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I was thirteen when I first laid eyes upon him. He would become the infatuation of my teenage years. And still now, to this day, if I close my eyes, I can still hear him sing to me. But in the beginning he never sang to me, he would not sing to me until thirteen years later.
He was the Tin Man in the school musical of the Wiz. I was in the chorus and the moment I heard his voice, those electric notes poured over me like liquid night. I was lost; hopelessly and utterly lost within the music that was he. I always watched him from a distance. I knew only too well my limitations and boundaries. I was but a child at thirteen and he was on the brink of manhood at 16. so I did all I could do, watch. I would watch the way he interacted with his friends, the way his face constricted to reach a note perfectly and the ease in which his lungs were able to fill the reed of his saxophone, expelling the most perfect rhythmic jazz notions. There was something about him that consumed me and left me lost for words and breath. This was my first real school-girl crush. I was perched headlong on the edge of teenage hormones and he called to me in a way I had never before understood.
I was able to create my own world. A world inside my own imagination where we both could reside together and I would spend my days day-dreaming of him and doodling his name across my school books. My imagination knew not the bounds of what kept us apart and I would fantasise that one day I would hear him call my name and on that one day we would walk through school hand in hand and he would not care that I was only thirteen. I would become his doll, small and fragile and he would sing to me.
One day I found some courage and I picked up the phone and called him. We spoke, although I asked to remain anonymous. We would talk for hours, about school, about the things we liked and dis-liked and I was surprised to find how easy it was, how comfortable it was to speak to him when he knew not who I was. It would become our afternoon delight. I am sure for him, it must have been intriguing to know that there was this little person out there who thought he was the sun, and the moon and the stars, and yet he knew not who she was. He knew the voice on the other end of the phone and he knew all that lay insider her, and yet he did not know her name or the contours of her face.
Everything changed one day when a friend told him who I was. My anonymity shattered and the invisible wall that I had been able to hide behind, the wall that had become my safety harness were removed. I was out in the open, unarmoured, defenceless and ashamed. I knew who and what I was, but most importantly, I knew who and what I was not. He was on one level and I, I was somewhere much, much further below him. We would not speak again for thirteen years. My adolescent heart broken and torn, it was the first time my heart would be broken. The first time that it would be reiterated to me that I was ugly, that I was not good enough.
He was tall and lanky and three years older than I. He was the beginning of my fixation with tall men. He was the beginning blossom of girlhood romance, childlike innocence and first kisses. He was smart and somewhat shy in the presence of others and yet with me, he always appeared so self-assured, so confident. I was eight years old when we met. I was eight years old and diving head first into the spinning well of love’s first embrace.
My memories are somewhat tattered, torn and aged by time and yet there are snippets of time that seem to be caught between then and now and I can remember them as clearly as if they had happened only moments ago. Memories of closing my eyes so tightly when my school friend had told him that I was in love with him, closing my eyes thinking (as a child does) if I can not see him, he can not see me. But he did see me. And that rainy winter’s day marked the beginning of my romantic journey into adulthood.
He was my first kiss… hidden in the darkness of my walk-in wardrobe thinking the darkness would hide the embarrassment and clumsiness of childhood love. He is memories of silent kisses blown my way whilst our parents were not looking. He is the memory of thrill and excitement, as we are sitting at a restaurant with our families and his foot brushed my leg, his hand lingering on mine as he passed a dish to me. We were secret, silent and filled with impish inkling.
Days and evenings were spent in his parent’s basement, where we would listen to Roxette, play snooker, ping pong and darts, whilst our parents would hold their dinner parties upstairs oblivious to the blooming of loves first decree. We foolishly thought that no one knew. That our feelings were only true to ourselves, and yet, as innocence prevails, it is hard to hide what it is that is so true. We were childhood sweethearts until the high school years. We were the embodiment of hiding in the dark, snuggled under blankets watching movies in the dark and holding hands oblivious to the fact that everyone else knew. We were soft and gentle and innocent…. And then, and then we grew up and apart.
