More Mr Nice Guy

And we go to the café. And we eat lunch. And she says her apology and says she realises she’s been selfish and says it's like she’s been acting subconsciously towards me the way she felt I was acting towards her after our relationship ended. More karma and getting back what I deserve. She explains it and instantly I do my inherent nice guy thing and understand and forgive and become more fascinated in the mechanics of everything than whatever wrongdoing I perceive myself to be on the receiving end of. I mean, what can she do about it anyway if it’s all karma and projection. She is but an instrument of the Universe being worked like a puppet to bring me what I deserve. I get my own back. I see how it feels. And, hopefully, I learn from it and move on.

But what to do then in that particular relationship when all is said and understood? There’s not a thing, I tell her, that I’ve experienced from you that I haven’t done either to you or someone else, or thought in my brain. Even my ideas make themselves manifest in my reality, so I can see the truth of them. And a lot of my ideas and actions have been foolhardy, I see that now. I hope I can get better.

We talk a lot. We talk for three hours and a half hours in the café and it’s pretty exciting and meaningful and I share a lot of my latest thinkings about relationships and life and what with all the openness and connection – and the way her top keeps slipping down to reveal ample bosom and brassiere – I start to feel, also, the stirrings of lust and sexual attraction. In fact, I find her unbelievably sexy. I get thoughts in my brain about suggesting to go off to the toilets for a fumble. Thoughts I don’t release.

I’m trying to be a little bit wiser. It’s one thing to think those things – I forgive myself that – but a whole other thing to put them into words. The wise man probably avoids taking that step. The wise man smiles as he watches those thoughts arise and figures they’ll more than likely subside at some point and, in any case, what possible benefit could come from any kind of physical union, beyond a short-term buzz? Seems like these days I’m looking for a little bit more than that. Plus, a cessation to romantically-induced headaches.

We leave the café. She suggests we keep talking and go back to mine and make some food. I’m all for that, seems like the natural thing to do. She says what a good time it’s been and I agree. You know though, I say, it’s pretty annoying. I came here thinking this would be it, that I wouldn’t want to see you again after this. Felt like I was happy when we weren’t having any contact and then when we did have contact it just made me unhappy. But now I feel happy again. It is a little bit annoying – but whatever part of me that genuinely forgives and understands everything, once everything’s been expressed, is in full motion and I feel nothing but goodness, save a slight niggle over the whole Ireland thing. No matter, though, I’m determined this thing isn’t going to go anywhere.

We shop. We cook. We keep on talking and I guess we’ve been talking seven hours now, easy and fun. We’re up in my room with candles and quiet music sitting on the floor. She’s looking at me intently. I’m not sure what to say so I ask her how she feels. She says she feels good and asks me how I feel. I say I feel good too – and, in the spirit of honesty – the kind of honesty I hope to inspire in others – I say I feel a little bit lusty. I say it ‘cos it’s true and I hope that saying it will help it disappear, move me beyond it, as it so often does. She says she feels a little bit lusty too. I tell her saying it seems to have dissipated it, ask her if the same has happened for her. But she says no.

I play a Gong album and we lie separately on the floor listening to it with closed eyes and doing hand dances. The Gong is amazing and there’s maybe no finer way to listen to it than lying in the dark with a woman who’s also listening to it and digging it too.

It’s getting late and she says she ought to go. Yawns a little. But doesn’t make a move. I get up. Get a bit fidgety. Lay back down.

She rests her hand at the top of my thigh, says she’s feeling pretty aroused, talks about how good it feels by the radiator and what it would be like to fall asleep there.

I know getting her to go will be the right thing. Climbing alone into my bed and sleeping content and uncluttered. Bringing myself to orgasm if I really need to release whatever sexual energy has been generated by the day’s proceedings. Something uncomplicated and without consequence.

But, wow, all these hours we’ve been but a foot or two apart and how sexy and appealing and attractive I’ve found her. The casual revealing of her milky-white belly and cleavage. The emotional and intellectual closeness and the connection. And the knowing that she’s feeling it too.

Except, all at the same time there are thoughts of wanting morality and not wanting to give in to the desire for trifles and baubles. The knowledge of the headaches that brings, and the knowledge of the headaches she specifically brings to me. Thoughts of her and this whole Irelandthing and whatever’s going on there. Hardly fair on this other guy. And hardly fair on me.

I could have ended up having sex there with a woman I find almost impossibly alluring and with whom I share a deep and powerful emotional connection. I know what it would have been like and I know that it would have been awesome – at least on one level. But, the thing is, I’m trying to work on other levels now, and on other levels, probably, it would have sucked. I want more than that. I don’t want to be used. I don’t want to be this woman’s plaything.

She walks back into my life confessing sins of selfishness and treating me badly and then makes it clear she’d like to spend the night with me again, all the while having something going on with someone else in a country she’s planning to move to, and all the while knowing how she’s hurt me and how I want more than mere sex and how I’m trying to regain my morality.

Then again, it’s not for me to judge what she wants for herself, but for me to live my own life and live what’s best for me. These things are sent to try us. My beliefs and theories about life and about myself needing to be tested and experienced in the real world, for better or for worse.

I once had ideas about free love and I got to see the truth of those.

It was a truth whose fruit didn’t taste so good.

And now I have ideas about going beyond sex again. Delayed gratification. And keeping things simple.

When she leaves I think, Christ, I had no idea she was such a lusty broad, plain and simple. She really can flit from one man to the other without much care.

When I climb into bed I feel glad that I avoided it. She’s gotten back in my head to a certain extent, and I’m not sure how I feel about that, but it’s not a fraction as bad as it could have been.

Still, I did open the door once more to her, the conversation and the connection and the shared outlook on life so potentially amazing, and upset of the past healed once more. I don’t know why I forgive so easily. Maybe I am just too nice. But all former transgressions were forgotten, and even her thing in Ireland does seem like a trifle. I mean, I’ve had my trifle, I know how inconsequential they can be from the inside, no matter how big a deal it might be for others. But seeing myself in others, I guess, helps me somewhat to see what it is from their inside too, beyond my petty foolish man/boyhood insecurities and jealousies. I dunno…

No sex, but once more a little confused anyway. Happy without her but an undeniable attraction and desire and hope when we’re together. And then thoughts of how it didn’t work when we were ‘properly together’ anyway. And then reminders of how much we’ve been through over the past few months.

But I guess ultimately I don’t trust her. She’s been selfish and treated me poorly and I’ve seen no real evidence to suggest a genuine change of heart in that. I mean, she’s apologised and maybe realised one or two things – but the fact that she would have gone to bed with again doesn’t sit so well with me. And no explanation over this Ireland guy and what’s going on there. Maybe him just getting fucked with too. Maybe the whole thing so simply understood as a lusty girl lacking in scruples going for what she wants and what she wants is sex.

I’ve been brought up to think more of women than that. To put them on pedestals and buy into that whole “fairer sex” thing. To swallow the idea that it’s men who think that way and that we’re the bad ones and the ones controlled by the whims of our pants. And every now and then I catch a glimpse of the world that makes me feel everything I’ve been taught about that was wrong.

A lusty broad. A foolish, trusting guy. The way we first slept together after not that many hours of non-sexual interaction in the first place. And then for three years she was in my head and heart.

Is it as simple as that? And have I broken through into something by finally saying no?

In any case, I guess I still wake feeling a little bit drawn back into something and also, perhaps, hoodwinked. She was in the doghouse and she knew she was in a fairly major way – and she talked herself out of it to such an extent that she almost got me dangling on that hook once again.

I’m just too nice! I mean, I do genuinely feel only fondness and gladness and want to encourage and share good times and this is who I am – but, man, I’ve got to be careful. Employ a bit of wisdom. Not neglect my badass side. Know what’s good for me and stick to that. If there’s anything real between us it’ll come out without needing to resort to sex, just as it will with Laura. Sex, schmecks – you know what I mean? I think it’s time to get me born again in some good old chaste Christian morals – and not the ones that allow anything but virginal. There’s always the right hand if I need to release a bit of pressure and keep the prostate well-oiled and cancer free. Not that I generally bother with that so often. At least up until recently.

And on that note…

Days since:

Eating a 500g bag of dates (0)

Showing someone a red card (2)

Eating fish and chips (3)

Sharing a bed with a girl (5)

Wanking (6)

Sharing a bath (10)

Starting a new job (13)

Kissing (26)

Having sex (27)

Crying (32)

Cooking something other than an egg sandwich or dhal (42)

Making it up with my mum (47)

Working on the sequel to Discovering Beautiful (48)

Hitchhiking (114)

Graduating with an MA (133)

Driving (314)

Drinking a very weak shandy (618)

Being in another country (634)

Sleeping in a graveyard (722)
Having my picture taken/taking a picture (736)

Eating chocolate/sugar/a biscuit, etc (753)

Falling out with my mum (775)

Making it up with my mum (776)

Having sex with somebody new (785)

Sleeping in a concrete tube (810)

Buying some clothes other than jeans, socks or sportswear (966)

Publishing a book (1029)

Doing a healing (1318)

Sleeping in a building doorway (1322)

Dancing naked atop a Mayan pyramid (1336)

Drinking something stronger than a very weak shandy (1383)

Appearing on a TV show (1549)

Eating meat (1388)

Crashing a car (1666)

Working a job with payslips (1751)

Being tipsy (1768)

Riding on a freight train (1908)

Falling out with my mum (2040)

Standing on American soil (2300)

Living in a caravan (3557)

Working as a postman (3966)

Headbutting a Frenchman (4397)

Being drunk (5235)

Getting arrested (5378)

Being on American soil legally (5765)

Wearing underwear (5926)

Losing my virginity (7528)

Discovering Everton (10250)

Getting born (13599)

And:

Days until I have to move house (3)

Things I’ve done about finding a new place to live (0)

No more Mr Nice Guy?

Monday morning and it’s my first morning off from the bikes in nearly two weeks. Plus not got any refereeing scheduled for the evening so I guess that’s what you call a day off. Been pretty mental with the physical exercise lately but to tell the truth I’m loving it. Wednesday night I do the Barwick game and cycle seven miles each way to get there – mad crazy head winds on the way back, barely moving at times – and then Friday after work play tennis with Nextdoor Nick followed by squash with Harry (won 3-0, 3-0). Saturday’s reffin’ is accompanied by another dozen miles on the bike and then Sunday I wake up early to cycle out to ref a game in Bramhope – ‘nother eight uphill miles – before cycling back down to ref some students at Weetwood. Pretty goddamned hungry by then – it’s four o’clock – but my rush to buy samosas before squash – yes, really – is thwarted after I realise I’ve left my phone in the changing rooms and have to bike three miles back up the hill to get it. No time for food before meeting Harry once again – but already I’ve decided none of this matters – the hunger, the fatigue, the aching legs, the millions of hours of exertion already in the days preceding – and that I’m now going to become “Super Rory” and kick some 21-year-old ass. I summon up the energy. I’m playing awesome and barely sweating or breathing while poor young Harry is panting and dripping. It’s another six games to love for me and my dear young friend the one to throw in the towel. I want to play more. I could go all night.

