Question for Sibyl

Yesterday, I went on a date. With someone who is available.

 

Just because he's available doesn't obligate me. But it is a far far cry from the other men I've involved myself with: men whose personal obligations and situations excluded any possible future. That was the way I wanted it. Maybe I still want it that way. It is easier when you don't risk harming them. When you can keep your own counsel and never let them know the contents of your dark heart: you cannot give yourself because you've already given everything and that there is an ugly gash inside. When you meet only briefly and do not risk exposing yourself to the truth.  

 

There is a particular cruelty in dating when you know that you have already met your soul's match. A kind man tells me, "I'm still looking for that person. I guess I've never found her." It is kind because he's indicating that he's open to the possibility: maybe I'm her. And I politely shut my mouth because I'm thinking: "I know the name of my soul mate. I know where he lives. I know the contents of his soul. I know that he betrayed me - but I know that I will never be with him and every day will be pain for me because I lack him."

 

I told Glen this once when he ached for me in my sadness and told me that he wanted me to have those myriad of experiences that you can only have in a long-term committed relationship. I told him what I knew then: that I would be alone. 

I said, "What man would want to be with me if he knew that he was not my first choice - if he knew that I would fly to be with Sjors in a heartbeat if I could?"

"There are men who would still love you. Still want you. Even in those conditions," he told me.

His tenderness broke me. But I don't know that I can believe him. Even the best of men would learn to hate me for it.

 

Is it a sign of healing, or strength, or delusion, that I went on a date? I will not act out of fear. I refuse to be with someone simply because I'm afraid of being alone. But I do have a glimmer of some hope: that there may be some form of peace for me in the future. That maybe Glen could have been right.

 

In an air of fatalism, I took Patrick to the Temple of the Sibyl in Cumae.

 

The Cumaean Sibyl prophesized by Singing the Fates and writing on oak leaves. Her temple is carved out of the rock in a strange, long tunnel the shape of a trapezoid. There are niches and ridges carved in seemingly random patterns. It is cold and dark and damp in the cave - what a place for prophesy!

 

When the Sibyl sang your fate, what would that be like? Do you ask a question? If so, what would you ask? Last year, I might have asked, "Will my death have meaning?" because that was the only meaning left in my life.

 

I do not ask about my future happiness. I do not ask about my career or the possibility of children. I do not have it in me to ask the Sibyl anything. I suppose I'm just grateful that I did not die. Do people who come so close lose all purchase on the future? Is there any longer any "Fate" for them, or do they exit the pattern?

 

I'm grateful that there are moments of forgetful pleasure for me. I'm grateful for work that keeps me occupied and focused. I'm grateful that, just for this moment, I have an interesting man standing beside me who does not seem to notice the dark interior of my heart.

 

I have no questions for Sibyl. Not today.

 

Holding Pattern

The trip to Cameroon was cancelled yesterday afternoon. My bags were halfway packed and my flight was at 0755 this morning. But I am here now. After a few hours of feeling angry about it, I've settled into a sense of relief.
I am bone tired. I've been working and traveling nonstop for months now. Since September, I've worked in Spain, Britain, Tanzania, the U.S., Gabon, Senegal...and I saw the next few months stretching out in an endless series of challening and rewarding projects in far-off places. Part of me thrills with the idea. But part of me is so tired. I need the respite. The pause. I need to let my body and mind and soul regroup.
I am fully here. I've spent the morning listening to Matchbox Twenty's new album and cleaning my house. It feels so domestic. I am not a particularly grounded person - always throwing myself headlong into projects and work. When I do these normal things: cooking and cleaning my kitchen and wiping down furniture, I feel like I'm play-acting some role that is not me. Is never me.
I like the loud songs. I don't like the sweet love tunes talking about all the tender moments and the years spent together. Something inside me shrivels up. This is the difficult part about being at home and spending time alone: I am confronted with the past with Hans and Sjors - it reaches its tendrils through the months of good work and interesting people and strong accomplishments. I have worked to form good memories to stack on top those awful black and lonely months and such exquisite pain. But I can't escape. The steely threads reach to me, hold me down, whisper: "yes. But don't you see what you've lost?"