Twenty two years on, and he is now married. Our parents are still friends and still see one another, but things have been different for us for a long time now. I have become the sister he never had and our innocence remains in tact.
Could I actually have been so stupid to believe that perhaps, perhaps this one was not a liar? I stood my ground, remained aloof and strong, knowing that this was simply not going to ever happen to me again, and it appears, for the first time, my instincts have done me right. I took the higher ground and stuck by what I believe to be true and then it vanished. It realised I was not that girl; I would not take part in ruining what was claimed to already be over. And when I was told that perhaps I would be the last push they needed in order to finally leave, I knew, I knew I was just an excuse, a reason and that my instincts had been right all along. I am no longer the girl I used to be and it amazes me every day the strength of character I see emerging and I am amazed to find that I actually like the person I am becoming. I am starting to realise that the things I always thought not possible actually are possible, and all that was required was to believe. To believe that I deserved better and that what I was being offered, simply wasn’t enough for me and if it isn’t going to be enough now, it will never be enough, they will never change. I would now, much prefer to be single and alone (yet strangely not lonely) rather than lowering my standards and accepting what is not enough or what I do not want.
You don’t think this is going to happen to you. I mean when you’re a child, you have these thoughts, ideas and plans about the future. About the kind of person you are going to grow into. The kind of man or woman you will marry and the life you will have together. You have plans of greatness and you know, you just know that when you grow up, you’re going to be great. I did. I thought I was going to be full of greatness, and be successful and happily married. I really thought that by the time I turned twenty five (cause that was just so old when you’re a child) that I was going to be someone. The thing is though; it never turned out that way.
I’m none of the things I thought I might be when I was a child and instead I have managed to end up here. In this space where I’m neither happy nor unhappy, I am instead content. I am content with my life, with my existence in this world. And yes, of course there are still so many things I wish I had of done when I was younger, just hanging onto those childish dreams. But it never happened that way for me. By the time I was twenty five, I was nothing but unhappy. I was in an abusive relationship and in a job I hated. I had managed to alienate everyone in my entire life except for my partner, who had managed to alienate himself from me. I know, in hindsight that the only thing I ever had to be by the time I turned twenty five was myself, and yet even now, at nearly thirty, I’m not really sure of who that is anymore.
So what happened to shatter those dreams, those plans of a wonderful life filled with greatness? Life. Life happened to me when I was four years old. Life happened to me before I was even able to comprehend what it was that was happening to me, and in one moment in a darkened room, those dreams of greatness were shattered and left for dead; covered instead by the smell of whiskey and smoke.
The problem with having your innocence revoked at such a young age is that you don’t even know what has happened to you. Why you hurt in places you shouldn’t and why you feel isolated from the rest of the world. You don’t understand why the words are trapped within your throat unable to erupt from your vocal chords, so instead you try to cope as best you can, and everything becomes internalised. You tell yourself that if you were just a little bigger, a little stronger, perhaps you could have stopped what was happening. You tell yourself it is OK now, you are home and you are safe, but you remind yourself every day that this is your own dirty little secret which will never be told. You can actually even convince yourself that this never even happened. It was instead just a really bad nightmare. And the nightmares you have afterwards, well they were the result of something other than the rape. So you make up a story to cope with the recurring nightmares, and you tell yourself this is how it is over and over again, until you believe it, until you no longer know what really happened or what it was you made up in your own mind to cope.
I was twenty six when I was actually able to pull these memories, these nightmares out into the open. It took me twenty two years to be able to admit what happened to me when I was four years old. And I wonder now, if it had not taken me so long to speak out, would things have been different for me? Would I have been able to capture just a little bit of that greatness I had dreamed of as a child? I guess it does not really matter now. The past four years have been a learning curve; the past four years have actually been the biggest learning curve of my life. I’ve learnt that I feel I need to be perfect in order to be loved. That I run away from relationships because I am unable to control the feeling of love. I have learnt that I seem to think it is OK to harm myself when I am in pain.
