Stress

Time is doing strange things. All those months that I looked back at so despairingly when nothing seemed to happen – the second half of last year and the beginning of this just time wasted, ticking along, filled with meaningless pastimes – and now, lately, since the onset of this crisis and this rapid period of growth, two days previous could be six weeks in the past, and even the events and feelings of a morning looked back on as though a memory from years ago…

I left you Wednesday in a good place. I’d had one last night with Nicky and felt like I’d come to a state of acceptance and letting go. She flew off to Ireland and I flew into my new life taking the first steps into finding some sort of meaningful occupation. I’d talked with Perlilly and my friend Carl. I’d written all that stuff and was feeling optimistic and hopeful. I then had a nap and when I awoke I had this enormous sense that “life just got real.” It was both powerful and new. And frightening too. I went then for an evening of squash and fun chat with another Karl and Harry. Harry mentioned an open mic he and some friends were going to and I thought, why the hell not? Been thinking I should be playing more. An opportunity to get out. And to maybe meet (and impress) some of his young (female) friends.

Funny how these tiny little insignificant turns can sometimes lead one into a whole new world…

Harry had said the bar was in the Victoria Quarter. I felt that unlikely – the Victoria Quarter is a posh daytime indoor shopping precinct – but he was insistent and so I decided to trust him. But, naturally, when I got there I realised there was no bar in sight. I got on the blower – no text for a change – and ascertained its actual whereabouts, about a mile away. I walked and pushed my bike and chatted. I told him I’d slept with Nicky and he immediately made a joke about how funny it would be, all things considered, if she got pregnant.

“Don’t say that man,” I said despairingly, “we did it unprotected. And I came inside her.”

He just laughed. “She was probably trying to get pregnant subconsciously so she didn’t have to move to Ireland.” It was all a big funny joke to him. But it hit me like a hammer.

Fuck. What if she was? We’d been so careless and flippant. We’d both reasoned the unlikeliness of it, the dozens of times we’d done that when together and nothing had happened. Twice before she’d taken a morning-after pill – once when we first slept together in 2010 and then again at the end of last year when we were broken up (both times her choice) – but this time she said she wasn’t going to do anything about it. She said she didn’t feel like it could happen and I wanted to trust that she was in tune with her body. I guess also I sometimes get this feeling that that’s the kind of thing it will take to actually get me to knuckle down and commit to something and someone and somewhere in this life. Left to my own devices, I’ll avoid this thing forever. But maybe something accidental/subconscious would be better for me. I surrendered, I suppose. Or was massively irresponsible and naïve. And maybe just a little bit stupid.

I checked out the bar for the open mic and that took about fifteen seconds to realise it was a bag of shite – or rather, not the thing for me – and went further a-wandering. It was after ten by now and unusual for me to be out and about so late without destination in mind, though tired, but I guess I was in that sort of mood. I biked on down to The Grove – an actually very good open mic not too far away – but still only lasted two songs before I got bored and had to leave. Watching live music just has so little appeal, and even if I’m playing, which I do usually enjoy, I’d rather just get it over and done with and then get out of there. I’m not much of a spectator, I guess. I mean, I love to play and referee football but I get hardly anything out of watching it.

And so I left there, and then got hungry and thirsty, and ended up in a Tesco Express I’ve never been in before. Naturally, that means a good perusal of the shelves to see what’s on reduced. And in the middle of my perusal I happened upon the magazine rack and picked up a copy of New Scientist and read a couple of articles therein. Again, something I’d never normally do in a place I’d never normally be.

The article I read was about how intelligent people don’t necessarily make good decisions. In a sense, the difference between IQ and rational reasoning. This resonated especially because of recent thoughts about how I keep on making terrible, irrational decisions, and also my mum’s husband’s words about how he’s “never met anyone so intelligent who had so little common sense.” There’s a lot of truth in that and I don’t know how to get out of it. It terrifies me: here I am, in a bad place because of a series of bad decisions I’ve made – and yet, once more, the only way out of it is to make another decision about something. But what are the chances of making a good one? Pretty slim, I’d say. And so I get paralysed and stay in my limbo – which is probably just another bad decision anyway. Ho hum…

And, actually, that’s not what I was thinking about here: what I was thinking about was some of the symptoms of those suffering from low-level “RQ” (can’t remember what that stands for; but basically “reasoning” or “rationality” or “common sense”) and in particular how the article said they were far more likely to have “unplanned pregnancies.” Shit, I thought, that’s twice that’s come up now. It put the fear in me. I started to think it was maybe messages. And that I’d better get on home and throw an I Ching to figure out what to do. I wrote:

“My darling I Ching – I’m worrying once more that Nicky could be pregnant. I mean, super slim chance – but after what Harry said and then that magazine article – plus all these thoughts of Laura – I just…well, is there something I should do? Some wisdom you have for me? Especially given her mission to Ireland [to see another guy]. Please help.”

And the reading I got was about the most specific and frightening I’ve ever had.  I got number 44: Coming to Meet – which I initially, from the title alone, figured would be a positive one about two people coming together. I couldn’t have been more wrong:

“This hexagram indicates a situation in which the principle of darkness, after having been eliminated, furtively and unexpectedly obtrudes again from within and below. Of its own accord the female principle comes to meet the male. It is an unfavourable and dangerous situation and we must understand and promptly prevent the consequences.”

Well, shit, though there’s a part of me that wants to go into detail about how that would relate to my current situation I feel it’s so frickin’ obvious that to do so would only patronise. The only thing I will say is that the word ‘obtrudes’, which I didn’t know the meaning of, translates in my thesaurus as, “sticks out, juts, projects, overhangs.” Great: more pregnancy symbolisms. Furthermore, the original Chinese translates as, “The maiden is powerful. One should not marry such a maiden” – holy fuck – which Wilhelm interprets as follows:

“The rise of the inferior element is pictured here in the image of a bold girl who lightly surrenders herself and thus seizes power. This would not be possible if the strong and light-giving element had not in turn come halfway. The inferior thing seems so harmless and inviting that a man delights in it; it looks so small and weak that he imagines he may dally with it and come to no harm.”

I mean, it’s all right there. I mean, ultimately I’ve got what I needed in that, oh fuck, this could be bad if nothing is done about it and I’d better bloody do something about it and fast. But even beyond that – my immediate requirement for a yes or no answer – there’s so much insight there, and perhaps confirmation of things that I’ve been thinking about myself. That all the power is with Nicky. That I’ve perhaps been toyed with and messed around. The seemingly harmless and insignificant thing – Christ, all I wanted was one last good session with her and a couple of simultaneous orgasms, not a baby and twenty years’ worth of responsibility and commitment with the wrong person! – but how foolish I’ve been. Going right back to when we first got together and what really attracted to me was how long and slender her legs were, even in her jeans, and the strong and, as it turned out, well-founded suspicion that she had an amazing body under her many layers of winter hippy clothing. Was that all it was? Plain and simple lust? The sexual imperative? Three years squandered on that, and now at her beck and call. I’ve been such a fool. I’ve lost my head and my heart to her. And maybe I’ve been used too – all that sex we’ve had, but it was always how she wanted it, always her that came away happiest. And I’ve been stupid beyond belief: fer fuck’s sake, the condom was right there at the side of us, and it was always my intention to use it, but she got on top and said, do you want to put that on? and I said give us another thirty seconds and then a couple of minutes later she started really going for it and got to her second orgasm and I could feel myself coming and in that moment made the decision that it would be a shame for her and a shame for us if I pulled myself out of her and so I didn’t. But, fuck! Once sanity returns how could I have been so idiotic? To risk creating a whole new life and the whole massive thing that goes with it just because I wanted her to have a good orgasm and because I wanted one last time with her that was good, that didn’t end lamely. Except it did anyway, because immediately I started worrying and talking seriously and the worrying just spoiled everything.

The condom was right there. I should have put it on. I should have known better. I have no common sense, and am massively irresponsible, and probably she is too. We’re two peas in a pod, and in so many ways. But it’s a pod I no longer want to be in. Life can no longer be lived this way. She gads about and doesn’t commit and always has one foot out the door and does impractical things – at least, that’s how I view her wanting to live in a bender in the Irish winter – and that’s exactly how I’ve been – all those things are me embodied in another – but want to put an end to. But as you can see, I struggle so bad, and fail.

I texted her and said I’d been thinking about what we did and wondered if she still felt okay with it or if maybe she’d had some signs or dreams. The last time that had happened she’d talked in her sleep and said, “now would be a good time to take out the wiggly worms” – and she’d never talked in her sleep before – and so we took action. But this time I wasn’t around, we weren’t together, I was all on my own. It was midnight when I texted her, figuring no point ruining her night’s sleep when there was nothing that could be done anyway. But my night’s sleep was rendered well and truly fucked and I lay awake stressed and carried that stress on with me into the morning. Everything positive of the previous afternoon was destroyed and felt like years ago. All I knew then was desperation.

I texted her in the morning and told her of my concerns and relayed some of what the I Ching had said. She believes in the I Ching and I figured that would be better than just laying out my own fears. Thing is, just to remind you, she was in Ireland – a Catholic country – and I wasn’t even sure she’d be able to get a morning-after pill there. The whole thing tripled my stress. I was full of thoughts about how to sort the situation: get a pill myself, courier it out to her or even take it to her myself; visions of me hitchhiking or taking a train and ferry or even splashing a fortune on a last-minute plane ticket; visions of persuading her to go over the border into Northern Ireland; and visions of none of it being possible or her not wanting to and what that might mean (never go against the I Ching!). I tried a pharmacy and a free clinic but neither of them would entertain giving one to a man. I was off biking around feeling desperate and still waiting for her to get back to me. She did and said, “fuck” – no doubt stirred and convinced by the I Ching’s unambiguous words – and said she’d see what she could do. I carried on freaking. The whole thing was so wrong. What if she was pregnant and couldn’t do anything about it? What if she came back to me and said, come on Rory, you’re awesome and I’m awesome and we’re still awesome together – and will be even more so in the future, despite everything that’s going on now – why don’t we just do it and have a beautiful baby and be happy? But how to tell your child that they were conceived in such chaos? That it was all because I didn’t want to interrupt his mother’s orgasm or didn’t have the brains to put on a condom? And that, worst of all, it was on the morning that his mother flew to another country to check out being with another guy, and probably sleeping with him too? Not to mention that dreadful Sunday realisation that Laura was probably always the one but that I’ve spent the last twelve years running from her. Plus a hundred other things besides. Fucked beyond belief.

I felt sick. I texted Nicky several times and told her how bad I felt about this. For her and for what she was going to have to put into her body. How could I be so stupid? And how could I be so stupid over and over and over again? It was just getting too much. I can’t shrug it off any longer. I want to change so bad and every little slip feels like a horrible reminder that I’m failing. Amazingly, in the middle of all that, I had to go to an appointment I’d made to see about getting some psychotherapy. Stress upon stress. I talked to the woman for an hour – it was just a first assessment – and told her everything and cried in the chair and brought back all the feelings I thought I’d perhaps moved on from during the optimism of Tuesday and Wednesday. And I guess by the end of it I felt a little bit better. And also by the end of it a message had arrived from Nicky saying, “don’t worry, I’ve taken the pill, you don’t need to stress anymore.” Thank fuck.

