office or in some other place where I am sure to be alone. I keep to my practice of meditation, as I turn to my nerdy nature and ask for healing from within.

Some days are easier than others. It helps sometimes when I am busy with work and my other regular responsibilities as a bread-winner and single mom. At other times the load gets heavy, and busy becomes swamped, and I begin to drop one or another of the many balls that I am juggling. At these times I feel so lonely and need a kind word, I miss him then terribly, because his eyes spoke kindness to me and promised a shadow of understanding and compassion that I was desperate for. And every now and then all the various disappointments, all the heartaches big and small, fuse together into a single red-hot point, and combined they choose to hit me in the solar plexus knocking me off my feet. In the grip of my sorrow, I am still aware that the Englishman is my illness and my cure. Because it is his shoulder that I need to cry on, and his arm that I want to hold on to when I stumble.

I tell myself that leaving was my only option. I reason that every day will get easier than the one before. On most days I do well, I can remember him without sorrow, but then grief hits me in the gut, and I have a tearful day like today.

I have not lost hope. And even on my worst days I still work on healing my heart. But I am not interested in the other fish in the sea. Love found me while I was peacefully drinking coffee alone and reading Dostoevsky. If it wants to find me again then it will, no matter how well I hide. By then I hope to have healed my foolish heart. By then I will know if it is the right love for me, and I will know not to mess with it if it was likely to burn me. I will wait, I have the rest of my life.

Not My Other Half .. But All of Me

April 27, 2018April 8, 2019 ~ marobbie ~ 1 Comment

I always wondered what would happen if one day I crossed paths with my beloved by chance. I got my answer yesterday. When it happened, I immediately counted the days of my failed experiment at forgetting about him. In the Eighty Days that elapsed since our eyes last met, Phileas Fogg managed to go around the world, but nothing changed for this foolish heart, and judging by its reaction to seeing him, it might have even taken a turn for the worse.

Even before this chance encounter, I had a tough start for my day. I was feeling down, I had a tension headache, along with the ache of missing him. I sat in the sunshine trying to make peace with all these feelings and a few tears flowed.

I had salad for lunch and tried to eat it slowly and meditatively, sipping Jasmine tea to calm my nerves instead of my usual double coffee. I should have finished up quickly and escaped when I saw his back in the distance walking away from his office block, because there was a chance his return path will take him past where I was sitting. A minute or so later it was too late, time stretched endlessly as he walked towards me and my heart jumped into overdrive, and I felt tremors in my whole body. I was grateful that I was sitting down. He nodded a greeting, still busy on his phone and walked past. I continued drinking my now cold Jasmine tea, taking deep breaths, and trying to calm my racing heart. The last time I experienced similar sensations I was trying to recover from a panic attack. Only when the panic attacks subside, there is usually a feeling of warmth and drowsy contentment, whereas here the fight or flight response abated slowly leaving me tired, sad and empty.

My younger brother, bless his clueless and unromantic heart, told me recently that emotions are biochemical by definition. According to him they are a mix of serotonin, dopamine, and adrenaline. These three compounds are not unlimited, so you can feel an intense emotion for 20 minutes before it peters out. He told me that it is all an illusion really, and referred me to the Lövheim cube of emotion. I argued that it was not that simple, that it was something in my beloved’s eyes that killed me. Then I sent him a photo, and I thought I scored a point, when he said: “I get your point, he has a babyface”, but he immediately spoiled it by telling me: “This is exactly is how it works. You fell for this …”. He attached “this”, an article from the BBC about the Benefits of Having a Babyface. The article argues that with a person with a babyface can literally get away with murder. I love my brother dearly, and at the end of the conversation I just told him, to stay the way he is, it is much easier on the heart.

No amount of logic has succeeded in taming this overwhelming emotion. The only solace I found so far was acceptance. I am now convinced that who we are determines how we respond to everything including our emotions, and our responses are not fully explainable through science. Love has a lot in common with faith, some people oppose them through science and logic, others respond to them mildly and philosophically, and a few succumb to them ardently and spiritually. There are no fixed rules, we are just different. Our responses vary according to our nature and experience, and depending on who or what elicits them.

Of course scientists are mostly correct because emotions are part biochemical for everyone, but that does not preclude that they may run deeper for some. I have recently revisited the Myers Briggs personality test. It is an interesting, albeit simplistic, test based on Carl Jung theories of personality types. I had done the test years ago, and it came up different to what I believed myself to be. I was always an introvert but I thought of myself more of a rational and thinking person, but in the Myers Briggs tests I always came out as an intuitive and feeling personality as opposed to thinking and judging. When I asked my best friend we turned out an exact match INFP-T, and recently I started to wonder whether there was some current of personality resonance that fuels the intense connection I feel with my beloved.

A few hours after the surprise meeting he texted me, it was close to the end of the working day, and my emotional state had prevented me from doing any useful work. So when he said he ordered coffee for me I thought I would go and see him. The damage was already done. We talked and quickly updated each other on general news in the few minutes I had before I needed to run and pick up my son from school. I told him about the personality type test and as I guessed we turned up a match although he is a borderline extrovert. We cannot change the way we are, how we respond to people, and how we love.

And incidentally, the brother I mentioned above, turns out to be an INTJ, defined as clueless in romance, and extremely skeptic even of his classification in this “unscientific” personality test. Ironically, all these aspects fit exactly with his personality type.

Seeing my beloved again opened the old wound. I have reset all counters to start again. I will try to forget how I know what he feels without him saying anything. I will try to forget that I can see what he is beneath all the masks of disdainful attitudes he wears for his daily life. I will try to forget that he found me, that he broke through the armour of cynicism and apathy that I wore to the world. And I have worn it for so long that I thought it was part of me, that it was me. He wasn’t even trying, he was just being himself, a mirror to my soul. He is not merely my other half but all of me* in the form of another human being, how could I not want to melt into him?

* I read this idea in an Arabic text attributed to Gibran, and translated to English as Half a Life, or quoted without title on goodreads, and others for example here.

من تحب ليس هو نصفك الآخر، هو أنت كلك في مكان آخر في نفس الوقت

The Arabic mirrors what I feel for my beloved: “The one you love is not your other half, but all of you in a different space at the same time”.

For some reason the English versions I read understand it differently, which leads me to believe that the poem was written in one language (my guess Arabic) and translated by someone other than the author into the other. The different interpretations could be a subject for discussion at another time and place. Here is a link to the Arabic version. I could not find a published or authoritative source for the poem itself. I found identical versions of the Arabic text but only on quote and blog sites. You are encouraged to post a comment if you can find a better source for either the Arabic or English.