So what do I do now? Well, I think, in order to capture just a little bit of that greatness, I must learn to overcome the things I do. I no longer need to be perfect in order to love myself or to be loved by another. I am adequate for all situations and I do not need to run away from something that resembles love, but most importantly, I can’t control how other people feel about me. I can’t control their reactions and I can not control the pain they may or may not inflict upon me, so do I really need to punish myself by harming myself to cope? I think that greatness is not so much about those dreams you had as a child, but perhaps, greatness is actually being able to survive. You can get over anything; all you have to do is survive first.
Do you remember the part in the Wizard of Oz, right at the end when Dorothy realises that there is no place like home? That profound moment when she declares that she needn’t go off to some far away land looking for something that she already had… when she realises she doesn’t need to look any further than her own backyard? Do you remember that? I had forgotten this. All my life I have been looking everywhere else for love. I expected love would be this massive, overwhelming experience and that I would know straight from the start that this was love. But perhaps love doesn’t need to be this way. Perhaps love is something that is much softer and more familiar. I’ve looked for someone to take me away from everything that has taken place in my life, and I wanted to go somewhere far, far away from everything that I believed to be shackle me here. But the truth is… it isn’t go to be any better or more wonderful elsewhere than it is for me right here.
I am loved by so many people, and yes, perhaps there is not one man who loves me, but I’ve come to realise that unless I can love all the things about me, no one else is going to be able to. So, sometimes I do run away. Sometimes I freak out, but that is just who I am. And I no longer need to see this as a negative, I no longer need to force things that are un natural because if it needs to be forced then it isn’t love, nor will it ever be love.
I think perhaps I have allowed myself to fall in love with the idea of love. With the idea that there is someone who wants to love only me, and yet in doing this, I’ve jaded myself from the true meaning of love. Love does not walk away because you’ve changed your mind or you’ve decided to focus on the things you need to do here before you take some massive leap of faith. I’ve been accused of cutting the flowers before they’ve grown, and perhaps I have, but love, love has to begin with yourself first. If I can not learn to let my own love grow here, surrounded and loved by things and people who are familiar to me, it will be wasted. The scenery, no matter how far away will have been the only thing that would have changed. I would have still ran.
My new years resolution to be kinder to myself is working. I’m beginning to feel something I don’t ever think I’ve felt for myself in my entire life; respect. I have begun to respect the person I am, and I’ve been able to do this on my own. i did not need to run away from everything in my life here to do it, and I think if I had of, I would have still been the same. I would not have changed anything.
Love will find me, when it is ready and when I am ready and I have this feeling that it isn’t going to be this overwhelming thunderbolt of lust… because that is what makes me run. It’s just going to happen and it is going to happen so softly, I won’t even notice, until, one day, one day when I wake up and realise that I never needed to look any further than my own backyard.
I’m changing. It has already started to happen and it’s a good thing. You see, when I was 18 I met a boy who was the best mate of a friend of mine. We ended up spending the night party pashing as you do back in the mid 90’s when you’re at a party. Three years later we bumped into one another again at the races, and again spent the day and night together. And then that was it. For years I never thought about him, and never heard from him. It was just one of those things that happened and life went on unaffected by him, until a year ago. He found me on our mutual friend’s friends list and added me. We ended up talking and it was again that the common spark seemed to ignite between us. Perhaps it was more lust, a wonder of something that never happened all those years ago, but there was something there. He asked me out, and I said yes… and then the next day he sent me an email apologising for contacting me. Telling me he was going to be married in June but still wanted to hook up with me before he got married.
I don’t condone men who cheat on their partners, and believe me; I would hate it if it happened to me. But the person I was then saw the world a little differently. I saw that I was single and was able to do what ever it was I wanted with whomever I wanted regardless of their martial status. I seemed to foolishly believe that it was the partnered man who was committing the sin, and not me. I was foolish to believe that I could walk through life feeling as though I had done nothing wrong. But that was who I was. And so I toyed with the idea for what seemed eternity, and I agreed to meet him. But we never met, and this went on for months and months until I saw that he had indeed gotten married. I surrendered the fantasy that we would ever be anything more than friends, and I was really ok with that decision. Somewhere along the way he (or he claims) his wife deleted me from his friends list, and this I was also fine with.