It’s like my dad says: “tha’s got to blow thee own trumpet sometimes son; no other bugger’s gonna do it for thee.”

And also: you ever see those Super Dry hoodies and t-shirts and sometimes think it says, “Super Rory”?

But enough trumpet blowing: one mustn’t forget humility and that there’s more important things in life than being able to move one’s legs lots, even when one’s legs are so magnificent to behold. I was lying on my bed the other day comparing them to Laura’s. Her feet were so small next to my size elevens. Her hairless skin so smooth and unblemished by muscles and scars. Mine looked like weapons; enormous clubs of meat you could wield and beat people with. Hers were like swans’ wings, glasses of children’s milk. Something soft and delicate. Both sets wonderful.

But there I go, more trumpet blowing…

So Laura came over on Thursday. Always nice to spend time with her but I guess since I haven’t expressed all the things I was thinking about over the last few weeks I’ve reached a bit of a bottleneck in my conversation and things have become a little stilted. I’m wont to experience that as her being not interesting enough – projection, of course – and that puts me off and makes me question the whole thing. And maybe I’m right to. And maybe it’s been good these last few weeks to spend time together and not get involved in love making and heavy heavy relationship chatter and just experience one another more clearly. Maybe I don’t need her after all…

She spends the night and it’s another platonic one and then in between work and tennis Friday Nicky comes over and it’s the first time I’ve seen her in maybe three weeks. We chat a little bit. I try and say some of the things I’ve been thinking about without being too negative towards her and she cries when I try and explain my, “I’m done with you” of the other week and says it’s hard ‘cos she still has feelings and I feel my own twinges too. It’s weird to feel things with her but know she’s wrong, and to feel so little with Laura but think she’s right. Am I being silly for being so influenced by my feelings and in looking for feelings that are strong? I mean, how did people make choices in the good old days?

In any case, I’m not making much sense. Truth is, I can’t remember what we talked about. But I do remember how we left it: Nicky mentioned some dance thing happening Saturday and asked me if I wanted to go and I thought, yeah, that sounds good. I said to send me the address. And then I went off to my various sports and refereeing shenanigans and got home twenty-four hours later and waited and…

No message. I could have called her but I wanted to see what she would do. I got in the bath. Eight thirty. Nine o’clock. Ten o’clock. I text her to say something non-pissy like, everything okay? you haven’t had an accident have you? And she replies with, no, why would you think that? I say, just couldn’t think of any other reason why you wouldn’t contact me about the dance thing and she says, oh, yeah, I just got done with the first part of that, probably won’t go to the second part. And there it is all over again…

All those months of not inviting me to things. All those times shunning me and stirring my feelings of rejection. And another example of something worse than a non-invite: the promised invite that never comes.

I tells ya, if she had been wanting to play games with my head as some sort of female revenge mission she couldn’t have played it any better. I’m rocketed right back to how I felt that devious lying unsleeping night in February and my head is once more filled with the ways I feel she’s let me down.

I was happy, you know, the three weeks we didn’t have any contact. But two hours in her company and once more she’s fucking with my head.

I’ve had enough, I think. I’ve got to stop this shit. I’m too goddamn nice. I forgive too easily. I’m cursed by always trying to see my part in it and understand and accept theirs.

I’ve refereed a game Saturday and been watched by an assessor and at half-time he says, you’re a good ref Rory but you’re too nice. You talk to the players too much. You need to be more badass. It’s like playing a role, being an actor. It doesn’t mean you have to become a complete wanker – but sometimes it can be good to pretend that’s what you are. Players need boundaries, need to know where they stand – and need to be told, sometimes, to fuck off. You can’t treat them all as sensible human beings. You’ll serve the game more by doing that. And the players and yourself too.

And second-half, I change my stance, and things are better all round. No more mass confrontations. A few yellow cards to calm everyone down. Not getting involved with people who aren’t seeing straight, just waving them away and saying, I’m not interested, get on with it.

Being a little bit badass. Which nobody minds.

And at the end of the game all the moaners and complainers shake my hand and say, good ref, one of the best we’ve had all season, and I shake my head and think, how can they say that after the grief they’ve just given me? But one guy even admits that he agreed with my decisions, just moaned to get under my skin.

Lessons, lessons…I’ll remember that one and use it to strengthen my duck’s back.

And parallels everywhere, of course…

She calls me a few times and I ignore it. Sleep pretty well and hope the opposite’s true for her, recalling that horrible sleepless night a few months back. She texts me in the morning and says she’s sorry and doesn’t want to be enemies. I say we’re not enemies but how much more should I take? She texts again and says she’s really sorry and sees she hasn’t been mindful of me or my feelings and should have been. Great truth in that: and what my peed-off mind wants to say is, see, she thinks only of herself, she’s selfish, that girl (with parallels in her lovemaking). I text her a few of the things I’ve found hurtful and deceitful and how even young promiscuous Harry’s been thinking she’s not been treating me well. Then I say I’m going out and not to text me back and that I’ll let her know when I’m good to talk. Being badass, I guess. Throwing up boundaries. Protecting myself.

Like I said, seems like I’m just better off without her.

And, like with the footballers, it seems like it serves everyone better every now and then to be a bit stronger and a bit less forgiving…

“Morning,” she wrote, an hour or so ago, “you’re probably busy but wondered if you wanted to have lunch on me. I owe you an apology and I realised where it’s all been coming from.”

So in ninety minutes I go and see what’s what. An apology and some revelations and a bit of understanding would be nice. And then, probably, time to call an end to this chapter. Opening the door to her just brings me stresses and headaches. Keeping her at arm’s length allows me to concentrate on my own life and joys. I felt awesome yesterday cycling around knowing that she wouldn’t be texting me or calling me and that I’d shoved her out of my head and my heart. I’d gotten my self back, just as I had the last few weeks before seeing her, and my self is pretty cool. It sings while it cycles speedily down country roads. It digs everything and marvels at the beauty of Yorkshire and shouts to the world and life, “I love you, you’re fantastic!” It likes being me.

…

I think that’s all the news this week. Elsewhere in the world the media got all excited about Maggie Thatcher’s funeral and a bomb in Boston, which pissed me off no end. I mean, personal tragedy aside, what’s it matter to everyone else? I fixed me up a little old radio from the fifties not too long ago and have this habit now of switching it on when I’m down in the kitchen making egg sandwiches or preparing tea – but, by God, the whole thing’s so weird and boring! All those silly voices chattering away. Phone-ins and pointless opinions from members of the public. Who cares? It’s all so dull. And then just ‘cos some nice white English-speaking cousins of ours get blown up it’s like the whole world’s got to stop turning and pay attention. But you know what? On the same day some thirty-odd people got blown up in the Middle East somewhere – probably nice working day-to-day souls also – and that hardly merited a mention. And you know what it says to me? (And yes, by God, I acknowledge it must frickin’ suck to be in the middle of it, to be family and friends, but we’re several thousand miles away.) It says that a nice white American life is worth a million times more than an anonymous Middle Eastern life and I think that’s bullshit. Allthose personal tragedies and acts of deranged cruelty are heartbreaking – but why the news has to go so overboard when it affects America is beyond me.

I think the radio’ll have to go for a Burton. It’s been pretty shortlived but I just can’t see the benefit, all those endless hours of spouted and shouted words, all that gloom and ceaselessly repeated chattering. Though it does sometimes help, of course, to put one’s own troubles into perspective. Like the lady who lost her arm in the 7/7 bombings who called in to talk about that and says, you know, you have to accept it, you get used to it, you move on and can’t let it spoil your happiness. She loses her arm and she giggles about it ‘cos there’s nothing you can do. And look at the way I am over losing a girlfriend!

It does put it into perspective – for a little while, at least. But then I start to think, well, one shouldn’t really compare oneself with other people so much, for whatever you’re struggling with is real for you no matter how trifling in the grand scheme of things. Plus: the death of a loved or the loss of a limb is pretty final and I guess you do have to accept it – but the loss of a girlfriend, the breakdown of a relationship…isn’t necessarily the end, and there’s things that could be done, perhaps – a call to action – decisions to be made – things to figure out.

I do hope you understand what I mean by that.

Satisfied

What an awesome day! Just got in from playing late night six-a-side football with some Christians and must say it’s good to be back playing and playing in a non-aggressive, non-shouty friendly game; aggression and shouting being the whole reason I stopped playing about six or seven months back (a lot of it mine). Lovely boys and lovely good-natured football and lovely to work them legs after a twelve-mile round trip ride up to Horsforth to referee a mad mental game in crazy strong winds which of course followed my three-hour shift biking round Leeds delivering packages and envelopes on that big old ice cream bike, which was a little hairy at times, let me tell ya.

But anyways, you rock up home not too long before midnight after that much exercise and eat a cheese sandwich and a couple of handfuls of dates (already had well over my usual half a kilo today, as my trumps will testify) and –

That reminds me! Oh my God, just like the best thing ever: yesterday I was reffing these crazy young guys I reffed last week at a five-a-side place (sent two of ‘em off and abandoned the game) and pretty early on I let one go and one of the players was like, oh my god, it stinks over here. I don’t think he considered the source could have been human but me being an honest sort I said to him, yeah, I just farted. And on they played – him mostly over in a different part of the pitch all scrunching his nose whenever he came near me and – wow, I got the giggles something chronic just thinking about the whole situation; also got it in my head that I’d go and drop one over near the goalkeeper – he was particularly obnoxious the week before – and that got me chortling even further, what with him being restricted to his ‘D’. The thing would have lingered a good three or four minutes and he would have been sitting in it, breathing it in. How cool would that have been? But decorum got the better of me and I spared him the experience.

Still, the imagining of it was joy enough.

– and now we’re to bed, all lovely tired and post-showered and feeling achey and fulfilled. Tomorrow’s more of the same – another morning’s delivering and then the afternoon to do whatever and an evening reffing eleven-a-side out in pretty Barwick (I could rock up early and get some country air) – and no doubt I’ll be achey and satisfied after that too.

Just thought I’d say. It’s good to write when you’re feeling grateful and glad sometimes.

To bed! Adieu!

T'aint watcha do...

I been thinking some more about Nicky, some more about the karma between us. Been thinking maybe I was a bit hasty with that “it’s over” call the other week, possibly there’s more we need to share, not necessarily for our relationship, but for the benefit of our souls. What was that based on anyway? Her sleeping with that guy in Ireland and me feeling rejected and also thinking I needed to clear the way to make something work with Laura. But I haven’t made anything work with Laura – still biding my time, which feels like a wise thing to do – and, anyway, it was all deservéd since I did the same to her (slept with someone and went on a date with someone new the first time she went there). Probably what she has with this guy is more serious and it’s obvious she doesn’t want anything more with me – hasn’t made efforts to contact or see me, for example – but what I’ve realised (and probably said already) is that it’s not her fault, just ‘cos I was wanting her doesn’t mean it needs to be reciprocated or that she’s done anything wrong in not wanting me. Rejection is what it feels like but rejection isn’t necessarily what it is. Should chocolate feel rejected and sad because I don’t eat it? Or should it just accept that it’s something that doesn’t work for me and I prefer other things?

