Children

I’ve never experienced Africa like this: running up mountains through villages and out at night in places I would never have any comfort or security visiting by myself. But I was surrounded by Cameroonian Special Forces. They were my protection. My dance partners. My teammates. My friends. 

I know that I am a person without joy. This must be clear to everyone who comes in contact with me. This sometimes worries me because I don’t want to make others uncomfortable. I often cannot summon the emotional energy to feign animation. But, even when with a heart that is dead, I give my mind.

I push them. When I speak, they listen. I ask them questions, make them work. They let me drive them to their limits and then they struggle to live up to my unreasonable expectations. When they reach one milestone, I drive them to the next task. I must do this because I can’t come back later when they need my help. This isn’t about them feeling happy in the moment. They must understand now. I need to make them not need me.

This is my program: my concept, my method, material and thoughts. When I work, there is spirit. There is soul. This is my program and they listen and work. It amazes me to see the manifestation of my mind.

At the nightclub for Eve's Birthday, I stood to say hello to Roger, the BIR commander who has a smile that splits his face. During the first week, his crinkled eyes and genuine wide smile gave me such pleasure, I found myself doing or saying things just to see that smile. At the nightclub, as he drew me into a friendly greeting (kiss kiss kiss kiss on the cheeks) and I felt the 9MM beneath his shirt. Same for Leopold. They are required to carry weapons at all times.

We ran together on Thursday after work: up Mont Febe again and down through the towns and side streets of Yaounde. I asked them to teach me a running song – the type they sang last week. My stomach was still in terrible pain after a bout with food poisoning the day before. Leopold asked me to chant “heh” to keep the beat and then he began his syncopated melody with words in French and his tribal language about how to cheat on your spouse. This chant was enough to keep my mind off my belly pain - but the pain got worse midway up the mountain. After this became intolerable, I thought that I would puke and make the pain go away, but I couldn’t make myself vomit while Roger was watching and he wouldn’t leave my side. He told me that he had been sick that day, as well. (Later, when I brought him pepto bismol tablets and told him what they were for, Emmanuel eagerly grabbed one, too. Apparently, stomach problems are as common as the unsafe drinking water) As we ran downhill, we talked about the choices we had made with our lives. He had been in amphibious operations before he was selected to work with the BIR. It has made all the difference for him. He asked me why I wasn't married, and didn't have children. I tried to answer at first but it wasn't possible with my broken French. He told me that my choice to work with SAMP and bring this analytical capability to the group was more significant than anything I could do in the home.  I was moved by this.

At the nightclub later that night, I danced with Patrick and Roger and Stephan. Sometimes, I danced with two at once. Holy cow. If you want to feel like you are THE SHIT, have two really hot men ease you in between them for some group hip action to throbbing base and strobe lights.

SAMP ended Friday at Lunchtime. I picked carefully at my food (anything besides simple carbohydrates can cause trouble). We rolled through conversations we had begun in the days previous. Then Leopold stood and gave a speech about what it had meant to the group that we had worked to give them a valuable skill and to make them part of a team.

He and Clement gave Eve an ebony statue of a  woman carrying water on her head - appropriate because Eve always makes sure that everyone gets what they need.

Then they gave me a statue of a woman with a baby on her back. My heart stopped in my throat. 

“We would like to give this to you,” said Leopold. “You can see that it is a woman with a child. It represents…”

“Procreation?” Suggested Felix hopefully.

“No.” Said Leopold. Then, again, firmly with a gesture of his long fingers. “No”.

“It represents family. You have taught us so much. You have given us so much. You have carried us on your back. We are grateful to you for all you have given us. You will never be alone now. We are your family. We are your children. We are the children of your mind.”

Under the weather

I had a friend in grad school who was a Christian Scientist. She believed that sickness in the body was a manifestation of sickness in the spirit.

I personally believe in the germ theory of disease and I try not to drink the water in Cameroon or eat contaminated food.