And then it happened again. He sent me a friend request yesterday, with the message: “I am thinking I would really love to bone you.” I accepted the friend request, and sent him a message back: “And I think you are drunk and being a shit again.” He then contacted me on chat when he claims that I should get it out of my system before I head off to Italy. And then it happened. Then I realised that there was nothing to get out of my system regarding him. The spark, that spark that I had thought I had felt with him, wasn’t really about him at all. It was about the fact he was unobtainable and that he was married, or going to be married and that it would simply be another way that I could hurt myself. He was just another way to make myself feel worthless.
I told him he was married and needed to sort himself out. He told me he wasn’t looking for a relationship but instead a fling with me. He thinks it would be hot sex, and a fling would be fabulous. And yet, it was the farthest thing from my mind. Yes a fling would be brilliant. A fling with someone would be romantic and fun and totally what I need, and yet I want that fling to be with someone who is single. I realised in that moment that I deserve so much more than to be someone’s secret. I deserve all those wonderful things that “flings” should bring and not some cheap, dirty, eluded dream that can never become something more. So the conversation went back and forth, until I said, “You are married; and I am so not interested”. The power those words had on me were unbelievable. It was as though in that one crystal moment, I reclaimed all my self worth and passion for life and the want and desire for something wonderful. This is something I have not felt for, well, forever really.
I told him it would be best if he deleted me again and got on with his life, and if his life meant having a fling, well then he should find someone else to have that fling with because it will never be me.
I wonder if perhaps I have become too guarded over time. Especially given what has transpired in my life over the past few months. Although I now feel completely different about that person, time does indeed heal all wounds, I take with me the lesson from the situation which appears to have been trust no one! I feel as though I have taken a key to my exterior and locked the doors to keep me safe inside. I know that building walls does not really keep anyone out, but instead locks me in, so I wonder if it is actually possible to have walls and still allow some things to penetrate the exterior.
I question whether I actually want to find love, or have love wash over me, or even allow love into my world as I seem to be best when I am alone, when I no longer feel the need to conform to another persons expectations. When I am alone, unattached, I am truly myself. I have not the need to impress anyone else, nor do I feel the overwhelming desire to be wanted and needed or to run away from something that will potentially hurt me. I know that is no way to live my life, and that there must be a time when I am able to look at another person and say, you know what, this is me, this who I am all perfectly flawed and perplexed, take it or leave it. I hope there will be time when I am able to remain aloof and to be comfortable with the person that I am that it will not matter to me if someone does not want me.
Right now, I have someone chasing me, and I am not interested. It is safer and warmer within my own cocoon. I am only now just starting to mend myself from the recent damage that has been done, that I have allowed to be done, and I’m not ready to let another person in. He keeps emailing me asking me to call him, and yet I won’t. I have no desire to talk to him, to make small talk… it is the one thing I hate, small talk. I loath the uncomfortableness of small talk, the awkwardness of taking a relationship to a new level and instigating sort of intimacy when really, I don’t want anything at all. Mind you, he is well aware of how I feel, I am at least honest. If nothing else, I am that. And yet still he persists.
I feel suspended in time, and although I’ve vowed to myself that I will no longer make plans, or place expectations upon situations and experiences, I feel as though everything that happens now, in the next five and a half months of my life is preparing me for some bigger adventure in Italy. Perhaps it is not even Italy; perhaps it is simply turning 30 that will prepare me for bigger adventures. I am far too old to still be acting like a child, but I wonder how it is I am supposed to grow up when I’m not sure how I got to be broken in the first place. How is it that you become completely comfortable with who it is you are and not worry about what other people think of you?
I think my problem is that I tell myself I do not want to be loved, cherished, adored, but deep down it is the very thing I crave.