I called her. I felt so desperately bad. I apologised a thousand times and thanked her for sorting it. I said, “never again” and hoped beyond hope that I meant it. And all throughout she was lovely and understanding and chatted happily about a few other things and didn’t make me feel bad at all. What a great girl. But…

I have to be over her. I have to move on. I don’t know if she’s played with me and done it all as some kind of evil female revenge for my being so cold to her when we were together. I don’t know if it was all just for the attention and the company and the sex I gave her, the adoration and the love. Life is more complex than that, I guess. Though there may have been some of that and, fact is, that’s how I feel. There was a point last week when she said to me, “I hope you don’t think I’m toying with you” – I guess referring to still seeing me and kissing me and all the love we shared and calling me up except always making plans with this other guy and resisting my desires to give it another try – and I had to admit that I didn’t know whether she was or not. I said, “I believe in your goodness – but if I’m honest, I don’t know if I believe you’re not toying with me.” In any case, toyed with is how I feel, whether from her or whether I’ve brought it on myself. And a fool too: it’s all very easy and tempting to say, “you’ve made a fool out of me” – but probably more realistic that I’ve made a fool out of myself. And, anyways, neither of them can be proved – but that I feel like a fool…well, that’s undeniable. I have to stop. I have to get my head together. I have to leave her well alone and break these chains. How the fuck has it come to this that I’ve lost myself over a woman when that woman is off somewhere else – breaking her own no-flying vows; spending umpteen money; taking time off work – so she can see another man. Another man she was probably having text conversations with while sitting in my own flat. It’s all very fucked.

Still, probably nothing I haven’t done myself. Karma’s karma – and while karma herself is thoroughly impartial, it sure do feel like a bitch at times. Ho hum. And then there’s Laura…

I saw her again on Thursday night. She was in Leeds and was at the station just the same time that I was. We decided that I’d go back to hers and I ended up staying there both that night and the next. Nothing fruity though, despite sharing a bed. We’re getting better at being platonic. We hang out and chat and eat and play table tennis and even watch rubbish TV. Being at hers is the vacation I so desperately need. I get tired and fall asleep on the couch and sleep at night. I feel comfortable with her. And that gets me thinking that maybe she’s a wise choice. But my conditioning is all about wanting and thinking that wanting is love. Nobody in movies trumpets comfort and the simple pleasures of some rubbish TV with fish and chips on your lap. That’s how it’s always been with her – and probably part of the reason I’ve never given it a proper go. Too easy. And like I’ve said, that petrifying knowledge that if we ever get it started we’d probably never stop. I’ve been a bit distant with her since last Sunday and since she uttered those words that kind of brought Momma’s prophecy to fulfilment. That feeling on the train station was too dreadful. The feeling of being trapped. The feeling that the next twenty years of my life would be decided and locked into place. Even though it’s a feeling I cherish when it comes in the short-term, such as a year long Master’s degree and how joyful it is not to have to have this constant thinking about where to go, what to do, who to be, how to be it. Yes, I do like that feeling…but to give it all up for a woman and a child? A fate, I guess I believed when perched staring at the tracks on Outwood station last Sunday night, worse than death. Except it’s exactly what I want. Just that I want it – I suppose, knowing how foolish this sounds – somehow differently. With bells and whistles and fireworks. With someone who looks like a movie star. With someone I feel that incessant, crazy love for. That was another part of that train station thing: to know how I feel about Laura and to compare it with the overwhelming way I’ve felt recently about Nicky. I adore that feeling, those hours of our noses but inches apart, of our eyes locked on one another’s. That may not be love – may not even be particularly healthy or wise – but that’s kind of what I understand love to be. I feel it’d be hard to go back to something different and to let go of that. And yet, with the other I may be happier – “if you want to be happy for the rest of your life/never make a pretty woman your wife” – and…and so I can never choose or decide, and will probably go for the lame option, which is once again someone new or running away or someone who only exists in fantasy…

Thursday night as I lay beside Laura I dreamed of Grace. I’d flown to New York and as I came out the train station into Manhattan I looked up and she was right there in an apartment window, the first person I saw. It was an amazing feeling, as though fate had brought us back together. And when I woke I thought that maybe it was a sign and an encouragement that I should go searching for her, that maybe hope was still there.

Though the next night I dreamt of Perlilly and of playing music in the street with her once more. It was a nice dream but it meant nothing to me. I like Perlilly, and probably even love her, as a friend, but what we had romantically is long over and my feelings have been purely platonic for a good few years now. I have no regrets, not a single inkling that there should ever have been anything more. And when I think of her and her current partner I feel nothing but a gladness in my heart and really hope that it works out for them and that one day there’ll be a wedding and I’ll get invited. And that’s absolute truth.

The point being that maybe Mother Meera is right and we shouldn’t take so much notice of our dreams. I’ve done that a lot – it was dreams that sent me to Sophie when I was first with Laura – and though I could never not believe in them – I’ve had too many ridiculously useful ones to ignore them completely – the fact of dreaming of other women seems to do nothing but screw me up and probably isn’t any indication of anything – a call to action, for example – other than the latent desires of my own mind. So I dream of Perlilly and think, that’s nice, and move on – but I dream of Grace or Sophie and think, oh God, I should see them, maybe they’re the one. And off I go again, gallivanting either in reality or in my mind and ruining the life I currently live. Or maybe not; I just don’t know…

That’s one thing they’ll never tell you: that your dreams will screw you up. One of the last times Nicky and I slept together before she went to Ireland back in February I woke up from a very vivid dream about Sophie and it confused me so. I was feeling frisky and Nicky was too and soon we were making morning love with me behind her, and in that position and in that state of mind I didn’t know who the hell I was with. Nicky’s hair was long and big and not so dissimilar from how Sophie’s had been. I had my eyes closed. My mind wasn’t sure what was going on and I just went with it. I couldn’t get Sophie out of my head and I didn’t even try. I guess I enjoyed it maybe even a little bit more because of that. Not that I would ever consciously fantasise such a thing but…what could I do? I had no option in the matter.

I remember reading Elizabeth Gilbert saying she still dreamt about her decade-gone ex-husband – and that was someone she hated. These things don’t leave us. Maybe another argument for good old Christian waiting-till-you’re-married. All these women have polluted my head. All for a bit of slap and tickle. And for some temporary fun and relief. If I could turn back my life and live it again all pure and virginal and waiting-for-the-one would I? Certainly, I’ve had that feeling before. Certainly, not doing things is good for a clear conscience. But then, if you learn from your mistakes – wow, I must have learned a lot.

I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I see Laura and I think, why not just give it a go? Why not, almost, give in? She’s right there and twelve years on and we’re still attracted to one another and still comfortable and have our fun and, now thirty-eight, she’s probably not too long for baby-making years. And yet…the thought of it makes me want to run a thousand miles in the other direction. Even though what I really want is to follow life where life seems to want to guide me and that’s where it appears to be. Why wouldn’t life let me leave Leeds? Was it for Nicky or for Laura or for something else? I guess nothing can be decided until Nicky comes back from Ireland. What if she then turns around and says she wants to be with me? After all I’ve said and felt over recent weeks, and knowing how awesome she is, yet with Laura still on the scene? First thing: man, that’ll take some persuading, given some of the ways she’s treated me (I’m back to feeling like I’ve been treated badly). And then what of the others? What of Grace, still loitering in my head and fucking me up for everyone else? What of that urge I have to say, okay, I’ll commit to Laura but just give me six months to get everything else out of my system, go adventuring off after Grace in mad styles and maybe trying to seduce Julia just one time – oh why didn’t I do it when I had the opportunity and lay that goat to rest! – and all the other things I need to do before I finally, finally stop? But when will it ever end? It’s such a confusing mess. And does this writing help? It kind of feels like it does in the short-term – but then an unprotected ejaculation kind of feels good in the short-term too. Is it really healthy or is it actually the thing that’s making me confused and unable to commit to anything? My brain investigates all the options and ends up going nowhere. My mind’s so open to all the possibilities that perhaps the whole thing’s just gone spilling out onto the floor as goop. I know I consider everything and I know that’s not necessarily good. Too many avenues to walk down. Too…

I fantasise one day about getting rid of my phone and my email address. I’ve probably written that several times before. But I’m sure I wouldn’t be in this mess if it was 1994 and I didn’t have all these avenues of communication available to me. People stay in our brains for far longer than they should. Texts and emails are too easy to dash off unthinkingly to those from our past we would never, ever visit or call. Some of the things I’ve written in texts. Bootie calls and fleeting emotions. Just tossing off a thought I would probably never share face-to-face. And a whole new world is entered into. And maybe the same in this writing here. And yet once upon a time The Universe told me to do it and now I can’t stop. Although the I Ching did last year seem to encourage its deletion – though I think that was more about anonymising it for the sake of myself and others, which is probably a good thing. Anyways, I’m thinking out loud now and probably I should stop. Probably not the most interesting of things to read. Though that then begs the question, who am I writing this for anyway?

But let’s get back to the real world.

I lost Thursday to stress. I lost it to such an extent that I thought the peace and hope of Wednesday would never return, but it did. Friday I dawdled at Laura’s and napped and that was nice enough. I picked up her copy of Paul McKenna’s ‘Change Your Life in 7 Days’ and figured I might give that a go, and maybe document it here. And then Saturday I reffed in the morning and played tennis in the afternoon (with former neighbour Nick; won 6-3 6-1 6-3) and spent the night in the bath with the Hitler movie ‘Downfall’. Now it’s Sunday afternoon and – holy smoke! – two hours since I started typing – it feels like five minutes! – and I guess since the sun is shining I ought to try and do something productive. So annoying that every day I have to wake up and create my life from scratch. All you lucky people who go out to your nine-to-fives and then cram in your weekend hobbies and chores don’t know how good you got it. What I’d give to find something that could fill my time in a satisfying way. But what that thing is, I know not. I guess I’m on a mission to find out.

Better

Some point Monday I got myself thinking about Nicky and thinking maybe three days of zero contact was enough to break the addiction I had to her. That’s about how long it takes with chocolate and caffeine and heroin, right? I was feeling calmer and more centred and less wanting and even a little bit forgetting about her but at the same time wanting to say a few last things before she left for Irelandto check out her new man. Things I think I wrote about at the end of my last blog entry. I managed to hold on till midnight and then sent her a text asking how she was and that maybe we could talk Tuesday. The coin okayed it. And then, maybe because of that, I couldn’t get to sleep and was up till two thirty again after sleeping really quite well when I wasn’t in touch with her. Ho hum.

In any case she got back to me in the morning and was jolly and all that good stuff and said, sure, we can meet up later but it’ll have to be quick ‘cos she’s got meditation and then needs to pack and do other stuff and sleep. And then I get a bit open – a bit too open for text messages sent to someone while they’re at work – and say the things I didn’t want to say. About this new guy. About the real reasons for going to Ireland. I felt bad about that. It was a bit stupid but I have an inability to keep it in. I took myself off to my dad’s shop to work there and give my mind something else to think about. Though she was cool with it though and arranged to come over to mine after her meditation around ten.