One way or the other (sickness in my soul or contaminated food) I've become very very sick. As I vomited violently throughout the night (busting a blood vessel  in my right eye, which looks creepy), I was grateful that Eve and the new guy are on track to help the SAMP team without me this morning. I was also grateful that I remembered to bring the Cipro and I took a tablet at 5 AM. It hasn't stopped my body from vigorously trying to eliminate the toxins but at least I feel like we're headed in the right direction.

I was sick in Cameroon last time I was here, as well. I don't blame Cameroon. I blame myself for not being as careful as I could be. But I remember that, last time, I welcomed the physical misery because it matched the misery in my soul. I don't welcome this illness but it reminds me to be glad that my body is usually so strong. In spite of all the terrible stress and all the fights I've been in, in spite of feeling like I have a hole in the center of myself, I have usually resisted sickness and injury.

There is also something good about the metaphor of eliminating all toxins from your body until you're wrung out and empty.

After meeting with Sjors last month in Amsterdam, I have felt sad and betrayed. Before that meeting I didn't know why he had walked away.  I could never understand his cruelty, nor the fact that he sided with his organization to try to discredit me. This has caused me unfathomable pain and I have always reached out to him, begged for him to fight them and come back. I could never understand why he turned cold and dark and removed.  For a long time I believed that he was compelled. I fought for months to release him. Again and again I swallowed poison for him.

I tried to protect myself before the meeting in Amsterdam Centraal. I didn't know what it would do to me if I saw the man I loved again and felt his cruelty in person. I arranged in my own mind that this was not Sjors - that he was a stranger - and that I could not expect anything emotionally from a stranger. But that he was a stranger with answers I needed.

I hoped he could help me understand what happened. Speak frankly with me. But he was awful. He was dark and malignant and hard towards me. He would not answer any of my questions in a straightforward manner. He tried to characterize me as crazed or stalking - but quickly gave that up when the truth was so disconnected from that depiction. He gave no pretense that my accusations against his organization were not just. He knew that was absurd. But he did ask me to drop the case. He looked miserable.

He said, "I want you to leave me alone. You have not been able to leave me alone. You are always seeking contact. I feared that you would escalate if I did not come. I do not love you. I thought that I knew you, but you did things that you knew I would not like."

"I believe that our objectives are not mutually exclusive," I replied. "I also wish that I could find some way to close. But I cannot do this. Consider that I am investigating the disappearance of someone I love. I am told that the man I loved never existed. I cannot find him. But I believe that he exists and I believe he is being held against his will. You say I am always seeking contact. Of course I am. If there is even the slightest hope that the man I love exists, I cannot stop looking for him."

I told him that I could give him what he wanted if he would help me with my investigation. That he was the only witness.  I needed to know what an investigator needed to know. So often he had told me that the man I knew did not exist - that we had not truly loved one another - that it was not real. So the first stage of my investigation was to confirm existence. After that, I wanted to know if that man still existed and, if he did not, what happened to him and who was responsible.

I reminded him that he had lied to me. In both instances that he walked away - when I met him in Anna Paulona in October 2011, and then in Reims in March 2012. He had told me that the reason - and the exclusive reason - he was leaving was because of his family. But I knew of his involvement in his organization. I could recall very specific times when they told him not to have contact with me. I remembered that they would not let him out of the organization when he tried to leave in December 2010. And I knew that the family situation had not changed from the first day we met. There was no real reason for him to return to a life of misery. I knew there was something else, covert and dark. And, because he was lying to me - handing me the one argument he knew I could not fight - I had no way of knowing whether he was choosing or compelled to return to his covert family.

It was absurd to expect that he would give me anything I needed. He kept repeating the same worn-out slogans: "My feelings don't match yours", and "Nothing has ever happened to you. You were never harmed" and "I want you to leave me alone".

I had sent  him all my memories. They were my pictures of us - my reminders that he had existed. I asked if he had read them. He would not answer. Instead, he tried to embarrass me. He said, "If someone was stalking you and they sent you a message, would you read it?"

He did eventually confess that he believed that my correspondence with Mac was designed to release him. He believed (at least he does now) that I was trying to save him.

