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…