I talked a lot with my dad at his shop. I was trying to get some wisdom from him about the whole women and commitment thing. He says he doesn’t have any regrets but also that he made a lot of mistakes. I say I’m trying not to make those mistakes and talk about wanting to be with someone in a serious way but all he can see is that women give you headaches – though he freely acknowledges that’s his way, not mine. In fact, when I asked his advice on something and he said to do basically what he himself would never do he surprised me with his clarity in knowing the difference in our natures. He never could commit or stay faithful and never really wanted to. He likes being on his own and not having to deal with another’s demands. Well I like that too – but I also prefer the life that involves another and all the sharing and companionship and cuddles and emotional growth, which I imagine is something that’s never really appealed to him. It’s about priorities and desires, I guess. Women for him was always just about the bunk up. For me, it’s that and a whole lot more. I do want to have a family. I do want to get to know someone deep down, come home to them, lay in their arms and share my heart. But I’m also terrified of it and I told him that; waxed quite lyrical and flamboyant about feeling the full extent of my fear of being trapped and how I almost would rather have died than finally give myself to Laura in a truly committed way. He liked her. He met her once and intimated that he approved.

Later on I met my mum and tried to tell her the story of the signs and how Laura had echoed Momma’s words – the final seal? the significance of the timing? – but as is her own nature she was being a bit too devil’s advocate for my sensitive soul. Still, it’s maybe something I need to help cut through all the slushy, mushy bullshit. I even texted some friends and asked them who they thought was best suited out of all my exes. One said “the French one and Laura” and the other said “Nicky.” I was happy that neither of them said Sophie, especially after the way she had re-entered my heart during my conversation with my mum’s husband; they both knew her quite well and thinking about how she was with them brings to mind that she maybe wasn’t that nice or good for me after all. Rose-tinted spectacles and all that. But she was cold and aloof and I’d do well to remember that, no matter what my record of our emails might try and tell me.

Funnily enough, right when I was working at my dad’s shop I got a call from Perlilly and we had a real lovely chat about various things and I thought she was a great help. I’d just the night before been reading the diary entries that cover the period of our time together and I was struck by a number of things. Number one, how awesome I thought she was, and how awesome she told me I was. Number two, by how surprisingly open and deep some of our msn conversations were. And number three, by how much like what I’ve just been going through a lot of our relationship was. It was all right there – the “don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” – the keeping things inside and unspoken – the fear of commitment and babies – and the resolutions to remember not to do those things in the future. That was a bit depressing, to realise that I’ve already lived all this once before and hadn’t remembered a thing – especially when I’m right now convinced that I’ll remember for the next time so powerful have the last few months been.

Mainly, though, it was in just reminding myself what an awesome person she was and that we had a really good time together. Of all the women I’ve ever been with she’s probably the only one I don’t have any regrets over. We broke up once, for about a month – I wouldn’t remember that if I hadn’t written it down – and I pursued her and won her back and things went from strength to strength, despite really lying in tatters at one point. I guess we took it as far as it could go – which was, ultimately, to a place of realising that our lifestyles were basically incompatible, much as we loved and liked each other – and I suppose that’s why I have no regrets. I mean, even after we broke up we spent the next three months sleeping together, and then after I went to Mexico for six months and eventually moved back to London, we hooked up again, but purely in a ‘friend and lover’ kind of way. I never wanted more from her and I got to realise that by being able to remain intimate. The last time we slept together was, I think, December 2010, a couple of months before I committed to Nicky, and a full twenty months after we officially stopped being a couple. A little while after that she met the guy she’s currently with and, though I’ve never met him, from what I can tell they seem super compatible and in love and I feel nothing but happiness for them. When I see her, which I do probably once or twice a year, we have a laugh and share like real good buds and there’s no sense of the romantic or sexual in my heart, which is unique again as far as me and my exes go. This friendship, I would say, is the definition of a healthy relationship. She’s so switched on and I think her such a great person. It’s lovely to know – and, perhaps, necessarily encouraging at a time like this – that these people I once felt so overwhelmingly desirous of and emotionally attached to can become, with the passing of time, good and trusted and purely platonic friends.

Anyways, I expected what we might talk about was the Nicky situation but actually what we got onto was more the question of career and my ideas of this mid-life crisis wherein I feel like I’m just drifting through the world and really truly need to knuckle down. Perlilly, of course, has only ever wanted to be a singer, and has pursued that to some extent – but suddenly, at the age of twenty-seven – which I can hardly believe! feels like it was just yesterday we met, when she was twenty-one! – she’s decided to go study to be a doctor and has already enrolled on A-Levels and is looking at something like six or seven years of study before that desire becomes a reality. Christ, that amazes and inspires me! Just to get on and do it and set course for such long-term goals when she’ll be not far off my age when she arrives finally at her destination – the sort of long-term goals that terrify and paralyse me and yet – well, if I’d actually gone for some of the things I wanted to do when I had the initial feeling instead of shrinking overwhelmed by the thought it then I probably wouldn’t be in the boat I am now. I mean, how many years ago is it that I first had the thought of wanting to study to become a psychotherapist? And no more so especially than when Perlilly and I were together in London and I used to meet my old friend from Mexico Canadian Dave for lunch and feel envy because that’s exactly what he was doing – plus working full-time, plus doing his own writing as well – and I knew I’d love to do that but always the thought of the money got in the way. The money! Ha! I’m shaking my head right now: how many times have I let that come between me and the doing of the thing I love? The five years between my BA and starting the MA. The postponement of getting involved in a committed relationship. But – no sense harking to the past – crippling sense of failure and regret are leaving me now this last week or so – and it’s all about the future. A strong to desire to get it on. And the awareness of the weights that hold me down, my fears and old habits, with regard to this and to Laura and to staying in one place and to pretty much everything else besides. Yet the only way out is through…

I get tickled by the idea of studying to become a psychotherapist – hell, why not a doctor myself? Talking with Perlilly is like opening a door to another world – the world I might have known had I not been born in South Elmsall or had I stayed at QEGS or had professional middle class parents. I’ve always had a top notch brain and though I know I lack common sense I can’t say I’ve ever met anyone I felt was any smarter than me. Indeed, through being at uni this time and associating with those who will go on to be lawyers and doctors and chemical engineers I’d say perhaps the opposite is true. But growing up in the way that I did I guess I bought into the notion that people who worked those kind of jobs were somehow of a different species; all those around me were factory workers or unemployed miners or market stall holders or shop assistants. If you were lucky – and especially smart – perhaps you worked in an office, but that was about as far as it went. That’s pretty much always been the limit of my imagination and I guess I now see why: I mean, even though I was generally regarded as about the most intelligent boy in my year that’s pretty much all my careers officer would have suggested to me. And yet here I sit knowing full well there’s not a job I’m not intelligent enough to do. No wonder I’ve got bored of pretty much everything else I’ve tried! But all that’s ever limited me was my own imagination and ambition – and an imagination and ambition that was placed in me right at the beginning of my life by growing up in a town in which all previous generations had been groomed for the pit. I suppose that’s a little bit sad, but given that I’m blameless, and given that I’m waking up from it – please, God, don’t let thirty-seven be too late! – then there’s nothing to do but realise it and move on.

So what should I be? What should I do? Conversations with Phil the other day did often loop back around to the need to do something challenging, something versatile, something that would push me. It’s all I’ve ever wanted really. School I flunked out of because it stopped pushing me. And uni was a doddle, and consequently boring. And in all my jobs – maybe forty or so, only one of which I’ve done for longer than a year – it’s small wonder that I move on once the initial learning has been accomplished and it settles into repetition. I did once want to become a policeman – it’s in my blood, and Phil himself was a detective in the fraud squad – but I ditched out pretty early in the process when I realised how much of police work was standing around doing nothing or shepherding drunks and no doubt maddening paperwork. I wanted to be cracking cases, using my brain and my cunning to think like a criminal and fighting for what’s right. Phil says I’d have been good at it – and that the two-year probationary period “on the beat” wouldn’t have been that bad – but he also, at the time, put me off it, and still does. He says I wouldn’t have liked the authority, the bullshit, the necessary sacrificing of one’s morality and the lawyers. He’s probably right in that – all through my working life I’ve been rankled by authority, unless it was respect earned – and I guess I wouldn’t have lasted long. But I would have been a bloody good detective.

The main thing I wanted to be, I suppose, was a teacher. Once upon a time I had a real passion for education and for children. I loved being around them and loved the learning environment. It all felt so alive. I first went into a school back in 2002 just after I finished being a postman and I really felt that was the place for me, that I’d found my vocation. I was volunteering as a learning support assistant and loved everything about it. But, at the same time, I wanted more and I wanted to be the one at the front of the class, the one in charge. So I immediately went and got my degree, and got a job as a teacher and…I hated it. The kids I could just about manage – okay, at times I adored being their teacher – but the rest of it was too much. The prescribed learning. The curriculum. The forcing of Shakespeare on kids who could barely write their own name, who would have been much better served by learning to read a newspaper and write emails and think about things. I was in the wrong subject, I guess – all along I wanted to be a Religious Studies teacher, a subject I felt passionate about – plus the related areas of citizenship and the humanitarian aspects – but English and nouns and all that stuff, much as I love writing, just left me cold. I didn’t care about the subject and to be even a half-decent teacher you’ve got to care. Then there was all the paperwork and the pressure and how completely screwed up the whole system is. I guess at one time I thought maybe I could move from teaching into working to improve the system itself – God, it’s so gone wrong, for both the teachers and the children – for everyone, pretty much, except the clueless politicians who shape it – but that was a pretty overwhelming idea and, anyway, I didn’t last even six months. The stress was ridiculous, the paperwork pointless. And looking at those who had been doing it for years, it never seemed like it would get any better.

Hmmm…maybe I should go into politics? ;-)

What else? Lately I’m mostly thinking of training to be a psychotherapist. I’ve thought about that for a long time and obviously love the intricacies of the mind and emotional problems and growth. It’s a fascinating subject. I love to help people. I love one-on-one interaction. I love what’s real and deep and healing. I’m a great listener. I have an infinite amount of patience when it comes to other people’s problems. Whenever I talk with a therapist I think how awesome it would be to do that and know that it’s only the time and the money that have put me off. But now I’m in this place of wanting to knuckle down and realising that the time is going to pass anyway – the time haspassed – then that all seems pretty silly. I’m going to seriously look into that.

Fireman? Probably not intellectually stimulating enough. Some kind of business? I’d be good at it but not sure the idea of working purely to make money would really sustain me, it’d need to have a sense of goodness about it. Charity work? Done that: good but ultimately again a lot of bureaucracy and frustration. Physical labour? Really, really satisfying – hauling logs and working with wood about the best thing I ever did. But in the long term? Something I could do for the next twenty or thirty years and earn enough to support a family? Not sure about that.

And then there’s always the writing, which I know is my big thing and major passion – but will it ever be more than a hobby? Could it ever pay the bills and satisfyingly fill my time? Or is it just a pipe dream? A nice aside? Something that may one day make sense to me. Man, I don’t want to end up like Kerouac.

I should write one of those agents that were interested in me though. You walk in a bookshop and see all that’s on offer and wonder what the hell you could write that would find a niche in the market. Maybe rather than trying to come up with something and see where it goes I should just ask an agent or publisher, “what do you want?” I’m pretty sure I could write anything and write it well, and enjoy it too. Maybe that’d be a better way to go about things.