Karma. Thinking back to Sophie and thinking back to the time in the build up to our breakup. Thinking of when I was working as a teacher and stressed out and despondent. Thinking of how I used to go walking alone in the woods of an evening and beseech the dark and the trees and moan for my predicament. So unhappy in my job. So wanting to break out and make a change and maybe go somewhere groovy instead of being stuck there in misery. And so unable to do what now seems the obvious thing and lay my head in her lap and tell her these things. Trying to figure it all out on my own. Not wanting to share myself with another. Convinced that was the right way to handle it. But isn’tt that just what Nicky did with me, the big realisation I mentioned several weeks back? And what a profound effect it had on me, and how I wished she’d behaved otherwise, couldn’t believe she hadn’t. But, yet again, by searching my own past I see I’ve done exactly the same thing. Everything little thing is karma or projection or lessons.

I think that maybe she never really gave herself to our relationship and that probably I should have seen it sooner. When we first got together she had plans to go to Mauritius but the whole thing kept getting postponed. A part of me wanted to tell her it was all meant to be so we could be together and maybe she shouldn’t go after all, could let go of those plans. But I didn’t, and she went. She was supposed to be away for six months and for those six months I looked forward to her return. I’m not saying I didn’t try things with others but she was always the one I thought seriously about. And then when the six months were up she decided to stay on another half a year. And then when she did come back she almost immediately went away to South America for four months with a friend. By this time we’d at least managed to spend a week or two together and committed to giving it a proper go. But wasn’t all this a sign of something? That having a real relationship wasn’t exactly at the top of her list of priorities, as it was mine? This is partly why I feel like I maybe wasted three years on her: we just didn’t want the same thing. I guess ever since I came back from Mexicoin January 2010 a relationship has been my number one goal, and for some reason I thought it could work with her. But now I look back I see that, though she wanted it, it wasn’t exactly her number one goal. Travel and adventures and gadding about and having fun were more important to her. Why couldn’t I see that? It seems obvious now.

And at the end, too, travel and gadding about and having fun and living life as though it’s a postcard are still where she’s at. New places, new people. Having things to talk about. She buys a van and she buys a yurt and everything’s complete. But, for me, it’s making it work with another that stays at the top of my list, and everything else – the hows and wheres of living, etc – are secondary to that.

Am I just a man among many destined to choose the wrong kind of woman time and time again? I know I’ve got to stop thinking back to Sophie – and certainly to extinguish whatever foolish candle I still hold for her – but there are so many lessons and parallels in that relationship I can’t help thinking it’s still useful for me to remember it. Used to think she, too, was a girl who was more interested in living her life for the things she could write on a postcard than the reality of it. And maybe I was the same also. Life is…

Life is weird. There’s a big part of me that lives my life, I know, for the memories I’ll have on my deathbed and the things I write herein. Or, perhaps more accurately, for the fear of what those memories, this writing might not be. It’s like I feel pressured to do interesting things, not repeat myself, not squander my time in what I judge as ‘nothingness’. The idea of doing the same thing every day, such as the majority of the world seems to do, terrifies me, seems like such a terrible waste. I want to look back and say, well at least I didn’t live no humdrum life. I want to reminisce as a dying old man that, for better or for worse, I did every foolish thing I imagined and gave it my best shot, denied myself not. I want to have happy future memories and a mind free of regrets of things not done.

Except…there’s another part of me that believes that’s not what life is about, that life is more about what you’re being than what you do. When I’m in this zone life doesn’t seem to be about doing at all, and the desire to create these awesome future old man memories appears rather foolish. This part of me looks at the world and sees that nearly everything people do is actually rather irrelevant and doesn’t make any rational sense. But what they’re being does. That’s the spiritual part, I suppose: the part that feels it’s not the events but the emotions behind the events that matter. Being loving and kind and compassionate and joyful in whatever situation. The part of me, I suppose, that is living for the memories of the moment after the old man on his deathbed has passed. Which is probably the more important time. Then the spirit can look back and feel satisfied in a life lived well, and in the states of beingness it experienced. To see that it grew in love, which is just maybe the whole entire purpose of life. I mean, love has always been, throughout all times and places, even where and when nearly all the doingness we have available to us today didn’t exist. So, rationally, life must be about being, with doing the side effect of that. Does it really matter whether I spend my years carrying water and chopping wood and doing not much else and nothing grand? Lahiri Mahasaya worked for the Indian railways, but inside he was a giant. He had joy and love, and when I think like this I know that’s what really matters.

I think about this a lot. I’m trying to find something to do with my life and I feel the pressure of making it something grand, something that pays well, something that society (and my mum) will be proud of. Because I’m smart and got a brain. To be a doctor or something. Be able to buy a big fancy house and show it off.

Is that at the root of all of this? Have I just hit upon some great truth about myself?

Or are these pressures real, worthwhile, what I should be aspiring to?

Would I be happier? A better person? Feel, at the end of my life and beyond it that I’ve done the right thing?

Typing like this I get more and more convinced it’s about what you’re being, that the doing doesn’t matter and, actually, I’d probably be better off just getting a job in a supermarket and being lovely to everyone I meet and going home to a family in a nest that I work to make joyful and having that as my priority. To let go of thoughts of needing to do something major and “change/help the world.” To live my life for the growth and the benefits of the soul rather than the egocentric dreams of a future dying old man. I mean, what does it even matter if do I create those amazing memories and have that moment of lying there dying and thinking back to how grand everything has been – to all the places I’ve been and the things I’ve done and the adventures lived – because, for sure, that moment will pass, and beyond that there’ll be another me, and that will be the one looking back – and looking back, probably, on that moment of glorious reminiscence as a vain and cute and unimportant folly. Are we not spirits? Or are we merely here to create excitement in this one lifetime? And who is it, exactly, that wants to live for imagined postcards and novelty anyway?

If I think about, I see that I can find this “spiritual” perspective within this lifetime too. It’s just that it gets jumbled up with other things. So, for instance, when people talk about my travels and adventures on the road I’m liable to get caught up in the doing part of it, the excitement and the thrill. But what they don’t realise is: a) it’s a lot like my good friend Siridharma once pointed out: “you only travel like that if you’re sick” (ie, in need of healing, looking for something, dis-eased); and: b) that what was actually so great about those years was what was going on inside (ie, the being and the discoveries and the joy of growth). In fact, if we’re talking about favourite memories and things that feel truly worthwhile – things I long to experience more of – it’s definitely realisations and moments of becoming something more than I once was that stand out. I mean, what is better than love? What is better than healing a wounded part of yourself? Than realising you no longer act in ways that bring you unhappiness? Than watching your understanding of how life works increase? All those are internal experiences and totally unconnected to whatever one might be doing. Was the great thing about hitch-hiking around America the things I saw and the people I met – or was it the realisation of the perfection of life and the experience of the higher, unseen, magical power and the change of heart I had? For all the wonders of deserts and nature quite a few of my greatest experiences took place in kitchens and petrol stations. They might not be my best stories as far as humans generally determine – but they are the moments I wouldn’t want to be without. All the past travel and adventure and exotic locations and stories I’m not too bothered about. But the growth I’ve undertaken and the deeper realisations I’ve been gifted I couldn’t imagine living without. They are what has given me joy and healed my heart. And, again, I wonder if I couldn’t have experienced those had I just stayed where I was and lived “a normal life” all along. Isn’t it striving and feeling that brings about realisation and growth? Or must it always have been the way it was, that whole odyssey of moving this body so hither thither around this globe pre-destined and necessary?

Well, I dunno, and that’s not the point. The point is…I’m not sure what the point is. That I’ve been musing on doing vs being? Though it probably isn’t a “versus” anyway; the two obviously work in tandem.

That I’m maybe using this as an argument into giving up all notions of “freedom” and allowing myself to finally live that “normal life” I’ve so long avoided with Laura?

That I’ve projected onto both Nicky and Sophie the idea of women who want their lives to be more about what they can write someone on a postcard than the nitty-gritty of adult responsibilities and ‘reality’?

That I’m trying to work out whether I really do need to do something like train to be a psychotherapist or whether I could live equally as fulfilling a life doing something simple and less headachey?

All good questions, all no doubt with answers that will soon arise. But what I’m thinking now is that first Paul McKenna exercise I did and how it made me realise what a massive amount of ego I have invested in being seen by both myself and others as “being different.” I don’t know why this is but I do know that it’s there, and that it’s been there a really long time. Who would I be without that? I’d be a nobody, just like everybody else. Such ego! And so I keep myself separate and weird and refuse to live like others and plot crazy shenanigans for the future stories that will differentiate me further and…

Wow. That’s kinda depressing huh? But the whole thing’s supposed to be about letting go of ego; maybe I should just get married and work a nine-to-five and keep inside all this other stuff and just let it shine forth from my eyeballs if that’s what it wants to do. But I don’t know how long I can carry on like this…

Another question Paul McKenna asked was, “what would you be if you lived beyond fear?” and the answer I gave: “a married writer.”

It’s always the same. It goes right back to that cave in Israelin 2011 and that week of absolute clarity fasting in the hot springs in 2010: I want a partner and I want to write. And what stops me? That…

I keep getting with the wrong women. Or I keep messing it up when I get with one. Or the one who’s been there all along and who is maybe the right one I won’t get with because: a) I’m afraid to be trapped, knowing it won’t fail but will just keep on going forever and ever; and: b) the worst thing ever which shines a very horrible light on me – that I wish that she was prettier.

I’m shallow. I’m making my choices based on the contours of someone’s face rather than all that important stuff I spout about love. I wish I was different. But, currently, I’m not.

But why that? What stops you? Ideas that friends won’t massage your ego by telling you your girlfriend’s a hottie? Ideas that people will wonder about why you’re with her when you could obviously be doing “so much better”? Ideas that you won’t be able to feel one hundred percent love when gazing at one another in intimate bedroom moments?

Or is that all just the excuse you’ve given yourself to not get involved? That moment when, several years back, you thought you wanted to marry her and then had a vision of your future self pulling back the wedding veil and…again, you ran away, and ran into the arms of someone ‘pretty’ but absolutely wrong for you. And thought them weird looking after a while anyway.

I mean, sheesh, I don’t get tired of this one – feel absolutely comfortable with her – and, yes, feel love and caring and kinship and all that good stuff. And even feel attraction for her – funnily enough, mostly when I’ve just opened my heart.

Attraction comes from the heart, not from the eyes. At least in my case it does. But…

Yes, that all may be the symptom of my reluctance rather than the cause of it.

And so I got with Nicky instead, and that may have been based purely on sex, because sex was what I understood as acceptance and wanting to be together and maybe love also, and three years later I’m right back where I started. She was wrong and not wanting what I said I wanted and probably somewhere inside I knew it even in the beginning – but is right of me to say she wasted my time? No. It was me that did that through my ill-thought out choices.