I suppose the thing I miss the most about Hans is the ability to curl up into his tender nature and release all of my anger and my fight because I knew he wouldn't hurt me. I liked the sense that I was lucky enough to see and appreciate his sweetness, an exclusive gift because the rest of the world was not privy. But this memory is embittered by the knowledge that I betrayed his generous trust in me, violated that space. Worse: the concern that I felt all the time that I was with him that this betrayal was inevitable - that my nature was harsher than his and more prone to wandering and that I was less able to completely yield myself.
I completely gave myself to Sjors, though. So it was not a matter of my ability to surrender. But he was the match to my soul and there is not a moment that passes without the pang of loss in it. I have cut off all contact with him - except in the inner sanctum of my mind which still perpetually reaches to him, talks with him, longs for him. With all the betrayals and the anger I feel, these things have not been sufficient to sever that sense of rightness and connection. I suppose that he severed it long ago and does not suffer as I suffer. But if I consider that my sensations always had their match in his mirrored experience (as all matches must), then I consider that he must suffer, too.
It isn't as though I haven't tried to date - to spend time enjoying myself and learning and appreciating men after Sjors. There have even been some beautiful moments. But they only serve to make me feel more isolated. I could form an attachment, bring someone in and spend the next decade with him. Maybe I will chose to do that, but I will not be able to delude myself that I have not lost the other soul who was match to mine. He is still out there, and I am the kite which has lost its grounding, battered around and unable to connect again to the purpose for which I was made.
We are alone, aren't we? We may form communities and hobbies, we may travel and work, we may have children and lovers. But do we ever stop being alone? I consider marriages between people who are not the other's match. How much more alone must they each feel, lying beside the stranger in the same bed?
These are my thoughts - the sensations I try to escape and then stop and examine and make sense of with the hope that I can find some peace. But there is no peace. I will create the illusion of satisfaction and accomplishment - I will seek for connection - I will work to change things and to improve my mind and the quality of my soul. But I will not, I think, find peace.

The Possibility that Wasn't

Yesterday, the program in Senegal closed up. The team I'd been mentoring was rapidly becoming autonomous and, even if I'd scheduled an additional week of work I doubt I could have delivered much more. My brain hurt. I was exhausted. I am still exhausted.

We returned to the hotel: Eve and John and I. John needed to change out of his uniform so we could get lunch. These people are good company. Eve has been my ally for years and, even though I've only now met him, I like John. I like the work he does and his attitude about jumping into any situation. I like that he throws himself into work instead of waiting to be invited. Also, he brought us stroopwaffels when he joined us on Tuesday. This earned him points in my book.

As the week went on I began to realize that I was enouraging John to talk more and more - that I relied on the sound of his voice: the pattern of his words, the rise and fall of his intonations, and his lilting Dutch accent. Even the way he tells stories and jokes. It was only yesterday that I discovered why: it reminds me so much of Sjors. There are few things in the world I would not trade to hear his voice again and to have the words be the kind and loving Sjors I fell in love with.

I was relieved to have the program finished yesterday, and I laughed and talked with Eve and John dring lunch. Then they talked about their lives outside of this work. This was somehow difficult for me to hear and, after a while I shut out the words, looking across the water at Goree Island and the blue stretch of ocean between. Eve returns to her husband and daughter; John to his wife and children. I have no analagous portion of my life. This program is my life and, when it stops, I can feel the darkness beneath me again. It is difficult to acknowledge this missing piece which will never be filled.

We shopped in African markets after lunch, buying batik paintings and baobab seed jewelry. These are lovely gifts for people. I wanted to buy baby dresses for Emily's baby and for Amanda's baby, too. We found a shop and negotiated prices for beautiful tiny dresses and I packed them away. In the car as we returned to the hotel, John enjoyed my pleasure in the purchases and so he shared a story:

"I was leading a battalion of men in a difficult area," he told us. "We had some time off and I wanted to buy baby clothes because my wife was expecting our first child. There was another man with me who also had a baby so we went shopping together. We wanted to get the best quality clothes, of course, and the people in the market were so surprised to have these two tough marines checking the quality of baby clothes and buying bags of them."

In the market with Eve buying paintings and baby clothes

If I did not look at John, I could almost imagine it was Sjors saying those words. I remembered the time in Mauritius when we spoke on Skype and he described the baby's nursery he would build me. He talked about the children we would have together and wondered aloud what they would look like. Would they have my eyes? Would they have his laugh? Our mutual need for adventure? He wanted our children to love physics the way that I love physics. I wanted them to have his boundless energy and curiousity. On that day, in a rug shop in Mauritius, I had purchased a wool rug which had a pattern of butterflies and flowers. I had felt so strongly and with such pleasure that I would put this in the nursery and that I would see it every day when I sang to our children. I remember telling Sjors about this and the look on his face as he reassured me that he would give me a place to put that rug.

Without meaning to, I suddenly saw Sjors in that market, doing what John described: buying baby clothes for our infant. The image came as involuntarily as breathing and the sensation brought with it an unutterable rush of pleasure. Then, with horror, this image blanked out as I remembered the truth: I remembered the terrible look on his face and the way his body and voice trembled when he saw that the condom had broken. I heard his yelling over the phone, demanding that I take the morning-after pill. I remember the fear and anger on his face when he told me I would ruin his life. I remember the awful months of messages and silences when he decided to close me out and throw himself back into his organization. I remembered the awful meeting in Rheims. I remembered the way that he sided with his group, negating the past between us and trying to discredit me for them. We will not have a child. I let him take the possibility of our child away from us and every day since that day has been so tremendously sad.

I could not check the tears that fell silently down my face. I did not alter my breathing and I looked out the window at the bright flowers and the women dressed in their bouquets of color. I watched the cement buildings go by and I tried to calm myself. Next to me, John continued to speak. He asked about the program and I answered with my head turned so that he would not see this. He would not understand and it would only make him lose confidence in our program to see me cry. Also, if Sjor's organization debriefs him about me, I want him to tell them that I'm strong and shouldn't be fucked with.