Anyways, the thing about writing is it’s not really up to me, it’s up to the whims of fate and the market – although there is certainly more that I could be doing, such as sending my stuff to other people. Difficult to imagine them wanting to buy my words when they don’t even know they exist.

I think I’m going to buy a printer and send out some hard copies again. Another thing I don’t do because I’m too tight. But a few times lately I’ve read about manuscripts that were plucked by curious agents from the slush pile and went on to become successes. That’s not going to happen when everything I send is by attachment. You just never know, eh?

And now we come back around to where I was in the beginning: relationships and my questions over Laura and Nicky – and Nicky’s impending visit last night, for what I felt would really be the final rites. She got here about ten, just after I’d finished making dhal and a nice homemade loaf of bread. More doing stuff that I know I enjoy but killed while I was with her. Doing it, yes, to impress her, and to further impress upon her my changes, but also doing it because even though my mental justifications might say, oh, it’s just easier and cheaper and less effort to buy it yourself – well, let’s face it, it’s a much better use of time than sitting on the internet. All that stuff – no longer growing our own food or making lavish and intricate meals or baking bread or fancy pastries – going instead for supermarket convenience and ready-made pizzas and Burgens – well what does it do except free up time that is only squandered anyway, on internet or lazing or television or inane texts? And so I make some effort. Whether she’s impressed or not I don’t know. Fact is, I think she’s both impressed merely by the quality of the emotional change in me and moved on. I can feel it. I’ve always thought it. This new guy in Ireland – where she is now; flew there just this morning – has done that for her, and maybe that’s what she needs to do. I don’t mind anymore. I feel well and truly let go and accepting. It’s not even a case of saying I want her to be happy – because, well, she is happy. Mainly I just hope that she’s able to overcome her own issues next time, and that maybe she’ll use me as a reminder when the going gets tough.

We talked some. We laid down and hugged. It wasn’t heavy, though there were a few moments when we perhaps foolishly got into reviewing times we went wrong in our relationship and said what we should have done instead. I guess we had some kisses. She said a few times she ought to go but didn’t. And then we stood up and hugged and kissed – and kissed a little more passionately – and went to bed one last time. It was pretty awesome.

And then she left around two. Kind of strange to know where she was going and what it would mean for us. But ultimately I’m glad I’ve ridden it till the end and can see that it’s made a better man out of me. Probably there was never any real danger of her committing to me – she, I feel, was my own fear of commitment and entrapment made manifest in the external world – and now on we go, her to whatever flight of fancy she takes, for however long – she’s got a good nine years on me anyways – and me to having realised it’s high time I knuckled down, in more ways than one. Three days ago I was terrified I wouldn’t know how to do that. But as time has passed and I’ve started making efforts – discussing careers, chasing up leads, feeling excited with sinking my teeth into something real and feeling and knowing how good that would be for me – the fear has dissipated and all I feel is a drive to action. Career-wise, things are moving; hell, they might as well, for what’s the alternative? I don’t want to bum around and drift forever. And it’s not as though I’ll never be able to take another holiday. Shit, if I was a qualified psychotherapist I might even be able to move to Canada or America. It’s time to get real.

But as far as Laura goes, and that feeling I had Sunday night, that she was always the one, and that it’s only now I’ve come to realise it…well, no rush there. I’m still terrified, even though it’s exactly what I want. But just because I believe in feeling the fear and doing it anyway it doesn’t mean I have to do it today. And I suppose I should wait and see what happens with Nicky, just in case she does return from her week in Ireland having experienced that this guy is about as real for her as all my fantasies are for me and that’s actually ready to get serious and knuckle down with me. Fact is, I’ve professed my love for her and I know that I’d want to make it work. She’s too awesome. It’s confusing. But I can’t see it happening – for her to want to fly over there to meet this guy and not want to be with me despite the incredible intimacies and lovemaking and joy we’ve shared speaks volumes. And the timing of the whole thing too…

I’m just starting to get a sneaking suspicion that everything’s working out perfectly after all…

Expunge

Good Lord! It’s been nearly a week since I’ve written anything and…that’s exactly the same sentence I started with last time. Which shouldn’t be surprising since I’ve just finished reading through my last entry and correcting it for mistakes. Seems like a hell of a lot has happened in the last week. Seems like for a man who doesn’t even have a job I’ve been incredibly busy. No time to write my sequel project, or this blog, or do very much of anything else. The emotions and confusion and figuring out and sharing has continued pretty much unabated. Plus, I’ve moved house. Let’s see…

Wednesday night I know I saw Nicky again. She came over in her new van to help me move but instead we ended up eating and cuddling and then surprisingly enough kissing and touching and once my hands got in her knickers there was only one way that was going to go. She asked me if I wanted to make love one last time in the flat and, naturally, I did. I kind of wish we’d done it after the dancing, ‘cos that was some serious major foreplay and I don’t know if I’ll ever be in that state again, and also because this time was a bit lame for a last time – my orgasm was poorly placed and timed – but, oh well. No moving or packing got done and she fell asleep in my arms and then left at two with a new plan to bring the van back over in the morning on her way to work and let me pack at my leisure. Which turned out to be a very good plan indeed.

So, yeah, I had to move out of my flat. I’d handed in my notice way back in the middle of February when I was feeling like dogdirt and, of course, it all made sense at the time. I was feeling like shit. Just treading water. Stuck in a town with nothing much going on except the massively painful reminders of this girl I once loved. My life in a rut. The English winter. And dreams of sun and adventure and flights of fancy to Canada or Greece. I’d said I’d go the first day of spring and I felt good about that.

Hadn’t done an I Ching, of course – was too afraid it would tell me not to go – but…well, surely it was the right thing, right?

Damn, I wish I’d done my I Ching when making that decision! And so I did one anyway, about a month too late…

“Dear I Ching, what would you have told me had I come to you in the beginning and proposed moving out of my flat?”

“Dear Rory, I would have said, ‘Number Three: Difficulty at the Beginning.’ And then I would have talked about how times of growth are beset with difficulties, like a first birth, but that those difficulties arise from the very profusion of all that is struggling to take form. When it is a man’s fate to undertake such new beginnings everything is unformed, dark, and in motion. It is good to persevere with this: the superior man brings order out of confusion. Stick at it. Don’t change anything. That could lead to disaster. And enlist the help of others.”

“Great: so basically what you’re saying is I shouldn’t have left my flat?”

“That’s right.”

“Fuck. Why didn’t I ask you? Well, I know why: because I was so desperate to escape the pain that I didn’t want you to stop me. Except now that I’ve come to realise that the pain is actually spurring me on to enormous growth – just as you’ve said – I guess I don’t mind it so much. How can you be so amazing and insightful? It’s not just the “yes or no” answer that I usually seek but also a perfect description of everything that has come to pass. The growth. The sticking at it. And even the need to seek out the help of others. I don’t think I’ve ever been so open to that, and it’s reaped such wonderful rewards. My mum is back in my life. My friends are saying I seem so much more humble and whole than I ever have. They feel connected to me again. Say the spiritual arrogance people always told me about but I never really believed in has disappeared. I cry in front of anyone. I’ve made myself a child again in my mother’s eyes and it feels comforting. All these years I’ve been doing it alone – probably my whole damn life – and it feels pretty amazing to let go of that. I’ve made some good decisions but I’ve made some bad ones too. Maybe I could have avoided those if I’d just known I could get some outside help. Oh, woe for the death of traditional life! For families that sit down and talk things through instead of innocent alone children stumbling from one misguided choice to the next. But that’s the past, and the past has gone: the future can be different.

“Anything else? Any changing lines?”

“Yes. One. Six in the second place means: difficulties pile up. Suddenly, there is an unexpected turn of affairs. The maiden is chaste and does not pledge herself. But after ten years, she pledges herself.”

And could that do anything but give me hope with regard to Nicky and make me think that perhaps she would come back to me after all? After, perhaps, this next trip to Ireland, or some more time has passed, or even after she’s tried again with some other guy?

Certainly, I can see a reason to stay in Leeds. Just to be close to her. To not disappear. The endurance and duration of the previous reading. The maintaining contact. I shouldn’t have given up my flat. I didn’t know that this overwhelming pain would prove to be not only bearable but that it’s continuous and embracing would bring me to better and better places.

Curse the world and its four-week notice periods! And curse myself for being so tight as to not consider that I could just have let the whole flat thing ride and, if worst came to worst, just duck out when the time came without giving notice and in the process lose only three or four weeks rent. What comparison in price a couple of hundred quid against the very growth of my soul?

But I had to have it figured out there and then – I couldn’t bear the thought of spring arriving and then having to face another month or pain and waiting and nothingness – and I had to make that decision all on my own without wise counsel to guide me through or at least present other options. So lonely, this life. Not just for company but in this constant process of making decisions. But at least that’s changing…

I’ll rewind now to the Friday previous and to the day Nicky and I went over to Ossett to buy her van and pop in to see my mum’s husband. One thing he’d said was that mum had tried to call me way back in November (after I’d emailed her following the LSD-realisation that falling out with her was stupid) but that she hadn’t been able to get through. So later on when I was walking home from Nicky’s it occurred to me that maybe she didn’t have the right number and that if I called now I’d either get her husband or the answer machine and I could give it to them. It was a little after five and I figured mum was probably still on her way home from work. I guess I wasn’t quite ready to facing up to talking to her. Well, it has been five years since we’ve had a civil conversation – only one very non-civil interaction in all that time – and you’ve got to ease into these things. Except…

Mum picks up the phone. And I’m so shocked and surprised I just start gabbling on about how I thought she was still at work and why I was calling – to give her my number – and then thinking maybe she doesn’t know yet that I’ve already been at hers that day so gabbling and explaining about that too and –

Well, you know what? It’s actually a really good way to break the ice, all that gabbling and bumbling and explaining and just yabbering on. Five years without a decent word between us and then suddenly I’m just chatting my head off and laughing about stuff and she’s being all fine and pleasant back. No need to address our hostilities – we both know the score; both know the other wants to bury the hatchet – and so we just chat all normal and friendly, like, and pretty soon I’m talking about all my emotional issues and problems and even though I’m talking through Woodhouse along the ride right in public view I let the tears fall down my cheek and have no problem opening up to my mother in this way – no longer the smart-aleck child who wants to have it all together but the child pure and simple – and in return she’s giving me outpourings of motherly advice and maybe it’s not so tender and cooing as it would be in the movies – she’s a bit more direct and abrupt than that – but it sure does make a lot of sense.

I drink it up. I feel infinitely grateful. And buzzed up and happy too for our restored connection and the humility in my heart.

When I arrive home just at the end of our conversation I see my neighbour coming home too and then we chat also over the garden wall and in response to his asking me how I’m doing I open my heart a little too and say it’s been a really hard time and it’s all about Nicky, etc, etc, and I feel no shame in that either. I know there are tears in my eyes and my chin is quivering. But even though all I’d thought him to be was a football-loving guy who liked to go out for pints he’s suddenly full of consolatory wisdom and understanding too. Says things that amaze me. About his own experiences and about what I must be going through. It’s one of those moments where suddenly the whole world seems enlightened and wise and I’m actually the only one who doesn’t know this stuff.