I’m an idiot. I’m a fool. Or at least I have been until now. I mean – Christ! – I remember going to see Laura back before I got with Nicky and thinking about her and thinking we could give it a go – but she wouldn’t sleep with me and I moved on. Why did I see that as the key to the beginning of a relationship? Sex: it just fucks everything up. I’m glad to be done with it, for now; glad that Nicky slept with that guy in Ireland and put an end to whatever crazy prolonged situation we had going on; glad that Laura stopped sleeping with me and that we now just share platonic beds and baths and don’t have that added confusion and propensity for hurt. It’s awesome. I remember that first platonic night and how I felt some stirrings and lust. But nothing happened and now, after four or five platonic nights, I feel nothing. I just want to sleep. The sleeping’s nice. I might not even be wearing anything but there’s nothing there of arousal. Much better. You just have to not give into it once or twice for it to pass. And everything’s more clear.

I should have been better with this in my life. Nothing fucked up ever came from not sleeping with someone. Although…I have also been thinking that part of my problem is that I get everything with women in the wrong order, or things overlap. And by that I mean…

Well, Julia, for instance – I was in love with her at 14 and 16 and 26 but because of various things – right back in the beginning my inability to tell her what I was feeling and seek to make anything happen – we didn’t go anywhere. And now I still think of her and think, not that anything serious will ever come of it but I’d sure love to have made love with her once or twice. And, stupid thing is last year she wanted that and I didn’t do it ‘cos I said I had to go referee instead and didn’t even end up refereeing! And so…

Well this makes sense in my head; you might just have to bear with me for a second…

Same thing with Sophie. Met her in ’99 but nothing happened until 2003, by which time I’d already met Laura and so everything got overlapped. But what if I’d not been such a pussyass and had managed to get it going with Sophie when we first met and we could have lived our time and been done with it and everything would have been clear. Same thing with Nicky too: met her in 2007 and dug her but didn’t say it and then it was 2010 before we got it on, but 2011 before we proper started seeing each other – should have done and said more the year before – and…well again, if I’d just been brave and done the natural thing – hey, here’s a girl I truly dig, let’s not just smile shyly and then not see each other for three years but why not instead have a deep long conversation and see where that goes and then maybe start seeing each other and then fall in and out of love and learn tons and be in the position we’re in now except without all the overlapping and wasted time and won’t things be much clearer that way?

But all I’ve ever done since I was a young lad with women is bottle it and keep my feelings inside and not really get round to it till years later. Except the few occasions when I haven’t done that – with Eve and Perlilly, for example – when nothing was kept back and every avenue was explored and gone for and – you know what? – funnily enough I don’t have any regrets with either of them, despite those relationships not lasting, because it all feels kind of in order.

Still, we did keep sleeping together long after it had ended. Eve and I broke up in April 2001 but slept together a few times that summer and then again in spring and summer 2010. And Perlilly and I broke up in April 2009 but carried on sleeping together until I went away to Mexico in July and then resumed it the next summer when I was back living in London, right up until Christmas 2010. I always do this and I’m not sure how I feel about it – broke up with Sophie in February 2007 but were still sleeping together for another eight months; broke up with Nicky in June 2012 but were still sleeping together until last month; and on-off lover Caitlyn who I first got with in May 2010 and have had a couple of dalliances with over the last six months. Even one night stand Justine from February 2011 came up for a weekend last summer and resumed where we left off.

And throughout it all there’s Laura, lovers for periods of several months in 2001 and 2002 and 2007 and 2012, though never nothing more…

In a nutshell, I’m a skanky ho and I need to stop. Plus, also, I need to give up with all the overlapping and one way to do that would be to go for it right in the beginning rather than biting my tongue and being a coward and letting the years pile up. Probably I still wouldn’t be thinking about Grace if I’d done that with her also. I tells ya, the next time I live this life – or the advice I’m going to give to my son (should I ever have one) – the advice for my future self – is this: go for it, my boy! Don’t hold back. It probably won’t come to anything in the long run but at least you’ll have made the effort and won’t dwell on it and won’t look back later with regret. So say those things to Julia aged 14. Kiss her under the swings and hold her hand and make her your girlfriend and your ‘first time’ and then always look back on it with fondness. And then years later, when you’re off in Mexico, go for it with Sophie – don’t let her go, fer Chrissakes – and be with her for a few years and learn a ton and maybe even stick with her – but, if not, when you one day meet a lovely girl in a kitchen cooking tofu and she offers you some (even though you’re just there to view a room in her house) – take it, and chat with her, and even though it’s Leeds do the thing you’d do if you were travelling and less hung up on habits and suggest a few hours and an evening together and see where it goes. And when she says she’s jetting off to another country either talk her out of it or go with her. And then it won’t be 2013 when you’re finally done with her but several years earlier and you won’t be in such a panic or a rush to get it on with Laura – who you probably shouldn’t have slept with in the first place (only did ‘cos you wrote an unwise letter to your mother; one that the I Ching would definitely have vetoed) – and all this mad overlapping business will be fine. Fuck, what a life!

Excepting, of course, those moments of recent days and weeks when everything has seemed just perfect and in order and all happening at the right time…

And excepting too the main reason that I have all this damn overlapping and never really letting anybody go: that I’m probably just too nice, and don’t get with people who aren’t nice, and don’t have it in me to dislike or not care for anyone, even if they’ve hurt me. I forgive and love and encourage and care for because it reflects well on me, feels like the natural thing to do. But just maybe being such a skanky ho and having all these headaches doesn’t. Oh, for a bit of Christian morality and lust-resistance! Oh, for a bit of proper good old Yorkshirehate of one’s exes when the relationship’s over and broken! But all I do is stay friends and think fondly of, and there’s not a one of them I wouldn’t go out of my way to help in any way I could.

Too nice. And even then, not as nice as I could be, should be, want to be. But…

It just occurs to me: there I was earlier talking about how doing stuff and creating awesome memories may be kind of futile when all is said and done (ie, when this current life is over) – but then…could it be that all these things I say I wish I hadn’t done are some of the things I’ll look back on from post-life spirit state and say, now that was worthwhile? I dunno – but it does seem like we learn more from our mistakes. And…well, from the perspective of spirit all that stuff’s probably good and groovy and suitably awesome grist for the mill, perhaps.

No. I really don’t know what I’m saying, nor expressing it very well. Point is, in a nutshell, I’m a really rather very complicated chap who thinks too much yet isn’t all that good at expressing it clearly and maybe sometime soon I’m going to have to stop, even though in there somewhere amongst all the gunk there do appear kind of genuine sparks of realisation and seeds of growth, like realising how hung up on being different I am, and how so much of my woman troubles comes down to shallowness and being too quick out the blocks – and, conversely, holding back – and…

And that’s the end for now. I think I might talk to Nicky soon and share some of my latest realisations. It might be useful for her and it might be useful for me. Seems like I stopped when it became more about her than about me but that’s hardly fair. Further levels of truth telling. Plus, no doubt something will come of it. I texted her yesterday to say that I missed her. Probably that’s true, beyond wanting to play any mind games – but I guess what I really mean is that I’ve been thinking about her and have things I want to share.

And Laura. And my house (ten days left). And my everything else besides…

It’s all up in the air eh? It’s all up for grabs? I wonder where I’ll be when May hits – ‘cos, for sure, I won’t be living here.

Canada? America? Wakefield? Mexico? Or just another temporarily empty vicarage in another working class part of Leeds, this time white and devoid of children on the streets?

Watch this space…

Awesome

What an awesome week that was! And what a particularly awesome day – woke up in Wakefield, had a yummy egg sandwich cooked for me, biked two or three miles to do an early morning game – good performance, nice chaps – and then biked maybe another ten or eleven miles in twenty mile an hour headwinds o’er hill and dale to line another. Plus, on the way back, stopped into a 5-a-side place I work at just for a glass of water and got asked to play a match and ran my ass off in that. And all that was already after being knackered after Saturday’s game and biking a good twelve miles then, plus reffing Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday, plus a new job I’ve started which is pretty tiring too. I feel great!

So, yeah, I started a new job – picked it up “by word of mouth” – always the best and maybe even only way to get a job – and had my first day Wednesday. It’s just cycling round Leedsdelivering DHL packages. Kind of like being a cycle courier except instead of a funky shoulder bag and a radio we ride special long bikes with massive boxes on the front that were originally used to sell ice creams at the Olympics. Leeds is a good city for that kind of thing, wicked compact and not at all hilly, but still pretty knackering even though the shifts are only like two and a half hours. Quite digging it so far though; we’ll see how it goes.

Ain’t had much time for much else this week, what with reffing pretty much every night and needing to take naps and being zonked. Did work an afternoon down at my dad’s updating his shop website and listening to him say mad things and sing songs in the pub singer stylee. Apart from that…well, the usual, really: just thinking about life and working through stuff and plodding my way back to 98% happiness 98% of the time. We’re definitely back in the high-eighties by now…

One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about this week is positivity and its opposite. Seems to me that I’ll often watch myself saying something negative when there’s no real reason – like if someone mentions they shop at Asda I’ll feel compelled to tell them I don’t shop at Asda and why – and lately what I’ve noticed is that I go away remembering that and thinking, hm, was there any real point in it? Did that bring anything to the interaction? I mean, I could just keep my mouth shut and wait for the Asda-moment to pass…

Monday it was kind of brought home by a Greenpeace fundraiser I got chatting to on Briggate; seemed like whatever I said to her she just had to say something negative about it, or introduce her own negative spin. Maggie Thatcher had died that day and she was all excited talking about how much she “hated” her (and Ghandi, and Mother Theresa). I just can’t see the point in that: hating anyone can only reflect badly on yourself, even when it’s Maggie Thatcher or Hitler. It’s like not seeing the point of life or something. And it’s just not attractive. But it was good to have that external reminder to work on not introducing unnecessary negativities myself.

Which is of course all ironic given the freedom of expression I gave my own ‘hating voice’ with regard to Nicky the other day – but I do hope you’ll all understand that was in order for me to see more clearly my projection and the lessons I needed to learn therein. And anyways, I guess there’s a memory also of writing about forgiveness and the clarity of that. I don’t hate her. I just have a bit of hurt – understandable, even if it was my own fault – and a desire to move on from the parts of me I saw reflected in her. Though I guess I’ve said all that before.

Anyways, working is good and physical activity is good and being busy is good and the healingness of time is good too. Time passes and you forget the people and things that cause you trouble – unless, that is, you continually write it all down and keep it stored forever and ever on hard drives, which is what I’ve done. Not sure about the wisdom of that. Though it does come in useful sometimes, like when one is pining for a past love – when one has an overly sentimental heart such as I do – and there are all those black and white reminders of the reality of such and such a person, beyond the rose-tinted fantasy. Don’t know why, for instance, I keep alive the spectre of certain people when I’m confronted with details of what they were actually like. Think I’m going to try and stop.