We spoke for two hours, standing in the cold of the station. It seemed that I would leave empty-handed. And then he gave me that one answer that I needed. "It was real". And I turned, and walked away, and did not look back. I did not realize it at the time, but that one statement gave me all the other answers I'd asked for. I don't think he realized it either.

 I realized that he had always felt the same as I did: that we were the match for the other. He loved me as much as I loved him. But he couldn't last through the first test of that love. They had not compelled him - certainly they had tempted and urged him and threatened. But he could have fought them and he did not. He had true love but he chose his career. He felt he could excel as a spy. He chose the good opinion of his colleagues and parents because it was too difficult to think about facing their aprobation. Everything that I have fought and struggled for, every pain I have felt, he surrendered without a fight.

I did not feel the need to send him a message. There was no "after action" report after our meeting. I did not think I would ever reach a point where I did not reach out to him. But I know now that the man I love is actually dead and the man who lives in Alkmaar with his phony life is only a shell of that man.

Two weeks ago, I received the "Appeal" from the man who calls himself Sjors. Of course every molecule in my body wishes to god for the miracle of ressurrection. I don't think you can ever stop yourself from hoping and begging with the universe that the truth you see is not actually the truth. But I know better.

I am vomiting today. Perhaps this is a manifestation of my spirit. I do not have joy. I do not have hope that the future will be any better. I have every expectation that I will live a life of clockwork and darkness. But this body cannot take any more poison.

Feels like hell

He's dead. There is not a second that goes by that I don't think about him. I am in Africa but my heart is lost somewhere in the north. I think of Sjors. I also think of Hans. There is something broken and cold and painful inside. 

I spent 8 hours in the classroom today. Difficult analytical work. Guided them to create a coherent product. Led them through the discussion. Destroyed me. 

Forgot I needed to buy tickets to DC.

 Forgot I needed to get gifts for Margaret's bridesmaids. I should go to the market and get necklaces. Said something about it. 

Jason said, "Maybe if you spent less time doing SAMP, you could be a bride instead of a bridesmaid."

He was joking. He likes me so it was a joke. He wasn't trying to be an asshole. He was trying to sort through his understanding of me and to decide why it was that I was not attached in any discernible way. His conclusion: I work too hard. I'm too uncompromising. I don't make room in my life for someone else. 

I will never be attached. This is all there is and it really can never be enough. 

There are good days and there are bad days. 

Today is a bad day. 

Bitter Kola and Mont Febe

Lunches are getting increasingly interesting. They are experimenting with us. On Wednesday, they served us "plums": a sour, stringy, fatty vegetable from some Avocado family which you can smear like butter on your bread.

At lunch yesterday, the ladies served a strange mush of corn and greens with sugar to sprinkle on top. There was also a plate with football shaped pellets that were roughly the size of pecans.

“These are Bitter Kola” our hosts told us. “They are very good for men”

And then, the stories started to come out: they were an aphrodisiac. They helped with lead poisoning and ebola. They were good for the digestion and helped you stay awake. To my left, Felix told me that he could be very sick to his stomach and all he would need to do was eat a bitter kola and drink a bit of water and it made him better.

Sure.

Eve peeled the flaky skin off one and nibbled on the side. Jason ate an entire nut. I took a bite the size of a pea and, after two minutes of chewing and trying to swallow, decided to scrape the pulp off my tongue with a napkin.

Yup. It was bitter. I’d accidentally chewed an advil once to roughly the same effect: nasty bitter flavor and numb tongue.

So off to google when lunch was finished. And, what do you know? The damned things have phytotestosterone. Also, extracts of bitter kola are used in eyedrops used to treat retinal hypertension. The vascular effects, combined with the phytotestosterones may make them the natural equivalent of Viagra. They have also been used to treat lead poisoning. Some epidemiological studies have found that people who ate bitter Kola in villages ravaged by ebola didn’t catch the disease, and they were also anti-listerial – meaning that they combat a certain type of food poisoning.