I feel awesome for having opened myself up. Letting the aloofness and maybe even arrogance drop. Just being myself: a boy. All those years of thinking I was something special, and being told it, and maybe trying to live up to it. Lost in thought and delusions of grandeur. But now I’m back in my heart and back to connecting with others. I don’t want to be anything special – or, rather, I realise now that I’m not – I just want to be myself. I don’t care who sees me down and in tears. I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I feel ashamed for ever thinking I was anything more than I am. More defence mechanisms, perhaps. More separation between myself and the people of this world. But I love both them and myself too much for that…

I went in the house and after a while I thought maybe it was time to send an apologetic text to Laura. She’d asked me not to contact her since New Year’s and I’d accepted that, despite the times when I’d feel so horrendously bad about how I’d acted with her and long to let her know. A few times I’d come close but the coin had always said no. This time the coin said yes. I wrote:

“Dear Laura, I just want you to know how sorry I am. For everything. I thought I was doing the right thing but life has recently kicked my lousy arse and taught me otherwise. I’ve acted like a smug, egocentric, arrogant bastard. I was deluded. I thought I was above it all and I had no idea how wrong I was. But ever since Vipassana I’ve seen what terrible mistakes I’ve made and I’ve suffered the consequences, please believe me. You can’t imagine how bad I feel about the pain I’ve caused you. I know now what a jerk I’ve been. I was wrong. I am so, so sorry.”

I sent that and I figured that would be it; he last communication had been pretty explicit in its request that I leave her alone so she could get on with the business of meeting someone decent. But within a minute she had replied saying she was literally just that moment sitting down to write me a text and that she’d had a bit of a mini-breakdown of her own and could I go over and see her. I was a little bit ecstatic, at the restored connection, and quite a bit concerned too. Of course I could go over and see her. I know she’s had her breakdowns in the past and I felt horrified at the thought of another one. I would be there for her. We made plans to meet up Saturday evening after my refereeing.

And – oh, my mad head! What is it that drives you so? For pretty much immediately there are words in there about how actually she’s the one for me and suddenly the story of all our twists and turns is being remoulded so that it’s “meant to be” and “everything is happening in its perfect time and place” and “all makes sense in hindsight.” Fuck this brain! Whatever woman came into my life I could do the same thing with – always have done even. The times I’ve cried over missed opportunities saying, we should have done this, we should have done that. Even when the relationship has begun always looking back convinced that it was meant to go another way, that we were supposed to get together sooner – or perhaps, once it’s gone wrong, not at all.

What the hell is it with me that everything has to fit some sort of pre-destined divine plan? This belief in “the right track”? This compulsion to create stories around my entire existence so that it all means something and leads somewhere good? Everything happens for a reason, they say – and it’s my brain’s mad foible that it wants to know the reason immediately, and will re-write the history of my life over and over again until current circumstances emerge from the chaos ordered and sensical, as though that was the way it was meant to be all along. I can only shake my head – one minute Nicky, the next Laura – and even if Sophie or Grace were to walk around the corner, them too – the whole story instantly reconstructed to make them fit. No wonder I can’t choose a woman. I have no idea how to.

But that’s all a tangent. In the event I stayed with Laura Saturday and Sunday night and it was pretty mellow and chill and took my mind off Nicky to some extent – though I did eventually confess some of my heartache and cry in front of her, despite thinking perhaps better of it but ultimately deciding it was wiser to share. In any case, she was resolved again that we were to remain brother and sister and I was glad for that, knowing my weak male resistance to lust when pressed up naked against a female body, despite what my wisdom and rationale might have committed to several hours earlier, and it was fine. But more on that later…

For now, I return to my flat, on the Wednesday morning – the day before my planned move out, and the day the new tenant was due to move in – and to me sitting down amongst all my jumble and beginning to pack. I was feeling pretty cool about the whole thing – I had plenty of time to get it sorted, knew that it would happen – and though the plan was a bit up in the air I –

Well, the plan: there’s a joke if I ever heard one – for what was my plan? I had a notion to go down to LondonThursday afternoon to see Mother Meera and then go over to stay with my friends in Kent. But what about all my stuff? You know, just typing it now I realise that I had no plan at all: I didn’t have a fricking clue! I just went to the toilet and all the time I was repeating, “what was I going to do? what was I going to do?” and I can’t believe I didn’t have an answer. I must have had something in my brain – but whatever it was, beyond putting my things in Nicky’s van and jettisoning most of it and going somewhere else…well, it’s gone now. But in the event…

I was packing my stuff and within a couple of minutes I had broken down in tears. Not an unusual occurrence for me of late but this was something different. Usually it’s heartbreak or regret or thoughts of Nicky or some other emotion – but this was like a message from my very soul, and the message was: “This is really fucking wrong.” God, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt something like that before – maybe once in Canada, when I had to leave Sophie to return to England – but it was undeniable. It was like something was wrong with the whole way the universe was turning. I mean, I often think I’m going wrong but that usually turns out okay and it’s not a major feeling. This was like I wanted to be physically sick. That if I didn’t act on it my whole life would be fucked. It kind of came out of nowhere really. It floored me with its power. I roared and cried and quit my packing and looked about my flat feeling so absolutely desperate and helpless and lost. I wallowed in that for a few minutes knowing that I was fucked beyond all notions of fuckedness and then I suppose I did what any normal man would do and got my ass into action.

How on Earth was I going to fix this? I needed to do something and I needed to do something fast. I texted Nicky and my mum and told them that I was packing and crying and knew it was all wrong to be leaving. I texted my landlord and asked him for the new tenant’s number and thought, well fuck it, maybe I’ll just offer them two hundred or even five hundred quid not to move in. I thought about friends I could stay with, places I could stash my stuff. But all that was too complex what with upcoming refereeing gigs and the need to access and repeatedly wash my kit. Nicky texted back and felt for me. My mum texted back and suggested an inexpensive hotel but then later that it was full. And I got on the phone and called this property guardian company that I knew had a few places in Leeds. There was one in Harehills that they could let me view on Monday. Too late, I said, I need to move like tomorrow. They called me back, said how about next Wednesday? I said that’s even further in the future, I’m leaving my flat tomorrow and I’ve suddenly realised I have to stay in Leeds. They called me back and arranged a viewing for the following day and then I was like, what are the chances of moving in that day too? They went through what I’d need to do – send in bank statements, work references, photo ID and proof of address – and I got it on, called people up, headed on over to uni and did some scanning and emailing and within an hour or so I’d got the whole kit and caboodle. Then I left there and thought, hell, what need for a viewing? And what if someone else gets in there before me and takes the room before I have a chance? And so I called them up again and said, hey, let’s just do it, I’ll pay the deposit now and then instead of it being a viewing it’ll be a collection of keys and I can move right in. And they were down with that and it was done.

10am: homeless and lost and confused and utterly, utterly fucked. 12pm: having paid a deposit on a place and moving in the next day.

Christ, I felt relieved. And also somewhat okay at my foolish last-minuteness once again. Although when I did move in I then started to wonder whether I’d done the right thing, perhaps hadn’t done it out of panic. The new tenant for my flat got back to me literally five minutes after I’d sent in the deposit. Both Nicky and my mum offered me a place to stay the Thursday night and another friend perhaps longer term. And the problem of my stuff was fixed because I could have taken it down my dad’s shop on the Friday – Nicky being off work – when originally it was going to be the Thursday when his opening hours and her free time non-coincided.

Well, sure, I overthink these things. And part of it was not liking the place so much (although now I’m in it it’s not so bad). And…

Yeah, ultimately, it’s overthinking. Just stuff like knowing how I’d mainly stayed in Leeds ‘cos I had like five refereeing fixtures coming up that I thought I needed to adhere to and then they all got cancelled for the snow. But no doubt if things take another turn I’ll be re-writing that whole story once again anyways. I guess it doesn’t really matter too much where I lay my head as long as I’m in the right town. I should have stayed in my flat and I loved my flat but now that’s gone and I’m here in a house in a new part of town and ultimately I guess it’s not that much different because I still sleep and type and it’s quiet and costs about the same (actually, a little bit less) and all the other things like my football and my squash and my friends are just as near and, in any case, if it’s wrong and I shouldn’t have committed to it and blah blah blah I can just go and lose a bit of money and that’s not the worst thing in the world now is it?

I overthink. I just get sad when I make wrong decisions. I’m so tired of making wrong decisions and, perhaps even worse, I’m not convinced I’ll make right decisions in the future. I keep leading myself into the wrong place and then I decide something lame to get myself out of that place. My life has been such a complex and tangled web – all the places I’ve lived and all the people I’ve known and how far and wide they and therefore my mind are scattered. Too many options and too many women. I feel sometimes right at the very end of my tether, at breaking point. I say I need a job and then I go online and am suddenly bombarded with ten thousand possible careers and it’s all too much for me. How I wish for a bit of simplicity. Would I not have become the same person inside – which is all that really matters – if I’d just stayed where I was all along?

So Thursday morning Nicky reappears with her van – me looking idiotically out the window awaiting her arrival like a half-brained puppy dog – and then I get down to packing and cleaning and loading and sorting and, wow, it’s such a big and tiresome operation. I’m thinking an hour or two and it’s more like six, non-stop, from nine a.m. to nearly three. It’s a little bit sad – I nearly cry when I glance over at the shelves and remember Nicky painting them so smilingly when we first moved in – but it’s also somewhat embarrassing when I think how ramshackle that flat is, with its damp in the corners and bits of walls crumbling here and there, the lame shower and the cheap carpet. Also embarrassing how messy I’ve let it become with all the dust and ‘bits’ and crud on the toilet and the sink. I don’t think I’ve done a drop of housework since I moved back in in August. And there I was all that time saying I couldn’t think of anything to do. It’s doubly embarrassing then to think of all the times Nicky was there and how she never even seemed to notice ‘cos I guess she liked me so much. But what was she doing in that little flat with me? And why did she keep coming back? I feel ashamed them. Ashamed again for not valuing her and what we had more. And ashamed for not being a better man. It’s about then, perhaps, that the idea strikes me that she’s actually too awesome for me and that she’s doing the right thing moving on. She fell in love with an idea of me – the me from my book and my stories and my youth – and what she got was something far, far removed. And she does so much, and is so cool and successful and all this time I thought we were on a par – and she, she confesses, felt somewhat in awe of me, for some weird reason (my forcefulness and certainty, perhaps?) – and yet the reality is maybe that she’s awesome and I’m not. That I should have been the one learning from her, and embracing her life, and not the other way around. I had my chance and I blew it. She’s better off without me.

Funny the thoughts you can get by looking at a shelf…

I pack, I clean, I hoover. I scrub the toilet and the sink and marvel at how white they look. Should have done that before. Should have mopped floors. Should have done regular housework. Maybe good to get out of this flat and snap out of my rut. What the hell have I become? So fuckin’ fatuous and lazy. Not the man a woman would want to be with anyway…

I’m viewing the new place at three thirty. I’m playing squash after that. And then I’ve to be on a train to Bradfordstraight from there to run the line on a game. Nicky’s offered me to stay at hers and cook some dinner. I’ve got it in my head that we should just go out and blow fifty quid on sushi – I want to say thank you for her help in moving and everything else besides – and maybe drink a bottle of wine and just go crazy and let go of everything (I don’t drink) but I won’t be back in Leeds till ten. It’s a mad fuckin’ day, to do all that and move in such confusion, but I guess it all works out.

