effect that this living death is having.
We walked together through the park to the shops last weekend. For a few moments our hands swung between us, synchronised in their movement. It seemed unnatural to do anything but touch and hold loosely together. In a few steps her stride altered a fraction and the synchronicity was gone. A few steps further and she wiped an imaginary hair from her eye and the connection was severed. This was a tiny, tiny thing, so tiny as to be invisible to anyone without a microscope. And it was a tiny drip of acid, doing just what acid does, burning, corroding the tattered fabric of ourselves. Once, many years ago it may be, when I was yet still full of hope and optimism we spoke of just such a moment. I forget the slight, the rejection that made me speak. She said that I was too sensitive, read too much into a meaningless word or action. Like a fool I was consoled and believed the fault was mine. Now, after all this time, the weight of evidence is too great, the probability too high. It is not my sensitivity, it is her indifference. Unless she is not indifferent, unless it is cunning and deliberate and designed. Unless she has the acid bottle firmly in her grasp and drips a drop here and a drop there to her own plan.
There is always a choice. Think about the choices and then decide on thebest course for the chosen objective. It is easy to know this is the right thing to do and another to do it. I remain paralyzed by indecision. But there is something moving somewhere, it feels as if the log jam is subtly shifting around me. Even that dim thought is enough to satisfy me for now. Nothing has moved, nothing has changed, the scene is exactly as it was a moment ago. But there is perhaps the capacity for change.
8th entry
This is the worst time, when she is completely and utterly involved in her teaching. She has no time for anything but her class, her parents, her marking, her Christmas play, her anything but us, and certainly not me. I am here every year and the practice has made it more bearable this year. The distant S is so much better than the distant S in the same house, same room, same bed. It gives me time to think of ways to be free. And it gives me time to think of the myriad reasons to be free. The thousand slights, the million rejections, the early days and her Saturday sufferance of morning love making. I hated that so much, but like a moth I was drawn to the flame every week. Surely it would be good, or at least better than last time, surely she would lie awhile and we could doze and snuggle into each other. Surely she would not stay unspeaking for a few moments before the pretext of thirst or shopping or ironing took her abruptly away. And every week a different excuse, until I got to counting them, seeing how long before one repeated, and then checking the frequency. And I can write it here, now, but never admit before, that in the end I would reach out a hand, touch and caress her to test the excuse, to provoke the action that I logged in my survey. She never disappointed in that respect.
I think of ways out of this and every way seems as painful as going on. Suppose at the last moment, she dissolved and wept and said how much she loved me really, and how it would all be different and let’s try again, suppose that happened and I’d already said I was leaving her. And if I was leaving her, where would I be leaving for? There are no friends I could suddenly announce myself on. And to plan it all beforehand, without telling her would be my betrayal not hers, I would be the deserter when all along it [was] she who left me. No, I have always been here, she is the one who left slowly and agonisingly over the years. Why couldn’t she talk to me or accept my love that I so wanted to share when that tiny scrap of a person, that dead, dead babylay for a few hours in his Perspex crib, for all the world peacefully asleep as any other baby on the ward except that he wasn’t breathing.
9th
We walked together through the park to the shops last weekend. For a few moments our hands swung between us, synchronised in their movement. It seemed unnatural to do anything but touch and hold loosely together. In a few steps her stride altered a fraction and the synchronicity was gone. A few steps further and she wiped an imaginary hair from her eye and the connection was severed. This was a tiny, tiny thing, so tiny as to be invisible to anyone without a microscope. And it was a tiny drip of acid, doing just what acid does, burning, corroding the tattered fabric of ourselves. Once, many years ago it may be, when I was yet still full of hope and optimism we spoke of just such a moment. I forget the slight, the rejection that made me speak. She said that I was too sensitive, read too much into a meaningless word or action. Like a fool I was consoled and believed the fault was mine. Now, after all this time, the weight of evidence is too great, the probability too high. It is not my sensitivity, it is her indifference. Unless she is not indifferent, unless it is cunning and deliberate and designed. Unless she has the acid bottle firmly in her grasp and drips a drop here and a drop there to her own plan.
There is always a choice. Think about the choices and then decide on thebest course for the chosen objective. It is easy to know this is the right thing to do and another to do it. I remain paralyzed by indecision. But there is something moving somewhere, it feels as if the log jam is subtly shifting around me. Even that dim thought is enough to satisfy me for now. Nothing has moved, nothing has changed, the scene is exactly as it was a moment ago. But there is perhaps the capacity for change.
8th entry
This is the worst time, when she is completely and utterly involved in her teaching. She has no time for anything but her class, her parents, her marking, her Christmas play, her anything but us, and certainly not me. I am here every year and the practice has made it more bearable this year. The distant S is so much better than the distant S in the same house, same room, same bed. It gives me time to think of ways to be free. And it gives me time to think of the myriad reasons to be free. The thousand slights, the million rejections, the early days and her Saturday sufferance of morning love making. I hated that so much, but like a moth I was drawn to the flame every week. Surely it would be good, or at least better than last time, surely she would lie awhile and we could doze and snuggle into each other. Surely she would not stay unspeaking for a few moments before the pretext of thirst or shopping or ironing took her abruptly away. And every week a different excuse, until I got to counting them, seeing how long before one repeated, and then checking the frequency. And I can write it here, now, but never admit before, that in the end I would reach out a hand, touch and caress her to test the excuse, to provoke the action that I logged in my survey. She never disappointed in that respect.
I think of ways out of this and every way seems as painful as going on. Suppose at the last moment, she dissolved and wept and said how much she loved me really, and how it would all be different and let’s try again, suppose that happened and I’d already said I was leaving her. And if I was leaving her, where would I be leaving for? There are no friends I could suddenly announce myself on. And to plan it all beforehand, without telling her would be my betrayal not hers, I would be the deserter when all along it [was] she who left me. No, I have always been here, she is the one who left slowly and agonisingly over the years. Why couldn’t she talk to me or accept my love that I so wanted to share when that tiny scrap of a person, that dead, dead babylay for a few hours in his Perspex crib, for all the world peacefully asleep as any other baby on the ward except that he wasn’t breathing.
9th
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