No kidding. No wonder pharmaceutical companies love their expeditions to exploit third world countries. A decade after we’ve articulated the human genome, we still only have marginal success in rational drug design. Nearly all pharmaceuticals come from natural products. 

The work in the classroom is good. Very good. In the past two days, I seem to be less prone to that hopelessness and sense of meaninglessness that always stands in the corners and embraces me when I stop for even a second. I know that, no matter what I do with my time, no matter how much I do, it will always come back to this. Without Sjors, life is clockwork. Not life. But I keep moving, breathing. Working harder so that it doesn't drown me. 

On Tuesday, the Cameroonian Marine, Patrick, suggested that we run together. So yesterday, when work was complete, we met and ran up a mountain together: Mont Febe. Roger and Leopold were from the BIR and John was a Navy man. All are in top physical form. I reminded myself that this is why I train: I want to be able to run with Special Forces. 

Last year, I started running faster when I thought that some covert Dutch service might come after me. I ran harder, trained harder - somehow believing that the day might come when it would matter somehow.  If I could, and if it could have brought me even a fraction of an inch closer to Sjors, I would gladly do it again and again. But I've never been able to fight them with my fists and body and tear their eyes out.

On days like yesterday, I'm glad that I train. 

Cameroon is one of the most profoundly beautiful places on earth. How do I even begin to describe the landscape when it is the sense of beauty and peace and home that makes this place so deep for me? 

There is a rock on an overlook on Mont Febe that is painted in hearts and bright patterns. We clambered on top. This is the place where young men bring their girlfriends in the hope of getting action. Standing on top of the rock, my heart pounding after the climb, I looked out over Yaoude, and felt the breeze brush my arms and the back of my neck.

Patrick is a Marine through and through. As he does dozens, hundreds, of triangle tricep pushups he shouts, "more! more! please can I have some more?!"

As they run, the Marines and BIR sing a French African song which, according to Eve's translation, sounds something like, "my wife isn't around right now. What would you like from me?"

That run was the first moment of wonderful I've had in a long time. Up the mountain was punishing but, as we came back down again, We ran through the villages and men shouted at us, "Bon Courage!" Children laughed and smiled and waved. A group of five or six-year-old kids were taking a bath in the water that ran off the mountain. A little girl, lathered in soap, jumped up and down and waved at the red-faced white woman. 

"This is the real Cameroon," Patrick told me. "We live very simply here."

Two men pushing a car stopped to look and shout at me. Patrick told me, "They say that you are Cameroonais now."

marker

The difficult thing of this place is that it marks the time. I know this building and its top deck.

In September 2011, I did not step off. I must have hoped that the pain would end. I must have believed I would be with him again. I must have believed in joy.

There is no joy. No life.

What have I done in the time I bought? Not enough to make it worthwhile. You don't preserve machinery simply because it continues to run. When it loses its function, you shut it down. Scrap it.

Logical discourse

Breakfast buffet in the hotel is not included in the nightly rate. But coffee is important - and its difficult to know what lunch will look like when you're executing a program like this. So we eat breakfast - and smuggle pieces of fruit and yogurts and dinner rolls with cheese wrapped in paper napkins. This is dinner when we're cooped up in the hotel room, madly working on materials for the next day and don't have time nor energy to get dinner in town.

I was grateful Eve had printed the methodology worksheets and slides. I've been so consumed with getting the right metrics up to the leadership and keeping the program, I didn't have any attention to see the work she was slowly and carefully assembling. I'm glad she had it together: got a visa for my passport, worked with the Embassy, obtained clearances, and reserved the car and the hotel. Now, it's like a vacation in Africa. Where we work. A lot. Every day.

I love Cameroon still. I look forward to the day when I can come into the country and just love it without the aching memories it brings. I've never been able to do this with the Netherlands - so maybe its not possible.