I’m pretty chill at Nicky’s that night. I guess I’m done with all the emotional stuff and I’ve a new plan as far as that’s concerned. Tuesday my mum had texted me and suggested a meeting and we chatted for like four hours over tea and wandering around in Leeds and again I was just in that place of receiving and being open to advice and she said a lot of really cool things. The main one being that I really need to break my addiction to Nicky and probably do that through putting a bit of space between us and then seeing how I feel once my head comes out the other side. I’m not in a good place. I’m lovesick and obsessing over her and it’s doing neither of us any good. I mean, Nicky stays with it throughout and I’m grateful for that – but it’s still me feeding the donkey. And what it does to my own nervous system is probably even worse.

So that was Tuesday and, naturally, we sleep together on Wednesday and then a platonic night together on Thursday – these things aren’t easy to break, even when you know what you’re supposed to do – and the plan for Friday is for her to drive me over to my new place early on before she has to go off and do her busy-stuff and I guess that’ll be that. In fact, just after we wake up I put it to her. It must be the right time because I don’t feel the struggle or the sadness that I did before. I feel, I guess, calm and collected and say it’s what I need to do and, not that I won’t be there for her if she needs me, but that we need to stop all contact for a while. And then I reintroduce the idea of the sushi and say, are you doing anything tonight? Want to go out in style? And she’s free and up for it and we plan one last date.

She drives me over to mine. I move my stuff in. We hold each other for a long time and look again intently into one another’s eyes and then she’s gone, to mushroom co-op planning and other things besides. And I get down to the task and making this bare room my home and, actually, it ain’t so bad once I’ve got my stuff in it and arranged. I’m so frazzled and dehydrated and tired and hungry and confused about everything – but at least there’s a little bit of hope and, right or wrong, short-term or long, I guess it’s good to have something of a base.

I’ve no food in the house, though. I need to go out. The local area is full of little ethnic shops and it won’t be a problem. But as I exit my door I suddenly get the idea to go to my dad’s shop and just have a break and the coin concurs. I can eat on the way. And so off I go walking a whole new way into town and feel some habits break. No more uni to pass by and disappear into and spend too many hours online. No more Morrison’s and Home Bargains. Now it’s the desultory busy traffic road through Sheepscar. Oh well. Uni’s a habit I don’t mind breaking. And I actually prefer the Asian street action to studentville. Could be something good in this after all. And also…

Because of the way I’ve walked into town I’ve gone past my old school friend Steve’s workplace, at the Job Centre at the bottom of Eastgate. I’d seen him a few week’s back and given him my number but not heard anything from him (he’s kind of lame in that regard) and so I think I’ll pop in and get his. I pop in. He comes to give me a big hug – how cool to do that in front of everyone when you’re like a manager and in the middle of your working day – and asks me how I am. Well, thing is – surprise, surprise – I’m feeling emotional and fraught and the tears are pretty much right there anyway – and for once I don’t pretend otherwise and just tell the truth and he gets all concerned and whisks me straight into a private interview room and sits me down and asks what’s going on and I tell him. It’s a beautiful moment with this grand old friend. I cry unashamed and with head bowed confess I feel like I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with my life. He reaches out and holds my hand over the desk. He gives me a big hug. He says things that are awesome and wonderful and wise. Talks about how, despite it all, he thinks I look better than I have in years (my energy, he means). Touches on issues of humility and arrogance and shares his own stories and says how strongly he feels this will all prove to be a really good thing for me. His words are healing. And his presence, his concern and love. Once again, I feel so grateful for having opened myself up rather than doing the usual English thing and pretending that everything was okay. I know it will be, one day, but this day it’s not. No more being above it all. No more denying my humanity. People like you better when you’re real, and they amaze you in return. By a certain age everybody’s lived stuff like this. I guess I just thought I was different from your average Yorkshireman ‘cos I’d bummed around America and met saints. But I ain’t. I don’t think I even know the depth of how much all that stuff screwed me up.

Later on he texts me and says: “I love you Rory Miller. Please use this to soothe whenever necessary.” And a few hours after that: “It’s amazing that I met you in 1988 yet today I felt like I connected with you like I hadn’t for the longest time. I think you are at the beginning of what will be a great epoch.”

People amaze me. I’m so lucky to have these friends, even though I may go years without seeing them. I thought I was so alone and had no one to turn to. But now that I’ve turned and humbled myself and opened up to others, though a few haven’t been quite so successful, I’ve seen myself proved so gloriously wrong. All this heartache has been tough, but look at what it’s given me. I’ve got my mum back, my old best friend. My biodad called me up the other day totally out of the blue after maybe three years absence. Even my relationship with my dad, while not exactly intimate, is far better than it’s ever been. Something big is going down. And I’m starting to feel that, when the dust settles, my great friend Steve may be right.

I left him feeling better. I saw my dad for a while and he was all high on some recent youtube fame that had come his way – seventeen thousand hits in two weeks on a video some metal guitarist had posted of the two of them jamming in his shop. Then I went ‘home’ and had a nap and when I woke up later it was time to go on my date with Nicky. She picked me up in her van. I guess on the way we talked about her respective days and I was grateful to be able to have happy things to talk about. She parked right by the big wheel that currently graces the market car park in the centre of Leeds and I said we should go on it. She said one of her housemates said he’d heard it was lame, that all you saw was the multi-storey car park but I said he’s always seeing the negative in things but, anyways, we need to eat sushi. We went and ordered a pretty massive amount – it was about thirty-five quid, with no drinks or dessert – and chatted wonderfully and intimately and smiled and had loads of fun and then when we left I said, come one, let’s go on the wheel, why the hell not? and we were just in time for the last turn. It’s the kind of thing I would never do before, always such of a “No Man” and being so tight with money. It was six quid each but I didn’t really think about it, just did it. I wanted to show her that I could be better, that my determination to change was real. It was fun. I’ve only been on one big wheel before – that was in Leeds, when I was about nineteen – and it scared the shit out of me. This one was frickin’ terrifying too. It was so ridiculously high and all I could think about was the gondola coming off and crashing to the ground – and it was in a blizzard and the wind howled through the gaps and we shivered and held one another close – but the terror was fun and the view was awesome and by the second time around I was a bit more chill, her sitting on me knee and just having a really lovely time. And then we went ten-pin bowling – I paid – and though she got cross ‘cos I was bowling awesome and she couldn’t get a strike, when she finally got one in the third game – we’d only paid for two but a glitch in the system must’ve been kind to us – and then another after that (and, I must confess, I purposefully flunked my last two balls so that she would win) we left there with more smiles on our faces. An awesome date. How our relationship should have always been. Me, I guess, being something of a new and changed person and, actually, it didn’t even feel like effort.

At some point not too long before we broke up I felt like I just wasn’t any good at this relationship malarkey. Funnily enough, now that I’ve lost her and I guess we’re pretty much at the end of any hope for the future I feel more confident in my abilities than ever. These last few months have taught me so much. I guess I’ve been the dark and now seen the light. Done the wrong enough to know what’s right. It’s a shame it won’t be with her, given how close and loving we’ve become, and what an awesome person she is, but I guess that’s just the way it’s meant to be. Maybe she was never the one – maybe, as with Eve, who reflected my lost delusional New Age self to me and made me realise that I didn’t want that, Nicky’s reflecting something of a non-committal, restless, flighty travelling self. She’s always dreaming of getting away and always had one foot out the door and, though I did too, I think I’ve changed in that regard. But just because I’ve changed it doesn’t necessarily follow that she has. She may well have done, or she may change at some point in the future, or she may never. As far as I can see Eve is still lost in that New Age world of delusions and weirdness. I expect all these mirrors to move with me but maybe they don’t. It’s a phenomenon so worth factoring in when trying to understand the complexities of human romantic relationships. We attract what we are. We love and hate that part of ourselves that we see in another. In fact, the other, and all others, are our inner-selves made manifest externally. It could work no other way. I see myself in her and I decide I want [to be] something different. When the other decides the same thing that’s mutual growth. When not, that’s just your own lesson to take with you, painful though the attachment and unfulfilled dreams make it. I don’t know which way she’s going to go. Probably, I feel, towards adventure and newness and something not quite resembling those “adult responsibilities” that I feel myself so unnervingly drawn to.

We went back to mine after. She lent me a futon frame and helped me carry it up to my room. We lay on my bed and talked a little, our heads bowed into one another’s, those two pairs of eyes always but inches apart, as they have been for so many hours over recent weeks. It felt so much like that end scene from the movie ‘Beginners’, and I said as much. But apart from that my talking was done, except to tell her that I still felt the same way about wanting to be with her. She opened up to me a little and said she hoped I didn’t think she was toying with me – I had to confess that I wasn’t sure, though I believed and trusted in her goodness – and that she was scared and she wasn’t sure what she was scared of.

“I know,” I said, “you’re scared that I’ll go back to being how I was. And you’re scared of love. And commitment.”

Why shouldn’t she be? Even though she wanted to be with me and thought she’d have my babies did she really contemplate what love and commitment meant? The work, the effort. The sheer magnitude of the whole thing. Who wouldn’t be? I was, and even though I feel ready for it and want it, I still am. But I’ve thought it through and, though it’s scary, I’ve come to believe that the alternative is even worse. A life that ends in loneliness and fear. A life that goes nowhere except around and round, always peering over the cliff edge but being too afraid to jump. A life that could be filled with adventures and travel and ever-new people – but what then? To end up like one of those super-tanned zombies I saw in the Palenque hostels who just filled me with the horror and made me want to scream, “go home! get wed!” (the world but a mirror)?

I think what she’ll do is go away and maybe get with someone or maybe it’ll take her a few years to reach that stage. Maybe it’s all stupid me anyways, trying to figure all this stuff out rather than just doing what everyone else does and letting it happen naturally. Probably if I wasn’t so analytical we could have muddled along and then maybe love and commitment would have happened of its own accord. But the fact is, I am. And I wasn’t ready for it. And I’m still not – but what I am is more ready than ever.

