Thursday, May 24, 2007

Not yet.

I used to always think of him when I was by water. It had nothing to do with him needing me.

I am questioning what I'm doing in this relationship. I don't think that I'm particularly attracted to men who need things. I don't like this part of him. I don't like the power dynamics that we're acting out. I don't like taking care of everything...


There certainly are gratifying parts of it--that way I get to be a saint to all his friends and family...but I'm not so attached to it.

I've never thought of myself as an unusually nurturing person...perhaps I'm a little excessively compassionate or empathetic...maybe it's the same thing. I've always liked to be able to find the people who were crazy and see what was beautiful about them...see the intelligence or creativity that was beneath the surface.

With him, though, it's different, and it always was different. I don't want to take care of him. I mean, I do...but it's a side effect of a greater feeling. I LOVE him. I love his smell, his skin...I want to be with the man who I fell in love with...the man who is so talented at making things beautiful. The beautiful man with skin like silk and wonderful hair all over his body and who touches me in ways that are so beautiful I can't explain.

Water, though, has broken my heart for years, for all the years I've been battering myself against this love for him. Something about the smell of water, moving water, reminded me of him when we weren't together. And something in the smell of seasons changing, like the first breath of fall or spring...the smells came with associations, and the associations always lead me to him. Any depth or height of feeling took me to him...this love I've carried for him has been at the root of every move I've made for years. I'd think of him in Manhattan where Broadway met the river, or in Jersey at the park with the Statue of Liberty, at the beach near my mother's house, near the graveyard by the river where I grew up.

That's why I don't leave. I'll just leave to want him. I don't want him in this incarnation, but I want him. I love him like the greatest lovers of all time have loved each other. I love him like the love in poems, like "I know a woman, lovely in her bones"...like "in my arms till break of day, let the living creature lie, mortal, guilty, and to me, the entirely beautiful." I love him like Auden could love, and Rilke...I love him like those cups, raised to lovers lips, drinking one past another, like grapes rottening on the vine, like yes I said and yes I will and yes...he is my Maude, my model, my muse...

NOW is when I'm young, and miserable, and pretty, and poor, and my wish is for him. I won't give it up. Not yet.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

that was beautiful.how i long and wish for some one to love me, as you love him.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful writing. Tragic content. I read the words, how he treats you - how one-sided it is. How you give and give, and he takes and takes. How you hang on to hope that is unrelated to reality. How he capitalizes on that. You have bonded to this man and cling to things that are not nourishing you. You are making him into something he isn't - the creation of your own mind, not the harsh reality that lives and breathes.

Could it be true that you are actually doing him a dis-service, an act of non-love to allow him to treat you this way? For him to learn that this is acceptable and tolerable and form behavior patterns that are going to be hard to break? Like you are training him that this is an ok way to treat people? Think about it.
Is there anyone (professional counselor) you could talk to (does your health insurance cover this) to work through some of these things?
Please read back over your own writings and tell us how you can say you love someone who treats you the way you describe. And I don't care HOW good he smells!

joy said...

Hah! Health insurance! That's for rich people!

Anonymous said...

Not necessarily for rich people. Even places like Starbucks offer health insurance to f/t employees and their domestic partners or spouses. I wasn't aware of the type of job that you have. However, what about community mental health counseling, that is often offered without charge or on a sliding scale?
My point was that you are in danger of losing yourself here and need some objective input. The way you wrote that post isn't remotely close to any type of healthy love. It isn't like the greatest lovers of all time - that you could write that line shows how far you have lost your perspective. It reads more like the addict craving a fix. This man is sick and broken. He needs to heal and get strong. And you really do as well.

joy said...

I'm not having any problems with reality--trust me. I'm a writer for a living, and there's not health insurance. Our community counseling centers only offer medication, which I've already sought out. I've been pretty heavily therapied in my past, however, and I'm attending Nar-Anon meetings regularly. I'm taking care of myself, and I'm KNEE-DEEP in the dregs of my reality. What I'm writing about in this post, rather inarticulately, apparently, is the profound emotional effect this man has had on me, for so many years, before any of this addiction business started. I'm talking about tragic lovers: Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet...I'm talking about literary reality, poetry and romance. Not the dregs of my daily life...I live it enough of the time, and write about it here enough.