I’ve learnt to not believe myself when I tell myself that I
am beautiful and intelligent, resourceful or strong anymore because these
things that I know about myself have been used against me by those whose voices
I have lent my ears and heart to, repeatedly. The only thing that makes them
different is their timing and placement. I can’t help but listen to the
turbulent, rushing sounds of voices in my own head; the declarations of love
especially -those just take on different accents and project mental images I
find harrowing instead of them being pleasant memories that warm the darkest
depths of a soul turned stone cold by other people’s self-serving adulation of
me.
Nemesis returned.
The territorial heart skipping beats at this news refused
to come to the party. All I wanted to do was burst into tears. I was torn
between wanting to see him and smothering him with kisses and feeling like
beating him into a bloody unrecognisable mass of human pulp. In my heart of
hearts I know the exact point when our relationship took a turn it never
recovered from; it was that trip in September. I prayed for sanity and
composure. I pep-talked myself into ignorance anytime I heard those demonic,
raucous voices start clamouring for attention. I prayed to be able to look him
in the eye without giving away how fragile and betrayed I felt. I prayed for
the warrior in me to not use words that I know would cut and make one bleed to
a slow painful death like a slug to the intestine.
Is there a feeling worse than feeling utterly stupid? Is
there a cure for it?
I agreed to meet with him for dinner and did everything I
could to bite hard on my own tongue until it was over. Astounded by my own
resilience and belief of my own make-believe I found myself shaking myself
aware to avoid relapsing into surveying him with the same eyes that had looked
at him that night I found the hair in the toilet. Most of what he said about
his trip was inconsequential to me. I just wasn’t interested. I have enquired
before as to what sort of family he comes from, who his friends are, the exact
nature of his job/career/aspirations and at all times the walls come up so
rapidly they choke off conversation and make one feel like they are being
subversively accused of prying and having no real way to articulate how they
got to that point.
Let’s go over the facts for a bit here...yes Nemesis is of the Caucasian persuasion, by his divulging he
is the oldest and only son out of a family of three, he has two sisters. I need
to make a quick correction here, the wedding he had attended was not for his
niece- it was his sister’s wedding, his 2nd sister and not particularly
his favourite sister and apparently it is du jour to have preferences where
your kinfolk are concerned. That’s why it smarted as much as it did. Granted we
all have our favourites in terms of siblings and relatives but liking my family
as much as I do, their pictures are firmly in photo albums where I whip them
out when the homesickness gets me good. Having two brothers and two sisters as
I do, you will not find now or at any point in my life pictures of them
displayed all over my home and then to especially have one specific sibling to
whom whole tributes exist above the others, even reaching as far as into my
bedroom. Say for instance the desire to masturbate took me, would it not feel
somewhat filthy to be fapping away at myself with an image of my sibling posing
and gawping directly at the bed where I am. Much worse is banging someone’s
head into the wall with your sibling “present”. This was the case in his home.
Let me put it another way for the sake of context, you have
two sisters- Laura and Sandy. You like Sandy a lot more than you like Laura and
you have two pictures throughout your home of Laura and by last count a total
of thirteen pictures of Sandy including two in the bedroom. When you go to
visit your family you stay with Sandy at her house/your house as you have done
for the past 10-15 years you have been globetrotting. She regularly comes to
visit you in deep dark Africa to the extent that she has a standing supply of
toiletries and her make-up mirror that have a permanent place of habitation on
your dressing table top even though she last visited you more than a year ago.
Yeah yeah so maybe you and this particular sister have such a comfortable
relationship that if she comes through, you move out of your own room and
bathroom just so that she is comfortable in the covers you use and with the
shower head set at the angle she likes which you obviously like too, to the
extent that you move around constantly to homes with ample guest rooms-but
these particular aspects about the layout of your home(s) moves with you. But hey every family has its own dynamic right?
I will point out though that almost half a year into this
relationship my family was well aware that I was very happy, they knew that it
had to do with my having met someone I considered special and we all know joy
like that cannot be contained. Anyone who mattered to me knew exactly what time
it was as far as the source of this added exultation within me. Although no
real direction as to the course of my association with Nemesis
was laid bare I was secure enough with my perception of him to not be secretive
about who and what he was to me.
Sadly as deep as we were to that point in the dalliance we
had it was morbidly apparent that I was to be kept in a certain position in so
far as his friends, colleagues, strangers and especially his family were
concerned. Don’t even go as far as social media and the dictates of that fickle
arena. Not only was it implied and at times voiced succinctly; it was well and
truly clear that despite any joy we brought and shared with one another I was
to be kept solidly a secret, for reasons only he knew. In what at the time
seemed very romantic and discreet there were places we would not go due to the
nature of our interracial set up.
It was fast beginning to feel like I had been sucked into
something I genuinely wanted to be in, with someone I genuinely had deep
feelings for but who still had far too many hang-ups within himself to ever be
able to fully address them within himself much less show and actually remedy
the same. Stuff that had absolutely nothing to do with me but directly affected
me more than I ever got comfortable with. Or it could be a reason as simple as
he was not ready to go to any ‘next’ stage with me and had reservations about
me and my intentions in being with him, therefore having familial opinion his
in particular added to the fray would not suit whatever his purpose was. One doesn’t
exactly want to be in a position where they push another person and would
rather wait until they push themselves, hoping they push themselves…
Another revelation is that Nemesis
has been married and divorced more times than either of us cares to delve into,
him more than me. He has also never had children, but that is a subject for
another day. Obviously before, during and after those events in his life there
would be failed relationships, flings etc. Everybody has a past; the degrees of
floweriness of our pasts are what differ. So justifiably he has trust issues
and is a cynic of note. A misanthrope if you will go as far as to analyse it
psychologically. He is by nature very critical of any and everything. If you
see a perfect blue sky he will point out the clouds as if to minimise the
impact of any moment’s beauty.
I don’t know what made him this way, neither do I
care- all I would like is to at least be given the benefit of the doubt and the
room to make my own mistakes within our relationship before I get silently prejudged and punished on the merit
of other people’s failings.
Just as he point
blank refused to pay for the hurts inflicted on me by my past and the choices I
made in it when that subject reared its ugly head in our interactions. The
thing with him is that it is not laid bare, not spoken as he keeps mum on those
kinds of issues or glosses over them without them ever being addressed, much
less put to rest. He tends to err on the side of the negative outcome and will
shroud it by pronouncing it to be his brand of realism.
It took a lot of time for me to see,come to terms with and eventually accept how he expresses
himself and also to reserve his right to not express himself as this is all
part of what made him who he is. He may project an air of control and other
worldly calm when just beneath the surface bubble demons I can never handle and
that he won’t open up to because he knows he can’t handle them either. It was
one of those things that I could either put him to task about or hammer on
until it reduced both of us to both our pained empty shells or it was something
about him I accepted no matter how begrudgingly and got a move on with him and
paid it no further mind. He obviously had his reasons for conducting himself
the way that he did and as unnatural as it felt to me he was under no
obligation to further complicate his anguish by making it mine too by sharing
it. I respect that.
And I will hug him through those things that I don’t
understand, not because I am lacking in any way or compensating a void within
me that I need him to fill but because maybe my being there will help him see
himself as I see him. Maybe it will help him realise that loneliness is a
companion he has chosen whose company he not only detests but continuously
indulges as if her fiendish ways bring calm to his soul.
Love loves
with no but…and love loves LOVE.
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