We said our goodbyes. We know we’ll see each other again soon – I mean, I’m riding her bike and sleeping on her futon frame (my mattress) and she’s got my guitar and lives like five minutes away – but for now it’s zero contact and seeing where things are out the other side. It’s difficult, at first – but then I’ve broken addictions to chocolate and tea and booze and other things besides and I know how it goes: you suffer for three days and have headaches and urges and then you feel okay. As I type this it’s been 48-hours. She texted me Saturday morning to tell me a lot of trains weren’t running and then emailed me later with some details about a dance place she goes to but I haven’t replied. I’m not totally playing hard to get, I just know it’s what I have to do. This morning I felt like contacting her for the first time but that was something different. All being well I’ll reach that 72-hour mark…

And now I have to finish it off. There’s still more to this story and I know I won’t be able to leave this computer until I’ve typed it up complete. I wish I knew why I felt so compelled to type but all I know is I do. I wish I knew whether it was good for me, or whether I was being stupid. I wish I knew whether it served any greater purpose in the world and in the universe as a whole, whether the angels still consider it my “service to the Divine” – and if so, why I feel so uneasy about continuing to share things online and flip-flop back and forth between publishing and hiding and deleting it. And why no one ever feeds back. And to where it will all lead…

Probably what I need to do is pseudonymise my whole writing career. Then I could be free. But I mustn’t ever let this typing come between me and my personal relationships ever again…

So where was I? (A pit stop for reheated dhal and teapot-refill later) Oh yeah: the Friday night date and our saying goodbye and then sleeping alone in my new room for the first time and it was actually quite chill. Saturday Harry’s arranged us an early morning game of squash – 9.30 start – and I bike over there through maybe four inches of snow and after that we sauna and eat crisp sandwiches and chat till maybe half one. Good conversation. Even healing our own relationship and growing him in honesty a bit too. And then I decide to have some internet time, despite probably being served having a nap, and it’s getting on for four when I finally leave campus. There’s nothing on line, of course – but it always takes me at least an hour to realise that. Then it’s Home Bargains and my new home – still less than ten-minutes from the sports centre – and I think, what shall I do? and realise that what I’d really like to do is something non-restless and maybe what I might have done a long time ago, which is lie quietly on my bed with my headphones on and listen to a Gong album from start to finish and maybe doze off. I feel like I haven’t sat down in weeks, what with all the Nicky stuff and the flat and that. Just to turn off my brain. I’d love a vacation but I’m not sure that would do anything for my bottomless thinking…

I do doze off. And in the middle of that and having rewound the Gong that girl I went on the date with calls and gives me some job tips about finding work in sport. She’s back in Leedsfor the weekend and sounds a bit lonesome and forlorn. Me being me I think I’ll suggest going over to where she is and hanging out – but me being me I don’t dare suggest such a thing over the phone. Still: me being the new me I do so in a text not long after we’ve finished talking – no more missed opportunities – and, whaddya know? She doesn’t respond at all. But: nay bother, at least I did the thing I wanted to do. And not that I was after any ‘funny stuff’ (as I explained in a later also-ignored text), just figured the company would be nice (for both of us) and might help take my mind of Nicky. But getting physical with a new girl obviously not a good idea given everything I’ve previously said.

Later on I went wondering my new area looking for a box of matches to light the stove and dug its streets. I liked the Asian shops and that there was a bit of community – you know, real people as opposed to students. And I liked the change of scenery: breaking old habits and all that. I went into a mosque and sat in a dark corner and prayed, I guess, and even cried. My prayer was mostly telling my heart and then saying over and over, “help me God”; something like that.

Reminds me of a moment when I was in utter emotional turmoil one day last week and saying all the things I wanted and hating the pain I was going through. I wanted it so badly to be over. But I felt a voice inside assure me that this pain I was going through was actually the way to the things I desired. There was consolation in that.

When you say you want a thing God doesn’t necessarily send you the thing itself, but rather puts you on the path to the thing, and that may be a long and hard journey taking many years and involving much pain. Maybe that’s all everything is. Maybe even these desires for a wife and a family are but a means to a greater end.

Not that that means that I shouldn’t do them.

I came home and made dhal. I was mellow. I ate my dhal and went to bed nice and early. I didn’t watch a movie or Shooting Stars or fill my brain with anymore sights and sounds, I instead read some Conversations With God and marvelled again at how ever-deepening its wisdom becomes the more I learn about life. Everything I’m going through is written therein – but even though I’ve read the whole thing many times it is only in the living of it that I truly come to understand and make real in my existence. Which, interestingly enough, is a thing the book repeatedly says also.

Truly, as far as I’m concerned, it’s The Bible.

Sunday Harry and I played 9.30 squash again and then I had plans to go over to Dewsbury and call in and see Steve and his infant son (for the first time) before heading over to my mum’s to “get nagged by her husband.” She said he’d been looking forward to it and it was a shame I wasn’t going to be stopping over. But I figured a good nagging might be in order and so went for it anyway. I need to have people’s input into my life. I’ve lived so long without that. I maybe wouldn’t have made half the mistakes I’ve made if I’d had a more involved family and loved ones, and hadn’t been so entirely self-reliant all these years. Nicky was very self-reliant too and, in the mirror of her, I saw so clearly how it just doesn’t work. Her own parents’ marriage was saved by the intervention of her mum’s folks. I wish someone had stepped in and attempted to save my relationships instead of having to do it all on my own.

Anyways, in the event the trains to Dewsbury were cancelled and I took one over to Wakefield– mum lives pretty much equidistant – meaning that I would have to postpone seeing Steve till another time. On the other hand, it meant that I could see Laura and arranged to do so after mum’s. And off I went to get nagged, and the nagging, it was glorious.

My mum’s husband is a very good man. We’ve never really talked before. But he cares a lot and he’s got wisdom and, again, through my opening up in my time of need I got to see so much more of another person. A lot of it was about jobs: he feels a job would be good for me and I don’t disagree. Structure and income and all that jazz. But what job? Well, I guess time will tell on that one – because every time I think about it and go online I instantly become sick at the knowledge of all the options that are out there – and at the notion of having to spend all those hundreds of hours applying for them, typing the same things over and over and over – and run as fast as I can in the opposite direction. Also, I believe anyway that the best things come in a more old school way, through word of mouth and feeling. Plus, I’m not sure I need or want anything right now – the only thing that’s driving it is my fear and panic at what the hell I’m doing with my life but that seems to be settling. Of course, what they always say is, the thing with you is you’ve never found the thing that you want to do – and what I always know in that regard is that I have – that I want to write – but just that I’ve never knuckled down or found a way to make it pay. No one would question me if blogging was a paid job – in fact, I’d probably be receiving high praise for all these tens of thousands of words I churn out, be regarded as someone who was “really good at their job.” But in our society blogging your life and heart pays nada while kicking a ball into a net or selling unnecessary Chinese fripperies pays millions. Tant pis.

Also, we talked about relationships. Phil’s very discrete and doesn’t say things that don’t need saying – so when I said, you always liked Sophie, didn’t you? all he would say is, well, probably best not to go there. But, me being me, I couldn’t help but go there and then suddenly I was back to feeling miserable OVER HER and thinking about how that all went wrong. If I’d known what was going on, he said, referring to the time of our breakup, I’d have had you both over here and given you a talking to. But he did know, I thought – or at least my mum did. But my mum’s more standoffish, wouldn’t have wanted to get involved. “As long as you’re happy,” is all she’d ever say, “I don’t care what you do.” My theory on that is that it’s all a reaction to previous modes of parenting where people got involved too much – and then the sixties happened and the hippies said, oh, just let the kids run around naked and find their own way. It’s only in recent years that I’ve found myself bemoaning this and wishing that I’d had more parental guidance – but then would I have listened to it? Probably not. In any case, I definitely want to make sure I have more involvement in my own kids’ lives. Nicky’s grandparents saved her own parents’ marriage. And maybe she has a decent career because her parents are involved whereas I was just left to drift free. My mum, in her defence, says she told me that I had to finish my A-Levels and then could do what I wanted – but even that she didn’t enforce. She did what she did and she sees it her way and feel it’s right and it is right. But it’s not what I would want for myself, could I turn back the clock, nor what I want to give, which is the only thing I have control over. That, and making sure I get some good advice now and use the input of the good people around me, who, it turns out, are far more numerous than I’d previously imagined.

Anyway, I was depressed over Sophie for a bit of that – Phil “thought the world of her” and even suggested getting back in touch (“no chance – she’s told me ‘no contact’ and thinks I’m a nutter”) – but right now I don’t feel so bad. Maybe she was the one and maybe she wasn’t. She certainly wasn’t as nice as other people thought. Very standoffish – like me. And perhaps a little bit aloof and emotionally cold – like me. But!

No, I won’t go there; instead, I’ll get back to reality, and to leaving mum’s and biking over to Laura’s and then seeing her and feeling the quality of her hug and how comfortable I am with her and – is she my sister or something more? –she tells me about the party she was at the other day and says how this guy there– a kind of weird old hippy who calls himself a mystic but is a bit dodgy with women – told her, “you’re beautiful inside and out” – well, if you knew me and you knew everything about me you’d know that it chilled me to the bone.

“Beautiful inside and out”…the EXACT same words Momma had used when telling me “your soulmate is coming” all the way back in 2001. Right about the time I met Laura. And though I never said it to her back then, walking around Asda one time she’d said she felt like I was her soulmate. And other things besides…

“This one will be forever,” Momma had said. And “forever” is the exact same word I’d used when telling Laura why I’d never been able to be with her. “I couldn’t be with you,” I’d said, “because I knew it would be forever and I couldn’t handle that. I knew if we got together we’d stay together and you’d never want to get rid of me.”

Twelve years ago! And even five years ago, after I’d broken up with Sophie, I was back in her arms and making love and then realising that I felt like I wanted to marry her – and so ran away in the opposite direction and pushed her out once more.

All this was kind of dawning on me and it terrified me. Thinking about how she’s the only woman I’ve ever really felt comfortable with. Thinking about the lovemaking we’ve shared, which has always been awesome and easy and fun. Pretty much every other woman I’ve had performance issues but very rarely did with her. And thinking about when she was in my flat last year and we wondered why we were always drawn together and I said, one day we’ll figure it out and instantly felt this rush of emotion that made me think about getting her pregnant and giving her a baby.

But then haven’t I said all these things before? About how Sophie was the only woman I’ve ever been with that I wanted to marry, could imagine being pregnant with my child, and wanted to grow old with? That provider instinct that I felt arise so powerfully and spontaneously inside me when we were first together, knowing that I would do whatever it took to take care of her, and never felt again with another.

Was it a feeling so person-specific or was it the unlocking of something within me forever, to be applied to whoever it was that finally bore my child? The liberation of a blockage that couldn’t be felt again because it was an opening that, having taken place, was once and for all?

And what of all this stuff over Nicky? The enormity of the feeling. The knowing what a great and compatible person she is – or could be. Do I really want her? For, for sure, there were times when I really, really wanted others too. Perlilly, for example, who I never feel regret over because I know in my heart that she is a great person but that we were totally wrong for each other in any long-term kind of way. Nicky seems right, but maybe she’s not. Sophie felt like the one – and the course of my life seemed to back that up, but maybe it was about something completely different. And all throughout these years Laura has been there, in and out of my life, my friend and intermittent lover and confidante and sometimes hater and, Christ, she even bought a house one time in the village where I grew up and eventually returned to, thinking that was where she might raise children. And now here we are again, both alone and both wanting someone and both so utterly comfortable with one another…

She was in a good place, her mini-breakdown over, and giving me advice about my life. But I’d had enough of that for the time-being and instead suggested we watch some telly and we settled down on the couch to watch Miss Congeniality. I fell asleep nuzzled up behind her. Time with her is the only time I’ve felt rested the last few months. She wanted me to stay but I said I’d go home. I had a return train ticket – but when I realised part of my wanting to go home was me being tight I tossed a coin to be sure and the coin said, “home.” Probably wise. I was confused. We would have shared a bed. Not good as far as Nicky is concerned. Nor, probably, my own head or Laura herself, being adamant – well, a little bit adamant; hopefully adamant – that all we are is siblings and friends. Earlier she’d persuaded me to run around the garden naked with her in the snow and though I’d wanted to say “no”, not thinking for one moment that it could be fun, I’d gone with the “yes” and, whaddya know, it was.

