Brush with Love #2

I’ve got the muse now.

I’m angry. I’m angry that I can’t write about my search for love here. I’m angry that my search for love is so hard. I’m angry that I’m sad. Another disappointment. Well, I’m going to write about it here. What is this damn blog about, if it isn’t my way of making sense of the world. The weird public private diary that can be read by the people referred to in it, if they have Internet access, and they’re not dead.

I thought I’d have to write fiction. I thought I’d be able to, as a way of expressing some of the things in me. And I’m doing that, slowly. But this is first. It’s my outlet. My way of expressing myself when there is too much to hold in, or when I don’t know what the hell it is and need to make sense out of it.

I always come to some sort of resolution and I know I’ll do that here but let’s not jump ahead.

Did I say that people have asked me if I’ve had therapy since Jane died? Well they have and I haven’t. I nearly did but she died. My therapist, that is. Jenny Rockel. She was a wise and hearted woman.

And so this, you, me, blogging is my therapy now. You don’t like it, you don’t read it. You probably don’t anyway. But I do and that’s why I write it. Straight out of me into me just like this. Heh, heh.

But can I blog my search for love? I’ll start with why not.

1. I am grieving my loss of Jane. It is too early for me to be looking for love. Either I’m not nearly ready for it, or worse, I’ve prematurely expunged Jane from my consciousness. And even if neither of those are true, it’s insensitive towards Jane’s family for me to change the subject here from my loss of her to my subsequent exploits. I can find a new lover, a new partner or love of my life even. They can not find a new daughter, sister, cousin, or niece.

2. The love interest in question may be reading, or may read this in advance of becoming one and think ‘not if I’m gonna be his next blog post subject’. I have been asked not to blog particular particulars.

3. You might think I’m pathetic or bad. The future’s a long time and stuff sticks on the internet. You could be a prospective employer, lover, business partner or customer. You could be a PI, the police or a dirt-digging publicist for some competitor of mine. You could be me reading and cringing. You could be any one of my exes reassuring yourself as to the virtue of being over me.

Well, nah to all three of you.

I can keep this confidential. Some people will know who is being referred to but that’s probably because they know anyway. I’m not going to put things here that are excessively pathetic. They’re there but the whole point of doing this is that they’re not as pathetic as they seem. They get made into some process of discovery, some cycle of decay and renewal. And Jane, and Jane’s family, you are real to me and here with me at each step in my process of saying goodbye, and of having you, Jane in me somewhere to stay. So far, each brush with love that I’ve had has pushed me a step further in my grieving process. Maybe this can do something like that for you.

So that’s the blogging. Now for the love. The love glimpsed, grasped and shimmeringly lost. That’s how it seems anyway. If you’d asked me three days ago, I would have said found. Ask me tomorrow and I don’t know what you’ll hear. Two weeks this time. Better than the one, last time. Maybe it will be four and then eight the next times. Maybe it would be better that I don’t do love at all so that I can focus on my business and get the garage tidied. I don’t know and that is the whole thing about all this, the unknown.

The good news is that I have not fallen apart. In fact, I’ve felt good almost the whole time with this one. I’ve had moments of sadness, and short moments of fear, but on the whole I’ve enjoyed a good time being in the moment with this new, old, lovely woman. That was the thing, the first thing that attracted me to her: being attracted to her. It’s not so often that I’ve had the experience of attraction to a woman and actually ended up with her. Very rare, actually. Of course, there’s no great sample size. Four in the last twenty years.

The surprise was that ***** quickly turned out to be able to meet me, emotionally, even to challenge me to stretch in some ways that I liked a lot. And when Jane came, which she did, ***** was right with herself and with me. I had my own moments, of course. It has been the week of the putting up of Jane’s headstone in Cromwell Cemetery. There was the moment when I imagined that ***** had died in the next room. And the moment when the two of us lay in the bed in which Jane did die and I told the story and cried some tears and ***** cried some tears, too. Like I would have wished her to and I said so, that I was moved that she did and she said that was no big deal, the minimum I should expect from a close person. Maybe I was projecting an idealised empathetic companion or rolling in the expectation of abandonment. I don’t think so. I like that.

And I like that I am ok with doing this, being with a new lover and enjoying that. Jane, you were there, but you let me do it. I think we are getting on in a new way around this just now.

She is a great playmate, *****. We did some very nice going out and stopping in together. And then there is the *****ness of *****. I just like her.

All that yumminess has come to a stop now. I don’t know if it will start again. I would like to but at the same time I know that ***** is looking for someone who I really don’t think I am. And a bit vice versa. For me, I’d keep going and enjoying saying “yes” and being in the moment, without thinking too much about the future. Be in there for the loving, learning and fun. I know that that is only sustainable while it has two willing participants. We are not twenty anything any more and what may be doesn’t come as easily. I met someone recently who said that men in their fifties tended not to prefer serial monogamy to committed relationships. Am I there already? I think not. I know that committed relationship is right for me but I am in no hurry. I know that it is right for me to be in the moment, to enjoy love and to say yes. To learn about reality and how it isn’t dreams. And to keep what is valuable, what I believe in, close to me.

It’s all a bit unresolved at the moment. I’m writing this at least partly because of a conversation that I want to be having with ***** but am not having. I’ve left the messages that I’m going to, for now. ****licious, I wish you’d call me.