But not much to say really. A great week. A good day today. A nice (platonic) evening with Laura, eating fish and chips and falling asleep early and taking a bath in her amazing bathtub (about twice as deep as a normal one and substantially longer). Also one incredibly groovy moment when she was saying how it seemed like it was never going to work out between the two of us and I was musing how part of it was that, you know, when you’re first in love and thinking the other person’s perfect and you don’t know their annoying side and you’re all infatuated and lovestruck and out of your head there’s this real impetus that pushes and keeps you together and you’re so dazed you don’t really stop to think about it until you’ve grown all attached and co-dependent and, actually, that’s probably a good thing. But thing with her and I is we’ve known each other getting on twelve years and been through all that and probably more in this place of like, well, fuck it, shall we not just give it a go, it’s kind of rubbish not doing it and I’m not sure if I can be bothered not to, just wanna stop thinking about it. I mean, I think I said it better than that but that’s about the gist of it. Had been thinking that for a while but thought I could never say it to a woman, even though it seems sort of obvious, what with all their romantic fixations and stuff.

Anyway, all she did was laugh, and laugh heartily, and completely agree. I really found that awesome.

Reality, not fantasy.

Comfort and ease, not pressure.

What a groovy gone chick. I wonder what it would take to get me to commit? I did do an I Ching about her the other day – a week last Saturday, to be precise – and got the chapter “Family” (number 37; no changing lines) which seemed kind of clear-cut and obvious – but then when I read a different translation yesterday I wasn’t so sure. Yes, it said a lot about the awesomeness of the family unit and how when that’s in order everything’s in order – but it also seemed to counsel about not getting into it if your heart wasn’t really in it. Or rather, if you weren’t truly able, had an inability to do it properly. I wonder if I really have the ability, much as I say I want to and want to get over all the flakiness and unreliability I say I saw mirrored in Nicky. It’s all very well saying I’m ready to commit – but the fear of becoming trapped is strong in this one. Could I really stick it out? For eighteen or twenty years, at a minimum? I’m far from certain. And given that getting involved with Laura would probably very quickly mean children on the way, I’d like to be sure. For her sake more than my own. I dunno, maybe it’s only natural to feel this way and maybe everyone does and just gets on with it. But I really really really don’t want to be: a) a deadbeat dad; b) responsible for causing a struggling single parent mum; or c) trapped in an unhappy situation that leaves me chomping at the bit for Mexican beaches and other women. Though most likely what I’d find is domestic bliss and an end to all this restlessness of spirit and the words, “I wish I’d done this years ago.”

Fuck: how do you ever know?

And: anyways, that’s all just thinking out loud and let’s not get back on to mind things when everything’s been so groovy and I’m almost back to being myself, except hopefully new and improved. Though: it is good to think about these things and, hey, probably what I’m actually doing is covering my ass ‘cos in my head I have a few imaginary voices of cool and uncomplicated people who read this and think, God, what a loon, why can’t he be different? And to those imaginary voices I probably ought to quote some ancient dead Greek smart bloke and say, “ah, but the unexamined life isn’t worth living and therefore it’s actually me who’s the groovy one after all.”

Well, whatever; we’re all the same underneath aren’t we? It’s just that my underneath’s on the top and laid bare for all to see in the microscope of this blog. I quite enjoy it really – in fact, did I ever mention that I love love love this typing thing I do? Probably have done somewhere along the line. And ‘tis a petty fascinating time; most likely I’m going to really enjoy reading this at some point in the future – say five or ten years down the line – when the inevitable solution has been reached, whatever it turns out to be. Which reminds me – speaking of unknown and uncreated futures – I got given notice on my current house and’ll be moving out of there on the 26th of this month. A bit less time than I would have liked – especially given that I’ve really started to dig the area – but c’est la vie. More conundrums and possibilities and maybe freedoms…

Did I ever mention about this sign I’ve been seeing over and over plastered to the back of the local buses? “Discover your options, create your future,” it says. I dig that. I feel that’s kind of what I’m in the process of doing. At some point I’ll probably have to make a list of all the available possibilities and then pick one or two of them. It’s slowly dawned on me the last few years that the future isn’t something that’s pre-destined, some arranged and glorious situation that I’m just looking for the door to, but a blank canvas and I’m the painter. For too long I’ve been thinking someone was going to come along and paint it for me, or at least tell me what to paint, but it doesn’t really work like that, does it? Free will, man: what a headache! You create your own reality but how to choose what to create when there are so many options? No wonder people follow the herd. So much pressure to get it right.

And – oops – is that negative talk? Bemoaning my position as master of my own personal universe and shaper of my destiny? Rather a silly thing to moan about, don’tcha think? (he winks). Ah but…

Here’s some awesome memories from this week:

1. Coming home from reffing late Thursday night and a chap in the middle of a ghostly industrial part of town was pushing a fairly new Mini with the lights off, electrics seemingly kaput. So I locked up my bike and gave him ‘bout twenty minutes and helped him push it a good few hundred metres up the road back to his place of work. I was starving hungry but that was okay, I right enjoy pushing cars and helping poor chaps in distress.

2. Coming out of the uni late one night I was right in the middle of campus and pushed off on my bike not even going at walking pace but decided to try not to pedal and even though it nearly stalled several times I eventually got going and even made it over the rise that goes over the ring road and probably managed a good two miles of freewheelin’. How cool is that?

3. That moment with Laura in the bath, saying the thing you think you can’t say but which seems so perfect and obvious and realising that you can actually say it if the other person’s switched on and lived a bit of life, ‘cos then all you have is laughter and not young girl’s disappointed feet-stamping romance burst dreams.

4. Staying behind at my dad’s shop for a little while after he’d gone home just to finish off an internet thing (the repair guy upstairs was there to lock up) and in comes a punter and he buys a lead and there I am, twenty years on, writing the sale on the sheet – so old school! – and putting the money in the draw all sitting behind my dad’s shop counter just like I did when I was a young boy and how funky that felt.

5. Watching cricket in the park behind my house while eating fish and chips or drinking my own mug of tea. Nearly everyone round here’s some form of Muslim and I dig how they play cricket every day and the kids run around and the park’s pretty much always full. So much life on the streets. People of all ages hanging out. Seems like white people just stay indoors all the time these days. Or can’t think of anything to do beyond their TVs and computers and drinking. I like the outdoors social life and groovy little third-world shops that are open all hours.

6. Cycling round on my new job and spying all those offices and office-type people in their smart clothes – thousands of ‘em! – and wondering, wow, how did they get there, what are they all doing? and wondering if maybe I shouldn’t be joining them, being all smart and educated and talented too. I used to like working in an office. Seems like such a strange and magical world though when you’ve been out of it for a while.

7. Singing in the house. That’s awesome.

8. Typing, too. And was it this week I wrote about forgiveness? Forgiveness is pretty groovy.

9. Watching High Fidelity again in the bath on Friday. Amen for a night off and a lovely hot bathtub and a good film that never gets tiring no matter how many times I see it. Amen too for how the breaking up and the longing to get back and the eventual reconciliation – plus all the “she’s shagging someone else in between” – doesn’t bother me anymore. Another mirror: ‘cos it sure did when I watched it and read it a month or so back. Anyways, bathtubs are great – and how lucky and what luxury when you think of how so many of the people of the world are spending their evenings (innocents in Guantamo Bay, for example).

10. Dates and egg sandwiches and fish and chips and dhal and green tea and toothpaste and cycling hither thither and Pedallers Arms and my new local Morrison’s and the stool I made and my re-fixed bike and playing football and some really lovely friends and Shooting Stars and dreams and ideas and rubbish self-invented jokes about anti-depressed ants, plus the ever-present trumping; they’re all awesome too.

And now I’m going to stop at ten, rather than putting pressure on myself to think of like a hundred awesome things in the world this week, ‘cos ten’s probably enough. In any case, it’s just to remind myself that life is awesome and be grateful for what I have and not dwell too much on what I don’t – especially when what I don’t have is actually so piddling and inconsequential anyway (not that I can think of anything I don’t have that I might need).

Cheers! Adieu! Tchüss!

Forgiveness

Here’s what happened next: I refereed a truly awful game of football – skill- and moaning-wise – and then amid flat-tyre shenanigans made arrangements for an afternoon with Laura and, given my recent thoughts about her – wanting to properly commit to her after just about deciding she was probably “the one” all along – figured I needed to do something about Nicky. So perhaps against my better judgment and giving in to the pressures of time I called her up and told her I felt I needed to update “our situation” – given the last time I’d seen her I’d still been on that track of seeing if we could make it work – and told her I was over her. I guess I didn’t quite think that through. Or, in my thinking, I thought it would be okay, being as she’s been acting as though she’s very much “over me” anyway. But, instead, she hung up before I had a chance to explain. Which was annoying. Kind of put her back in my head again and opened up some kind of corridor between us when I’d been doing so well with the no texting thing.

Anyways, she was out of town and not answering her phone so there wasn’t much I could do about that. Laura came over just as I got back home – took me two hours from Bedquilts to Harehills, with various pumping up and puncture repair stops along the way – and we had a lovely afternoon together. We sat in the park behind my house drinking tea and watching cricket. Put a lazy Sunday afternoon movie on and napped. And then went up to Ecco Pizzeria in Headingley and ate amazing proper Italian pizza. I guess I’d thought at some point in the day I would say something about wanting to be with her in a really serious way but…well, I chickened out. Part of it because I wanted to be sure and wanted to avoid at all costs any possibility of hurting her again – and part of it because I’m a massive coward and will probably postpone it for as long as I possibly can. Except, given her thirty-eight years, I’m not sure that’s really that long…

In any case, she brought stuff up. She talked – most calmly – about how she wished I would say something along the lines of the things I was thinking. Talked about how she’d always wanted to be with me – and then talked some (with my prompting) about how actually, okay, yeah, probably she wasn’t really ready all those years ago, and had given it a go with people she thought she could make it work with, and so probably wasn’t all that different to me after all. But now she was in that same place of wanting the next time to be the last time, the proper time, the baby-making time and all that jazz.

I was so close to letting things out. But the best I could do was try and explain why I hadn’t been able to do it in the past and how I felt now. Things about the necessity of my karma and suffering with Nicky. A steadily-dawning belief that actually all was working out as it should and that, despite whatever my regretful mind might try and tell me in moments of high anxiety and distress, I probably couldn’t have done anything differently anyways.