But I got scared. In God’s honest truth, I got terrified. The last train from lonely old late night Outwood was late and I stood alone on the platform staring forlornly at the tracks wondering if maybe I’d be better off just climbing down and lying on them and letting the train slice off my head. I saw the full extent of my fear. It seemed to me like committing to her would be the end of my life. No more adventures or foolhardery or other women or mystery and romance. Truly, she would be forever, and even though this is what I keep saying I want and need and that the other road is a lonely stupid road I don’t want to walk down, a big part of me does. Fuck, that was an incredibly woeful half-hour I spent on that platform. I can’t even comprehend it now. But at the time it was almost unbearable. The weight of everything. The feeling of giving in to the one who was probably the one all along instead of chasing after others who don’t really want me.

But she’s not pretty enough: that was always one thing that stopped me.

And then that song I heard after first meeting Grace, which I felt at least temporarily cured me of her – “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life/never make a pretty woman your wife” – and how I’d laughed and took it as a sign and then thought of it often when I thought of Laura and how none of that stuff really matters anyway, it’s the love that counts.

Momma’s words, after my breakup with Eve: “She’s not the one. Another will be coming, beautiful inside and out, your soulmate. And this one will be forever.”

Twelve years ago. So much wasted time! Egad, we were so young back then – twenty-five and twenty-six and so much has happened in the years since…

But my dreams and subsequent relationship with Sophie – what was that? Nothing but preparation for this moment? Or –

That I Ching I did sitting in the library in Grimethorpe with Laura when I first went gallivanting to Canada after Sophie, propelled by signs and synchronicities. “You can’t escape your destiny,” it had said – and I’d taken it as a sign to go.

And back on the station at Outwood, thinking of all the things I haven’t done. Of Grace and crazy dreams to track her down in America. Or Julia, and how we’ve never had sex. Of the day last year when we were in her bed and we kissed and I fingered her to orgasm and then she said you should stay and make love with me but I said I had to get back to Yorkshire to referee 5-a-side and left her and didn’t make it for the 5-a-side anyway. Little stupid things in the grand big thing of actually knuckling down to commit to someone and make this go of it that I keep saying I want to make. All these women and all these confusions and just as I think I’ve made my mind up about Nicky back pops Laura into the picture and I’m left shaking my head once again. The signs point her way – but what of the signs that I talked about last week, that I said superseded anything from the outside? Those of my heart and my feelings of wanting. But what is wanting anyway? Is that where love and meaningful relationships are? Or is it in the simple comfort of being able to fall asleep with someone and not feel frantic? I don’t know what love is. Maybe that’s what love is and I just don’t recognise it.

These thoughts and feelings terrify me. I don’t know what to do about it. I feel like running in the opposite direction but I’ve a pretty good idea where that will lead. I wonder if maybe I should just do those things anyway – break into Americaand search for Grace; sleep with Julia; have one last night with Nicky – and then get them out of my system. But will my system ever be clear. And what of poor Laura, moving ever nearer to the age where pregnancy is far from a given? The clocks they are a-ticking. I feel the impendence of everything, in myself and in my life. Phil would say find some work and stick at it and stop with all the gadding. I know I need to knuckle down and I’m genuinely terrified that I might not have the ability to do it and what the hell will happen to me if that’s the case? And yet, even less than twentyfour hours later, I feel calmer and more optimistic about the whole thing. The awareness of problems and blockages and desires and the bringing them out into the open through words and sharing is sometimes all that is required to set the wheels of change in motion. And maybe the turning of those wheels in inexorable.

What drives the machine? Some outside force? God in His heaven? Or me with my heart and my new and ever-changing ideas about my life and what I want to do with it?

I’m starting to think the latter.

And, in any case, I don’t right now feel those things that made me want to jump under a train last night in Outwood. Maybe because I’m twelve miles from Laura and have no immediate plans to see her. Maybe because I’ve given six hours and eleven thousand words to typing out the last week of my life and put the seal on this current round of emotional turmoil and growth and realisations. I know as soon as I close this computer down I’ll be a new man and the wheels will turn again. God, it’s a weird old show, this one that I’m watching! There ain’t nothing like it even on all those channels we’ve got. And here I sit with all these things happening and yet just a guy in his dressing gown in a room in an empty vicarage in Leeds. It’s weird how the world turns so complex and busy outside my window yet how much more full of life does the world in my heart appear. What a period! What upheaval and change! And all thanks to pain and misery and romantic misfortune: man, I’ve got to be grateful for that. And for Nicky…

Where is she now, and what does she do? What wheels turn in her own head and life as she mulls over her options and me? Thinking, no doubt, about how much I’ve changed and all we’ve shared – and the weirdness of the timing that it should all come just when she’s made her plans to leave Leeds and start something new in Ireland, with perhaps a new man too. I know they’re having a little something – just texts and Skype for now – but off she goes over there again next week, and I know it’s probably a little something more. She’s flying, despite having made a no fly vow well over a year ago. She says it’s to see her friend, to find a place to park her van, but I know better than that. She managed a good few years without seeing her friend to not need to do it twice in six weeks. And to fly? Probably the dude’s paying for the ticket, wants her over there, and why not? Kind of thing I would do if I was in love with someone hot and awesome and desiring their body. I don’t feel too bad about letting her go – but I do worry that I won’t be able to feel the same intensity of feeling and wanting to make sure I do everything right with, say, Laura, as I currently do with her. We’ve shared so much and grown so close. I really felt that we could take that forward into our relationship and build on it, now that we actually know one another. But what can I do? She has to go and probably she’ll decide to make something happen with the guy. It’s perhaps reminiscent of the two of us when we were beginning: communication by email and falling for an idea of one another without really knowing the person. Is this a pattern of hers? Is this something she may do again and again? The Bee’s Wing and the I Ching’s “ten years”? Either way, whatever she decides, it’ll mean something for me. Probably, right now, I’m more terrified that she’ll say she wants to be with me, for I’m far from a hundred percent sure, and scared of what that might mean. And yet, two days ago, when my neighbour said, “let her go to Ireland, she’ll want you to be there with her after a while” I was all for it and shaping my future life around her. Shaping my life around a woman: something I said not too long ago I would no longer do. But love the most important thing. Except what of my own needs for some sort of stability and career and future? How to train in any field when floating after a wandering spirit who wants to live in vans and yurts and even benders? Sometimes I feel she’s so impractical, much as I admire her free-spirited ways. She buys a van and with insurance and tax that’s nearly two and a half grand gone in a flash, plus the price of the diesel to feed it, and feels only happy. She wants to live in a bender – as far as I can tell, a glorified tent – and licks her lips with anticipation. All I see is cold and rainy nights dreaming of a warm bathtub and the creature comforts a modern life affords. I did my year in a caravan and I liked it but I’m not so sure I’d want to do it again. Except…staying in that bell tent at the glamping place near York – with warm showers close by, mind, and a cooking stove – well, yes, that was very heaven. And the joys of the countryside and nature. And the prison-like feel of these modern houses and cities of ours. And giving in to running around naked in the snow last night and, yes, really rather enjoying it after all. Well, who knows? Are these women impractical or am I just a grumpy old man who needs a kick up the bum to snap out of this rut and go reclaim my joy? We danced for an hour in my flat and the memory is awesome. We worked up a sweat and I was horny as a billy goat. I would miss that. I can’t see myself doing it with Laura – but then maybe that’s just my limitation. And spending money on sushi and bowling and a big wheel – all the while I buy cheap crisps and mostly get everything on reduced and deny myself avocados. But what will I remember at the end of my life? That twelve quid I hoarded and spent on discounted butter or the time we giggled terrified on a big wheel in a blizzard looking down upon the beautiful rooftops of Leedsmarket with a wonderful woman in my arms? Christ, I’ve been such a loser!

Over at my mum’s she was baking bread and the smell was good. The bread was good too. Nicky liked to bake bread but I always pooh-poohed it because I figured it was just much easier and probably cheaper to buy even a luxury loaf like Burgen’s from the super and so what was the point? Just as I pooh-poohed her vegetable growing which, okay, didn’t exactly yield much but was fun and satisfying in the doing of it. All the fuckin’ ways I went wrong. And why? What was the root of my resistance? Was it resistance to her? Did I not really like her? Or would I have been like that with anybody? What was I punishing her over? The aforementioned trauma? Or was I just dragging my heels in rebellion at her wanting to be with me and my going along with it? Not that I didn’t want to be with her – or, at least, not that I didn’t want to be with my idea of her, and, of course, wanted the sex. But – fuck! I’m getting into different territory now.

In a nutshell: I’m terrified of commitment. I think I should bake some bread. I think when Nicky goes to Ireland that’ll be the end of us and she’ll come back reinforced with all the things she said before I went on my emotional bender: that we were over and she was sure she didn’t want it and that she was going to Ireland on her own. Probably Laura is my soulmate and not that we should have definitely been together at any time in the past – maybe these lessons learned were necessaries – but in my thinking right now we’re pretty much at make or break time and there is nothing left to do but “try it or deny it,” much as when Mother Meera answered my question when I was in Dublin back in 2002 – which, incidentally, rocketed me away from Laura and pretty much straight into the arms of Sophie.

Still, has God not answered my prayers and pointed His mighty finger at “the one”? And if She has, what am I to do about it when such a large part of me wants to run away and would rather die?

I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: I’m going to sign in for a good healthy dose of psychotherapy. There’s another thing I’ve long wanted but always been too tight to pay for. Except I probably need it now more than ever. Except again – you know what always happens when I feel I need therapy? Yes, that’s right: the thing that’s troubling me suddenly goes away, as though the awareness of it was enough to go beyond it.

Still, it might be a way to become aware of more things and therefore make up for lost time.

Also, I should probably find some sort of job and a career. Or at least give the writing a proper try, if that’s my dream.

Also, I think I should probably stop this entry. I’m a bit pissed off now ‘cos seven or eight paragraphs ago when I felt myself come to the end of reporting about my week I was having that giddy feeling that comes from being cleansed and released from everything. But then I got into speculation about Nicky – no longer reporting on “what actually happened” but going off into theoreticals – and that’s made me furrow my brow. How can theoreticals liberate me? I’ve taken it too far. All I really wanted to say was that I think we’ll soon be over and that I quite fancy spending one last night with her. But that’s speculation and unknown future too. Okay, from now on just stick to reporting on the facts or that good old mad expression of emotions. But talking about the ifs and buts of the woman you’re trying to forget is hardly sensible. And going on as you are now with a desire to bring it back to something joyful hardly sensible either. You see? More poor judgments and decisions. But you live and learn. Hopefully I’ll have learned enough by the time I’m on my deathbed to get through a paragraph without saying something stupid. Sheesh! It’s a bit like how I can rarely ever say goodbye in person without doing something lame right at the end. Which is perhaps something relevant to what I mentioned eleven sentences ago. Crap.

And also: laugh out loud.