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.