We spent the night together. Absolutely platonic. And then talked more in the morning and the talking was lovely. Laura’s a grown-up. I feel so comfortable around her and always have. She’s funny and – in comparison to Nicky, and Sophie too – good company in the company of others. Very loving and caring and, beneath a bit of bitterness accrued from the times she’s been disappointed by me, I know she adores me. There’s such an ease about our time together, which always carried over into the lovemaking; perhaps the only girl I’ve ever been with where I truly enjoyed myself rather than just enjoying that they were enjoying it. Maybe that’s all part of what I find hard about being with her: for ease and feeling comfortable isn’t what I’ve been taught to understand as love, more “wanting” and “intensity” and “infatuation”. Probably I got that from my relationship with my mother and from movies and TV. And though I’m starting to see through that there’s still a part of me that wishes I felt about her the way I’ve felt about Nicky in recent weeks, mad though it was. People talk about being “crazy in love” but nobody really wants to be “crazy”; most of us, I think, would much rather be “sane.” Weird how these ideas of love as something mad and intoxicating and feverish perpetuate…

Laura says, for her, I was always the one, and felt it from the beginning. I guess there were times when I felt it too – even in the beginning – but then when I did feel it that was always my signal for running in the opposite direction and generally ending up in a relationship that I probably knew, on some level, wasn’t going to last. Or, at least, getting with someone who didn’t really want me so that I could fall into my safe pattern of feeling insecure and wanting them and trying to win them over.

I dunno: I’m teetering on the edge. I still have stupid thoughts of Grace in Colorado and I guess I’m loathed to say anything to Laura just in case those stupid thoughts turn out to be not so stupid after all. I tried the other day to get free of them though: tossed an I Ching about the whole Grace situation – why had I never thought of that before? – and got the most perfect reading that basically said, “forget about her, you’re being an idiot, to go anywhere brings misfortune, be patient and accepting and remain true to your fate” – which reminds me of when I tossed an I Ching about when I was first going to see Sophie, sitting right next to Laura back in 2001, and it said, “you can’t escape your destiny.”

Anyway, it was all pointing to Laura and I felt happy and grateful that I Ching’s words had cured me of Grace and put a kind of seal on those pesky thoughts of her, much as iboga had done for Sophie.

Except, as I later realised, for the first time in my life I’d read the wrong chapter – read 47 instead of 46, even though I’d written 46 down – and the whole thing was screwed up. Goddamn! I mean, 47 and its changing lines was goddamn perfect: but 46 made little sense. But was it a ‘coincidence’ that I read the wrong chapter? Or…

Well that’s a shame: I was all ready to put Grace behind me forever; but if 46 had any relevance it was a relevance that didn’t exactly discourage mad adventures. And so I’m back to trying to figure that one out. And thinking again about a spring trip to Canada. And a sneak across the border. And more of the mad-headed, impractical things that I’m supposed to be getting away from, that I found so unsettling in Nicky, and that are in polar opposite to the simple joy of my day-to-day life in the city I love. The life I have here in Leeds is actually quite awesome and would probably be even more awesome still were I to come home every day to an awesome woman like Laura. That’s what common sense would do. And thoughts of an illegal and dangerous trip just to answer the question of this girl once and for all fly totally in the face of all that. But I need my mind to be clear. I can’t commit to Laura without freeing myself from Grace. I can’t risk hurting her again. I need to know, and not just suspect and theorise and hope…

Although it all could be just another symptom of fear, my last get-out-clause. The product of a mental mind. That part of me that feels so much safer in unrequited love and the chase and rejection.

Common sense: there’s something I don’t have much of. And something Mother Meera, perhaps unique among spiritual teachers, heartily endorses. I’m all too much about intuition and feelings – but the older I get, the more I see the benefits of trying to employ a little bit of that common sense. Except…

I think back to my youth. I think back to the boy I was back in February 1998 and the life I was living in Charlottesville. Depressed beyond measure. Awaiting a criminal trial and a likely six-month jail term. Lost and lonesome and living in my car. Pretty much friendless, having alienated several dozen people. Jobless and without possibility of a job and having just had nearly my entire savings stolen, leaving me with just a few hundred dollars. And an illegal alien to boot. In a nutshell, the worst time of my life – and what would common sense have prescribed to get out of that? Fly home and retreat to the bosom of my family and friends and put my life back together in a country that was safe and welcoming and legal? Or sell my car and walk to the edge of town in the middle of winter and point myself in the direction of Arizonaand stick out my thumb and hope?

I’m pretty sure I know what common sense would have said – but I did the latter. And it turned out to be maybe the best decision I’ve ever made, and changed my life infinitely for the better, and maybe even saved it.

Although, who’s to say going home wouldn’t have changed and saved and improved my life also, to perhaps an even greater extent? I mean, had I done that and somehow managed to meet the same kind of people I met in those next twelve months in America then perhaps I wouldn’t be in the situation I am now, with my closest friends scattered thousands of miles around the globe and so often wondering desperately where all my soulmates are.

I guess you just never know – and maybe that’s the key here with Laura; I say I’m “desperate to know” and expect I should before I commit myself fully but…well, who ever does? Those are the risks you take huh? “If you want guarantees in life you don’t want life”…

I dunno. I didn’t expect this writing to go down this track just now. I imagine I shouldn’t be entertaining thoughts of Grace but they’re still in me, every day. Seeking her out would probably be ridiculous – but then it does appeal to the part of me that is adventurous and journalistic and always looking for a story. I’m not even that bothered or interested in the outcome, just got myself fixated on the idea. Much like, probably, Eve got fixated on the idea of Barnabé when we were together – was reading up on those days again yesterday (April 2001) – and, not being able to get him out of her head, slept with him and destroyed everything we had together and broke my heart. Though, on the bright side, she saved me from a life with her and brought me back to a more humbling existence and – well, it’s not insignificant that Laura was the first girl I met after that…

Good things sometimes come in weird packages. Someone lifted two grand from my car when two grand was my lifeline – or so I thought – and that sent me not into oblivion but onto the greatest journey and time of my life. Eve cheated on me and filled me with hate and mistrust and insecurity – but at the same time saved me from New Age delusion and psychospiritual imbalance and perhaps even bona fide madness. Not to mention probably raising a child in France in a severely fucked up situation. And now we have Nicky…stringing me along and using me and all the other things I mentioned a few days back – and, with it, bringing me back in touch with my humanity and my humility and taking me to an altogether new level of clarity with regard to romantic relationships and myself and commitment…

I felt forgiveness and acceptance for her today. I felt that, in truth, it wasn’t her fault, all those things I said the other day. She can’t help that she’s not able to commit to someone. She can’t help she wasn’t able to feel the things I felt for her. And she can’t help that I chose to give my heart to her so completely, neither in the beginning nor at the end when I was trying to win her back. How can I blame her for that? Maybe a different and stronger and wiser person would have been able to do something better for me, such as saying, this isn’t good for you, go away, I won’t sleep with you – but then that’s not her, that’s somebody else, and she can hardly be blamed for not being somebody else. It was my decision to pursue her. It was my decision to lay it all out on the line. It was my decision to open myself so completely and lay myself bare with everything I had. How can I blame her for that? It must have been confusing for her. But something kept us apart and, all things considered, I think I ought to be grateful for that. She’s an awesome person but probably not an awesome person for me to be in a relationship with. I guess it’s only now that I’ve seen there’s a difference between the two.

It feels good to forgive; I suppose I’ve forgiven myself somewhat too. It’s only a few weeks ago that I was feeling like a massive failure who had gotten everything wrong in his life – or, at least, the last ten to twelve years – but now that feeling has passed and my mental and emotional well-being has more or less returned. I had this idea my explosion of regret and remorse was kind of like a convenient lie I gifted myself to wake me up from a slumber. Sometimes you need a bit of a shock in order to move on. Sometimes a lie can be healthy.

In any case, things have settled down. I still need to be careful around Nicky, for knowing myself and knowing how keen I am to work through negative feelings and genuinely feel hate for no one and no thing, it’s then so easy to forget that this person simply wasn’t right for me and to let that healed hate and forgiveness transmute into not just fondness but also loving attraction and lust. I think of her today and of how nothing was her fault and actually she’s quite sweet – and next thing I know I’m thinking dirty thoughts and thinking, hm, maybe we could still have some fun times together after all. I don’t care anymore about what she got up to in Ireland– how could I, when I’ve done exactly the same? – and even though I still say sex means something, with the passing of a little bit of time, it doesn’t seem to mean as much. A week ago I was feeling used and abused and rejected; but now I feel I’ve gotten over that I’m back to joy and giggles and affection. Such a strange creature! But I can’t help the way I am: keeping things moving through me and harbouring no ill feelings seems an obvious way to maintain good cheer. I’m certainly a most happy chappy. I guess it’s working out.

Still, I shall be keeping her at arm’s length. Forgiveness is one thing but wisdom is another. I’ve a better idea now of what’s good for me and having sex with probably anybody right now wouldn’t be. Such little reward for such likely upheaval. Probably our whole relationship was bred out of an initial sexual encounter. It seemed so innocent and harmless at the time – but then there you are, three years later, hating that person – or, at least, their presence in your head – and wishing you’d never bothered with them; three years down the tube and nothing to show for it except the same reminders of how to make the next one better that I’ve made after every failed relationship. But one always enters into it with so much hope. And who’s to say that things will be any different with Laura? I mean, just because I’ve concocted a story about her and us doesn’t mean it’s any guarantee of success; I’ve concocted stories about all of them, it’s what I do. But on we go, I suppose, until we one day get it right or the spring of hope runs dry. Whatever that means…

Everything is karma and projection

I seem to have got stuck at some point this week. I’ve had the title for today’s entry – and what I imagine the content will be too – right at the forefront of my brain ever since about Wednesday, and been meaning to write it, and been knowing that I have to in order to move on. But for some reason I haven’t done it. Part of it’s because of busyness – increased workload, time spent looking for other work, a bit of social interaction – and another part of it’s because of thinking about some of Paul McKenna’s ideas. But, interestingly, I got stuck on his thing too, on Day 2, and I guess I felt I needed to get this stuff out of me to progress in that.

There were a few things he’d written in his book about negativity that intrigued me. One was to take the voice of the inner-critic and put it outside of you, pretend it was coming from the thumb on the end of an outstretched arm. I made mine come from a talking hand, like a naked sock puppet, and it does have a good effect. Makes everything it says sound kind of laughable. Like if you were listening to it from someone in the street you’d just think they were an idiot. Easy to argue with and/or move on from.

Another thing he talks about is a “negativity fast” and using various techniques to switch out of a habitually negative way of thinking into a more positive one. That made me think about my blog and the way I mainly write the negative aspects of my life, the things I want to get out of me. Has doing so, and doing so much, trained my brain to think of life in a negative way? To focus on the things I don’t like? Certainly, that’s been one of the problems in my relationships, for some reason zoning in on the 5% bad and failing to appreciate the 95% good.

