Saturday, Mar. 06, 2004 - 5:20 pm
Um... I'm sorry.
This relationship just isn't working for me.
I'm at www.dailypreciousness.org now. So change that bookmark.
So I've thought a great deal about my trip to Florida to see Henry. It had all the makings of a wonderful trip: Good company, pleasant surroundings, comfortable temperatures... but it lacked something very important. It lacked a 100% real Henry who was free to be... Henry. He just couldn't be himself at the airport when I arrived and departed. He had to maintain a buffalo stance.
It's a poker face and a shadow of real emotion: a careful demeanor that keeps him safe from harm. And I feel like I'm a selfish bastard for wanting to hug him and kiss his handsome face.
Let me point out, of course, that this was not his fault. He is only guilty of self-preservation. He is only guilty of wanting to maintain his livelihood and I completely respect and understand that. This was not a choice he made.
The only choices made were completely my own:
A) to fall in love with him in the first place.
B) to keep loving him after he got activated.
I never thought that I'd be in love with somebody in the military. Having a boyfriend in the armed services never really crossed my mind. So the only decision made was mine. I am completely to blame. But that makes the pain no less difficult.
Just breathe, I tell myself, so that I won't feel this yucky hollowness. I feel like the main character in a book I'm reading. In the story, a man's wife, Kumiko, disappears without notice. After a few weeks, an intermediary tells him she wants a divorce. She will not speak with him – she will only communicate via Instant Message. Online, the man explains his feelings for her...
"I know that I want to find my way to where you are – you, the Kumiko who wants me to rescue her. What I do not know yet, unfortunately, is how to get there and what it is that's waiting for me there. In this whole long time since you left, I've lived with a feeling as if I had been thrown into absolute darkness. Slowly but surely, though, I am getting closer to the core, to that place where the core of things is located. I wanted to let you know that. I'm getting closer to where you are, and I intend to get closer still. "
This passage has a lot of resonance for me. If I'd read it just a few months ago, I doubt I would have read it three times in a row, like I did earlier today in the library.
