July 14, 2004
Love
This is, I mean. It's not a straightforward story; it is full of evasion and misdirection and outright lies. Everything is misrepresented, but if you were to read it from start to finish (which I can't, in all conscience, recommend) then all the pieces would be before you in some form. I do not propose to put them together for you.
Evasion and misdirection and outright lies are the way we get through our worthless lives. We compromise. We compartmentalise. It's pragmatic. We get by. We survive.
I have lived so long treating various aspects of my life as separate that I had forgotten they need not be; and when, for a brief spell, someone came along and brought them together, the resulting illumination showed me things I had chosen not to notice, bitter dissatisfactions in my life I had come to accept; for love, for companionship, for guilt, for the sake of an easy, comfortable existence. Duties done, responsibilities taken on, needs denied.
I was -- became -- still am -- closed down. Curtailed. Dulled. I tried to do the right thing, and in the process betrayed myself and those dearest to me. And now it all lies in tatters, and that bright happiness is gone, but the threadbare nature of what surrounded it is still vivid in its afterimage.
Things cannot stay the same, but I lack the decisiveness to change them. I can no longer face my responsibilities, but am too ashamed to run away from them. I should leave this hollow shell of a life, but I'm not the only one in it and I fear that someone I dearly love would not survive without me. Then again, if I stay, empty and bitter, and live out our remaining years desperate and resentful and corroding, making his life miserable too, does that really do anyone any favours? What kind of vicious, hateful homunculus am I destined to become?
None of this grief should arise from love. The lives of the people I love should be made better by it; that they love me in return should bring me happiness. Alas, that does not seem to be the case. I wish I could understand why that is. I wish I could make it otherwise.
May my wrongs create
No trouble in thy breast.
Remember me, remember me,
But ah! forget my fate.
WalkyTalky has been such an integral part of what's been going on for the last year, that I find I now approach blogging with a kind of stomach-churning terror. It has meant far more to me than I can say, yet part of me wants to shut it down and be done. Sign off. Pull the plug. Time for tubby bye-byes.
That isn't going to happen.
I will, most likely, take a few days off, but this site, like life, will go on. I have some more stories I want to post, for a start, and whatever happens over the coming weeks will surely be documented in some oblique fashion eventually.
Have no doubt that normal service will be resumed soon. In the meantime: thank you for reading, thank you for commenting and thank you for your concern.