Funny thing is, though, when I did used to write only about the positive things and how amazing my life was I got feedback saying, yeah yeah, blah blah, that’s not interesting, nobody cares, and I stopped it. Except now I come to think of it that was only one person who said that and that person was on anti-depressants. Weird that I would choose to take on board that lone voice when it was a voice of discouragement…

And none of this is what I really wanted to write about, just the preamble, the introduction to…

His Day 1 exercise was about the various aspects of self we have within us and getting to look at those. One thing I realised from doing that was how big an ego-investment I have in thinking of myself as being different from others, and how that perhaps impacts on me negatively. The final part of it was in thinking of someone you dislike and looking at the reasons why. In truth, I couldn’t really think of anyone, save for a couple of authoritarian bureaucrats – cold, inflexible, made me feel powerless and impotent – but of course there was always Nicky…

I’ve been trying not to think of her. I’ve been trying not to think of her in negative ways. I understand so much of it’s projection and karma – maybe all of it – but what I’ve realised is that understanding and accepting that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t go into it. Many of Mr McKenna’s techniques may be about minimising negativity, but another thing he says is, if things keep recurring there’s probably a very good reason for it and a lesson for us therein. And the words I have in my head have certainly been recurring. They don’t disappear when I refocus or my mood changes. I can run around a field and feel awesome and free – but when I settle down to sleep or think about what I’m going to write next, they’re still there. And I’m a little bit annoyed that I’ve waited until now, Sunday morning, to set them down. But better late than never. For the truth is…

I hate her. I hate what she’s done to me. I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve come to realise that she’s been treating me really shittily, for quite some time now. Always content to come over to mine and take my love and attention and affection – to take my sex, too – sometimes getting herself an orgasm or two and leaving me with none and then going home straight afterwards – but blanking me out of every other aspect of her life. One time she said she was going to a party and I said I was lonesome and sad and could I come too and she said no. Another time she mentioned having a fire and would I like to come – and then when it came to it, and she did it, she didn’t bother inviting me. And then when she’d tell me about going for meals with friends at the curry house at the bottom of my street or sledding in the snow and all the other things I would have liked to have done – her knowing that I wanted to meet people and get out and was going through a bad time – she could have introduced me to people who could have been my friends – but she excluded me from all that, kept me at arm’s length, just took what part of me she wanted and rejected the rest. Kept me dangling and stringing me along all this time. Fucking me and using me for sex and companionship when she herself was lonely. Cried her tears when her own life was confusing and had me console her. Fuck! How I used to write about her being “too nice” – when it was me who was too nice. And still I carry on being so…

She makes love with me a week last Wednesday, the day she flies off to Ireland to see some other guy and probably fuck him too. We did it unprotected and she says she’s not going to do anything about it, that if it happens it’s meant to be and probably just what we need. But I turmoil and writhe thinking that’s just about the most fucked up way to introduce a new life into this world – I want them to be wanted, for the moment of conception to be beautiful – not some retarded fucked up situation where the mother of your child is getting boned by some other guy while your semen’s still fresh inside her. And thank God the I Ching worked Her magic and got things sorted. Thank God that’s not going to happen. I may have turmoiled and writhed at the time – but what I realise now is how insane it all was, and how insane she was being. How frickin’ unreliable and impractical and weird. What the hell was going on in her head? And what the hell was going on in mine that I should have fallen for one such as this? It beggers belief, the madness that love can induce. I’m so, so glad that nothing came of it.

Her going to Ireland is what seems to have snapped me out of my love-induced daze. I’d tried my goddamn hardest to show her the changes in me and work to not let this one go, to at least try. I do still think she’s an awesome person – but what I’m thinking now is just ‘cos someone’s an awesome person it doesn’t mean they’re an awesome person to be in a relationship with. They may be smart and fun and make good decisions in their own life – but it don’t mean they know how to work things out with another. She’s totally non-committal. She always had one foot out the door when we were together. I found the birthday card she made for me for my 36th – when things were still pretty groovy between us – and it said inside it something like, “I wonder where this year will take you?” You? You!? What about “us”!? And all those plans she was always making about travel and going away and living in a yurt and biking down the Rockies– they were always individual plans, never things that we did together. And then she had the nerve to complain ceaselessly to me about the lack of “togetherness” in our relationship and scorn any suggestion I wanted to make about her possibly “projecting” that. Fuck me, she was ridiculous. I knew she was a free spirit – as am I in some regards; it’s probably what brought us together – but her levels of non-commitment were far in excess of mine. I can’t believe I gave my heart to this girl. And therein lies lesson number one.

Paul McKenna says when a negative emotion keeps on recurring and won’t be shrinked away it means there’s something for us to learn from it. And, certainly, I need to learn to not give my heart to someone who doesn’t deserve it. To get to know them first. To find out who they really are. Every single time I end a relationship I say the same thing: get to know them next time. Take six platonic months to find out the real person. Go beyond that period of infatuation and lust and thinking them perfect because that’s all they’ve ever shown you. And then maybe you won’t get your goddamn fool heart broken when they shit on you.

She, on the other hand…

Tuesday I’m all done with her. I’m committed to washing her out of my hair and I’m moving on. But that evening she calls me up and says things about missing me and how one day everything seemed to remind her of me. She cries and asks herself why she is the way she is, why she can’t commit or take the love that’s offered, that she believes she wants. It’s giving me hope, I guess. Or at least helping to lead me back into confusion, stringing me along. I wonder what happened in Ireland and wonder if maybe her seeing this guy out there hadn’t quite turned out as she’d hoped. Maybe the cold light of day and all that. Some sort of realisation, like me and this girl I went on the date with, wonderful though she seemed, a knowing that there wasn’t anything that could work in the long-term – or the short-term really – and that the long-term is where I’m at right now. But still I want to know…

I call her Wednesday morning and ask her if she slept with him. She hesitates. She says, “I’ll be honest with you, I did.” “In the end,” she says. In the end? What the hell’s that supposed to mean?

But all I say is, well thanks for telling me and good luck with that, and then she says maybe we can talk about it later and we say goodbye. I’m glad I got to know. But instantly I’m right back to…

…that night she lied to me right to my face so she could go off with that other guy at the beginning of February. To the thoughts and words I was having then. Go fuck yourself! Bitch! All that kind of thing. Kind of wishing I’d left it there. Kind of ruing spilling my heart and my guts and doing things with her while I was doing my damnedest to not let another relationship die due to silly mistakes. I danced with her, I made love with her, I took her on a beautiful memorable date – big wheel and bowling and lavish sushi – and it was all for nothing, save me getting to experience me in a really good and beneficial way. But the fact that I did it with her…as though the memories are forever tarnished…of big wheels and sushi and of dancing with another woman. How I wish I’d saved myself, not given my heart. But time heals all and we forget these things quicker than we can imagine.

She’s fucked up. She’s insane. That she would nearly impregnate herself with me and then go off and sleep with some other guy and yet still be telling me she would have had my baby and raised it together. That she’d been so goddamned adamant about not flying – and then flown to see him anyway. And that night after I’d read High Fidelity and decided in my bones that I needed to stop fucking about and step out of the fantasy and into real life and had pretty much proposed to her – how she’d said, I want to be alone right now, I need some space, I don’t want to jump into anything, want to take my time with the next person – how all along in her devious bitch heart (I hate to type the word “bitch” there and don’t really mean it, just giving voice to the expression) she was already plotting to see this guy and texting him and skyping him and how I had to intuit it and suspect it and ask her outright to get the truth of, “did you meet someone you’re interested in?” and – how many hours anyway would they have spent together before she jumped in the fuckin’ sack? And we two supposed to be some sort of ‘spiritual’ and ‘enlightened’ people – but so, so lacking in the kind of basic teenage morality that even the drunks in the pubs seem to possess. How could I be such a fool? How could I believe all the lies she told me?

Those last questions are all lines from a Mothers of Invention song, by the way, which kind of sums up exactly how I feel about all this at certain points in the day. Fucker.

And what else? Now I’m letting it all out and everything’s done and finished I might as well go the whole way. Pissed off about her bullshit about money, how she’d invited me out one night for pizza and then when I said I just ate she said, okay, well that’s probably good ‘cos I need to save money anyway for when I move to Ireland and don’t have a job – but then how much was a frickin’ last-minute plane ticket to see this guy she wanted to bone three days after nearly having my baby?

All I can do is shake my head. Fuckin’ women! And they wonder where they get their reputation for deviousness. Though I guess they’re not all like that. I hate her I hate her I –

Well I guess this is maybe the point where I turn it all around and say, “yes, but it’s all my karma and projection” – which is basically the truth of the matter. Indeed, I can’t think of anything in there that isn’t a reflection on me. Sure, there’s lessons, like the one already mentioned – don’t give your heart away to somebody before you’re fairly sure that they’ll treasure it – but even that’s more about me than her. I can’t change her, only myself. I can’t make her the kind of person who won’t shit all over some guy’s heart – but I can make me the kind of person who won’t give my heart to someone all because I like the curve of their breasts…

I got pissed off with her the other week ‘cos she was talking about when she was really in love with me and it was all from when we didn’t even know each other, when her ideas of me were far stronger than the reality of me. I guess she wanted to say it as some kind of show that she did once want me, had once fallen for me – but what consolation was that when it wasn’t really me but just her imagination of how I was going to be? And even when I pointed that out all she could do was say, no, but when I really fell for you it wasn’t in my head, it wasn’t before I got to know you, it was that moment sitting in the kitchen at St Anns when you were playing guitar and I was knitting and…and I was like, yeah, that was after we’d spent about ten hours together. Fuck me! This crazy ass world of falling in love so quick and giving so much of ourselves and our time based on such fleeting little moments! I can’t believe it. And I can’t believe I’ve done the same. Three years I’ve wasted on this girl! Three years, all because I liked the swell of her breasts and imagined she was a good person and imagined that she liked me. Three years when I could have been with someone else building something real instead of squandering precious time on some flighty non-committal hippy traveller who was never really in it for real and didn’t have the first clue about what it meant to truly be with someone…

But I really hope you see the irony in that sentence. For even as I type it I know what it really means. Yes, she may be a flighty non-committal hippy traveller, and that may be bloody annoying – but she’s not the only one. Everything I’ve said about her – every little hateful thing – is naught but a reflection on me. The world is a mirror. You attract what you are. You learn from everyone and everything and you absolutely get what you deserve. I deserved her. I got what I needed. She was me – at least a part of me – made manifest in the external world so I could see it so clearly and make up my mind about whether I wanted to continue to be like that. And, Lord knows, I don’t.

I’ve been so non-committal. I’ve run away from love. I’ve been avoiding it for such a long time. I’ve always had one foot out the door. And – Christ! how those words come back to me – pretty much everything I’ve said about her above has been said to me at one time or another. How Sophie would accuse me of mindgames. How for years afterwards Eve would want to know if I wanted to be with her and all I could say was, “I don’t know.” I thought I was being honest, but all at once I see the cruelty is stringing someone along, and understand exactly what Nicky’s going through. I can’t be too mad, wounded though I am, because I know life isn’t so clearcut, especially when you’re a commitmentphobe. You never do know because you’ve always got to keep your options open. I don’t think I’ve ever closed any door, and perhaps that’s why I stay friends and lovers with all my exes for years after the relationship ends. I just thought it was ‘cos I was a nice and cool modern guy, but maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it’s a lack of that good simple teenage morality I keep talking about. Like…

Fuckin’ Nicky, man! How could she fuck me one day and then go fuck some other guy the next? How does she think that makes me feel, or him? What kind of basis is that for a new relationship, even beyond me? I think, God, how did we become such hussies? But the real question is, how did this happen to me? How did I lose my moral compass to such an extent? And what can I do to get it back?

