Clockwork

I once observed to Sjors that life without him was clockwork, not life.

It has been three weeks since his last ugly message to me, four months since I last saw him, and more than a year since he had hope that we would be together. In the first week of October, I will find the two-year anniversary of the day that I first saw him, jaunty in his blue uniform, striding down the hall of the C4I building. In that moment, everything changed for me: all my assumptions about the way that life and love worked. My soul rejoiced, cried out in recognition: "There you are! Where have you been? I've been looking for you for 33 years!"

It is probably true that I will never see Sjors again, but I try not to ever think about it directly. I look at the fact in my periphery or glance at its reflection. The way you are told never to look directly at the sun or it will burn your eyes and blind you. The truth is: I have not been truly "seen" by Sjors for much longer than a year already.

After fighting Mac in that bizarre e-mail correspondence, and filing in the Italian criminal courts, and watching Sjors lie to me again and again, trying to deceive me the way that he has already deceived himself; I am beginning to recover. I do not suffer the crushing depression that contaminated everything for more than a year. I work on as many projects as I feel I can take on. I try to live as much as it may be possible. 

But no matter what I try to tell myself, I know that I will not be whole again. Back in the days when I believed that there were multiple people in the world whom you could meet and attach to: many men in the universe who could be compatible - I thought it was just a matter of finding someone suitable and loving. But for me, this paradigm has become a lie and I know it.

This is the catch about the soul-mate: when you lose that person, you realize that you will always be half-alive. Half finished. You will live a life that is clockwork, not life.

Emily was here for nearly two weeks. We were in Florence, Rome, and drove along the Amalfi coast. This time, I saw beauty. And I enjoyed her company so much. I was happy to have her near. I was not perpetually confronted with the horrendous sense of loss and despair that has accompanied me everywhere for so long.

But I am also very alone. I feel inside me all of the pieces that are missing, and everything else rattles about restlessly. There is the constant in and out of my breath. And the whirr of clockwork.