One month in Paris
Mardi 28 juillet 2009Not much to write about this first month back to my old-new life. Lots of sadness, I guess, despite the friends I could see again, the culture much more accessible in this playmobil town than in NYC and the hanging out with my beloved and charismatic brothers. I am not working hard enough, doubting the quality of my work and the purpose of writing something which is by now so clear to me and that no one is going to read thoroughly.
I fall asleep, when I can, every night squeezing my pillow and dreaming like a littel girl it is the torso of my beloved one. I know nevertheless that my charming prince is far away, geographically and in his weak mind, with which, he was so afraid I would mess up. I know in my mind that he is an old selfish man, who never made me feel loved, whether I was just an angel or a sextoy to him. The soul and the body will take a little longer to process what I know from the beginning.
After two weeks of heaviness, crying, puking and not even being able to mourn this imaginary relationship, I finally had a peaceful wonderful evening tonight. It is strange how the past can help… I had dinner with an old flame. Funny how I forgot how much I suffered, then. Not as much as now, but it seemed unfair all the same. No pain tonight, just a wonderful conversation, too much wine, and the good sense that I know why I was so fund of him, and also why it would never have worked. Travelling the spiritualities of the world in Saint-Germain des Près with him, I remembered how he used to make me dream, and although I am too broken to dream or write, I got the sense that it happened and that it might be happening again in the future, when I am healed.
The man I love, still now, never made me dream. He once told me that reality was made of fruitless miracles, a conclusion he came to only recently with wisdom and age. And I was so blind that I thought I could breathe a miracle for both of us, with my youth and the strengh I found for him. His fear, and his selfishness turned our encounter into the most banal miscarriage. So, even if I saved him in some ways, I had to take reality seriously and that killed the poetry in me. Can I ever forgive him and myself for throwing poetry out of my life for so long? Anyways, good or bad, I wrote a poem last week, and I know I don’t want to give up on magic, writing, and acknowledging the beauty around me. I don’t want to live in fear, and even after this big earthquake of the last months, I won’t change this strong decision of mine. I hope… I hope one day soon, I ‘ll be able to live by this principle again, instead of hiding at home, staying with memories that are too meager for my young longings, and even somewhat shameful.
Don’t get me wrong, I am human, as my father told me before leaving for St Tropez. I miss him so much that it hurts each and every minute. I miss his strange and long way of making love to me, and I don’t even see the point of making love to a man for whom I don’t feel as strongly. I miss his wits (cause he had some, even if he was so clumsy that he could hurt me with banal thoughts of his, so not understanding me). I miss our crooked conversations, even if so many other things were floating in my head. I could see that while reading some of his messages, recognizing some familiar ways of writing. Maybe there should not be more mails, and I should bravely cut off with this everlasting succession of disappointements. But I am not ready. And I have been brave and elegant enough in the last months to cover up for the next decade. I am too proud to write, but for the first time in my life, too weak to break all communication. I am so weak, and everyone is so used to think I am strong, that they don’t see it. Something is not over, something is growing in my head and my heart. Something bitter and smelling like rotten flesh. Some days, if a magic fairy could even give me one hour at his side, I would swallow my pride and my reason and take the first plane.
I know it is not him I am idealizing- I felt I knew him so well- maybe I am idealizing my own feelings, but they were so strong, fighting each and every minute with my good sense and my reason, even then, and still now. That is exactly why I should follow my pride, as I did for the last three months, finally : The man did not treat me right and I could accept that from a good lover about whom I don’t care, I can’t take it from the man I love and still would like to be with… for one year, one month, eight days or one hour (we are back to Edith Piaf’s heartbreaking song), but thoroughly.
I don’t want to get over that rare longing artificially. I want it to die by itself. Even if, by know, I can’t picture how it could die, and I know that pain is useless, that nothing come out of it. But if I give up on that, I will belong to the sad club of the people who think that miracles can be fruitless, I’ll abide by reality and not by what I feel. And this is something unbearable, this would mean breaking up with who I am. So, part of me wants to resist, wants these feelings to last as long as I live and part of me cannot believe these feelings are still there after so many vexations, and disappointements. I don’t see the answer, I don’t see hope, I have no more dreams, but I still challenge life to show me the way out. Until then, I’ll live sadly outside of life, in a world of duty and sorrow. The endless sorrow of a little girl left behind at the supermarket, and cannot even cry for help, because she has the feeling she should not be alive anyways…