I never used to be like this. I never used to go from woman to woman. I was always a strict serial monogamist and though I had a few one-night stands when I was younger once I stopped drinking that pretty much stopped and sleeping with someone you liked generally meant being in a relationship with them. Aged 22 to 24 I went something like 27 months with only one brief one-month relationship sandwiched in the middle, basically celibate. I shake my head now remembering how I used to share beds with girls during that period – even with the pair of us naked – and not want to have to sex. I’d say, we’re not missing anything, and turn them down. Just wanted pure friendship and love. No complications. Back then I was acutely aware that sex brought headaches into your life and without it life was groovy and good. But I guess I lost it somewhere along the way. All for an hour or two of sweaty pleasure! What the hell went wrong with me?

I met Eve, and when we made love I felt like she was every woman I’d ever been with, a kind of seal and summation of the experience, and a moving on. It was beautiful and good. But then of course I put my heart into it and tried to make it into a “relationship” and my heart got broken. I was with Laura and Sophie and after Sophie I had that moment of wishing I’d never been with anyone, envying the Christians their pure-eyed virginity and the innocent fumbling joys of their wedding nights and then years of learning together, with not another soul in their heads. Still I tried to be monogamous and at some point I decided it was screwing me up. I’d lost Laura because I didn’t want to be dishonest about wanting to sleep with Sophie again. And then I lost Sophie because I didn’t want to keep Perlilly from her. I believed in honesty and not screwing more than one person at a time and I tried my hardest to keep everything above board and not hurt anyone. But when I looked back on all that and saw how I’d lost opportunities for love by being so upfront and open I changed my mind about it, thought maybe it was okay to sleep with more than one at once while you decided which one to go for, and maybe it is. Indeed, recent troubles with Laura and Nicky were probably again caused by my being upfront about it. Except, what I’ve realised is…well, now that I’ve been on the receiving end I’ve realised it fuckin’ sucks. That sex does mean something. That it’s not just like playing squash with different partners and why can’t everyone just be okay with that? That it’s not just some New Age idea about non-attached “energy swapping” like I once read in some book somewhere and thought was probably the way it should be. It means love and acceptance and wanting and intimacy. It means sharing and giving yourself and saying to another, you’re special and I trust you and I pick you out. It means heart and emotion and honesty. And it fuckin’ hurts when the whole thing is turned against you.

I look at Nicky and I wonder about her morality. How one I felt could be so “good” could use sex so flippantly, so promiscuously. But all she is is a reflection of me and I know without a doubt that’s exactly what I’ve done. I was even in bed with someone the first time she went to Ireland, even though I didn’t want to be, just kind of went through the motions so as not to disappoint them, and thought only of Nicky. Somewhere down the line I’ve lost my moral compass. I’ve tried a certain way of being and I’ve now decided it doesn’t work. I want to get my direction back. I want to treasure again this special and precious aspect of the human experience. And, to be honest, the last few months I’ve been doing that. Laura’s back in my life again, but we’re keeping it purely platonic, despite a few shared beds. And – whaddya know? – it actually works better that way.

Nicky was my teacher. She embodied all the crappy, relationship-busting parts of myself and served them on a plate and said, here, take ye and eat, see how you like it. And she served me up my past karma too, of how I had been with Sophie and with Perlilly and with Laura. She shovelled it down my throat until I choked and was sick, could take no more. Made me scream out for morality and commitment and something true and truly loving. I’ve been such a goddamn ass. I’ve been everything I’ve said and felt about her. Insane, unreliable, flighty, non-committal. I’ve been impractical and dwelled in fantasy. I’ve always had one foot out the door, lost half my life to dreams of travel and other places, other people. I’ve strung people along and confused them and given them false hope. And I’ve fallen in love so many times without really knowing what I was getting into, without thought, just going with the flow. But I want so many different things now, and I want to be different too. I’ve been thinking about the kind of person I want to be with after Nicky and what I’ve realised is that that’s not really what it’s about. I have this list, I guess, and it goes something like: I want to be with someone honest and committed and truthful and sexy and funny and loving and open and willing to work at things and truly together and not running away and moral and sharing – a kind of anti-Nicky really – but what I’ve realised is that, actually, the thing to do there is lose that word “with” and then read it again. And then it all becomes clear: I want to be someone who is honest and committed and truthful and loving and moral and…

It’s more about who I am than who they are. You attract what you are. Everything she was, I was too. The slowly dawning truth that we’re all one and that the reason you should do unto others as you would have done unto yourself is precisely because everything you do unto another will one day be done to you. Everything she did to me, I earned. Everything she did to me I’d already done to her or to someone else I was romantically involved with. Every little thing. I can’t bemoan – well, I can, but only as part of the process of coming to this truth – because even though it hurts it’s a hurt I’ve already unleashed into the world, through my own unknowing and ignorance. I thought sex meant nothing and could be splashed around willy-nilly – if you’ll pardon the expression – and I see now I was wrong and, probably, all those devout religious types were right. It is something special and sacred and…well, the thing is, though, that they don’t tell you why you should keep it sacred – or at least not the right reason – that it’s displeasing in the eyes of God; that you’ll go to hell – no, no: no such nonsense of that – but purely and simply because it can cause a lot of freaking headaches and heartaches for yourself and for others – not to mention wasted time – and that given the rewards it’s just not worth it. I mean, maybe it’s okay purely for fun – though I’m not so sure about that – but…well, this is all just a reflection of where I’m at right now – and where I’m at right now is not wanting it except in a committed relationship. Wanting lots of it, yes – but with a woman I love and with a woman who wears my ring. And I’m starting to think I know who that woman is, and probably always was…

I guess I should thank Nicky for bringing me to this place. By showing me what I didn’t want from another, or want to be in myself, I feel more clear than ever. At some point in the middle of our relationship – yea, even when we were happy – I became convinced I was no good at them and maybe never would be. Funnily enough, through this one failing, I now feel more confident than ever. I seem to have finally grasped the idea that it’s not how the other is – obviously it’s important to be on the same general page as your partner – but how you are to them. And in grasping that I realise how that not only makes things better for the relationship and for your belovéd other, but also for yourself. It’s lame to go around thinking your partner should be this or that – but it’s awesome to go around knowing yourself to be a loving and good person, and demonstrating this in your daily life. I’m not saying you ignore abusive behaviour with blithe smiles and flowers. But I am thinking it’s what you bring to the table that enables your joy, not what you expect and demand from another.

Nicky once wrote me a little thing about “what love is” while we were together, probably in response to my foolish musing on it and whether it really existed or was important. It was kind of sweet but, I felt, a little bit shallow. Kind of like her, I guess (he winks). It said stuff about watching movies together and giggling at trumps. Cuddles and sitting by the fire. Which is all good stuff but I think there’s more to it than that. I found that again the other day and had a think about it. I wrote my own list of what I now think love is, of what I want from a relationship. It went a little something like this:

Love is…

Being honest with one another

Making the effort

Sticking at it through thick and thin

Laughing lots

Working as a team

Commitment and not having one foot out the door

Being brave and showing vulnerability

Saying the difficult thing

Cuddles, kisses and affection

All kinds of sex, but something more than lust

Making plans and decisions together

Saying “I love you” and showing it too

Encouragement and compliments

Gratitude and appreciation

Treasuring the good things and seeing past the bad

Sharing time and troubles and joy

Helping one another through the trials of life

Being the best you can be

Dancing together

Having fun

Giving yourself, your heart, your everything.

Love is for giving

Not for getting

Obviously much of that has come out of experiencing the opposite with Nicky, and deepening my realisation of what I actually want and what I’m determined to try and do next time. All those things may change, of course, but I’m pretty happy with them as they stand. When I got with Nicky my only thoughts about the person I wanted to be with were that they were decent and attractive and didn’t give me hassles, so I suppose I’ve come a little ways at least! And I guess typing that I realise that, in her, I got what I wanted back then – but now I know there’s more to it than that.

Wednesday morning, after finding out she had indeed slept with the guy in Ireland, I knew it was truly over between us. I could find nothing of respect for me in her actions, nor caring, nor love. I guess it was just a sign that she had well and truly moved on and wasn’t really interested in making it work with me. As I said way back at the beginning of this entry, I was returned right back to hating her and, more precisely, hating the way she made me feel – or, even more precisely than that, the way I had made myself feel in relation to her. I needed her out of my life. I took the few things I had that reminded me of her – a lamp, her bike, a Moleskine notebook she bought me for my birthday – and delivered them to her house, along with a copy of the “Love is” list above and that 36th birthday card with the word “you” circled in red pencil. She later returned the notebook with a note (I was out when she posted it) saying:

“Rory,

It’s pretty rude to return people’s gifts to you back to them. Your version of love that you have written in your poem is perfect and I feel saddened that we missed lots of those aspects together. Hopefully we can both enact this more in the future. Rory, I wish that I could feel now the love you feel/did feel for me and I don’t know why I have so much resistance to returning to it. Fear? Mistrust? Stubbornness? I’m scared really – that things will just return to how they were before, scared that I’ll get hurt again, scared that what you were presenting me with these last few weeks was too good, scared that our connection would get lost when we took it out of the confines of your flat and into the world, scared that I’ll lose myself again, scared because I found such a kindred soul and now I can’t handle it? Rory I miss you and I love you but I can’t seem to do anything about it.”

So naturally that made me feel good, and feel like I’d gotten a little bit of the power back in this relationship, that had been so one-sided of late such was the crushing nature of her victory over me. Then I called her and apologised for the ‘rudeness’ (rude?! ha! what a crazy word that is – especially when you consider some of the things she’s done to me of late) and she cried and said she missed me and didn’t know why she was the way she was. I listened. There wasn’t much I could say really. I felt totally done with the whole thing, and accepting of my pain and lessons and karma, and ready to move on. I’d lost her and, for better or for worse, she’d found another. Maybe that would come to nothing – and perhaps even be a reflection of things I had recently lived – but, you know, that’s her karma to deal with. I kind of hope it does come to nothing and that one day she’ll come back to me and say she was a goddamn fool and expression a realisation of the same kind of mistakes that I have. At which time I’ll be with someone else and be happy. I guess that’s kind of shallow but, ya know, what the hell. Whatever gets you through the night, right? Except I’m starting to believe that women don’t do regret and remorse and apologies and realisations in the same way that men do. At least not in my experience: they just want to project and make us feel bad. And they’re good at that. And I don’t even mind. Just sometimes wish it was something approaching a two-way street.

In any case, I’ve got to go referee football now. I’m not sure how to proceed with Nicky. I was all done with her and feeling awesome yesterday after some I Ching readings that seemed to clear everything up – but then like a goddamn fool I called her up to “make sure she was okay” (read: “listen to her cry some more and say how she misses me and made loads of mistakes”) and, wouldn’t you just know it, she was. Or, at least, she was keeping herself busy with loads of other things and dreams and schemes and the re-connecting made me feel bad. Probably I did wash her out of my hair but then put her right back in it. I wonder if I’ll ever learn. And I wonder what’s going to happen next…