It is the rainy season so the heat has broken. The mud here is a rich red and the hills are lush with green. I've lost the ability to speak about Africa and Africans in some distant, keenly observant way of a travel magazine article because it isn't foreign to me anymore. It's certainly different than Naples or Paris or Salt Lake City, but not mysterious or exotic. Just comfortable and welcoming. People live their lives just like anywhere else. The challenges are different and can be severe when there is inadequate support - but this is true everywhere. If I ever needed to, I could come and stay for a while. It would not feel bad to me.

There are eight naval officers in the Cameroon SAMP team. All are so forward-leaning, so well-educated and articulate, so clear-minded. Its quite a pleasure to work with them. The level of discourse is high. We present the concepts, they wrestle with them, debate them, make sense of them, and evolve their answers and results so quickly.

I remember years ago, when I was leaving for Naples, my friend Anne threw me a going-away party at a restaurant in DC. At some point, I asked everyone at the table what they would do if they could make one big change in the world. There were good answers - from energy conservation to health care to diplomacy. But Anne said something that stood out for me. She said that she would teach every child logic. We are so susceptible to emotional decisions, she said. People are manipulated by corporations and politicians and they don't make decisions based on their own best interest nor the interest of the community. They get suckered into making terrible, illogical choices. She wanted to arm everyone with analysis so that they could resist propaganda.

I think about this now that I'm executing this program. It's a complete delight to see the way that people are empowered with logic. It isn't anything earth shattering that we discuss: we talk about the scientific method: examining questions and objectives, developing hypotheses, and identifying assumptions and personal bias. We design experiments, collect data, and conduct inductive reasoning and deductive logic on qualitative and quantitative problem sets. These things are natural for me because I'm a scientist. But they are NOT intuitive. And certainly they are not broadly taught to military people. Suddenly, these techniques become maps. People can navigate through any problem. Anne was right - although I only recently made the connection with her words of three year ago. Reasoning and logic are powerful tools.

Back again tomorrow. Looking forward to the smell of burning hair as the brains heat up.

Travel

April 2009 with the Nashville.
September 2010 after I first arrived in Naples and was still dating Hans and thought we would have kids by now.
September 2011 after losing Sjors. Twelve floors and the top of the hotel didn't have a guard. Or a rail.
And now, June 2013.
Cameroon.

We took the flight from Brussels this morning, grateful for the 24-hour fitness center at the Sheraton, clean sheets and towels, and the breakfast buffet with the cappuccino machine. Three cappuccinos for comfort and caffeine.

Places hold meaning for me. Always have. I remember the Brussels airport in some deep psychic way: the bathroom in the luggage area where I changed into Winter Netherlands clothes after a flight from Africa and took the train to Amsterdam to see Sjors.

Today, I hate and love my memories. They cause me pain: remind me what my life should have been. But the alternative is: never having lived. Never loving. Never knowing what it is to feel that way. Completely alive. Completely whole. Now I know I live a half-life.

Eve turns to me intermittently, says, "you did the right thing" because she can see that I still feel the raw, hot miasma behind my eyes when I consider that Sjors reached out to me and I did not reach back. My mind knows she is right but my arms, skin, womb, skull, scream: "but he was right there and you did not go to  him!"

This time, I rule my instinct because my instinct would tell me to walk into the ocean rather than live without him.

Today I am in Cameroon. It is the rainy season. Are there avocados? Mangoes this time of year? I don't remember.

On the plane, there were movies. I have a diminished tolerance for artificiality. I hate the way women are depicted. Or men, for that matter. One-dimensional caricatures. And the series of unrealistic situations and stupid choices that seem to miraculously be the right ones.

"A good day to Die Hard", for example. I love a good action flick, but they are filled with such phenomenally bad decisions. With the possible exception of Jason Bourne, I would never want to travel to Africa with any of these action heroes. They would kill my friends and get me into trouble I couldn't get out of.

Six months ago, in Dakar, Eve and I met a group of operators from Canada, holed up in our hotel waiting for  spare parts for their plane. The French had just gone into Mali to oust the extremest militants who had taken over the country. Supporters of this action were passing through Dakar. On the weekend, sunning ourselves next to the water, we counted the military flights and their affiliations.

The group of Canadians were conspicuous in their back-woods manner, excessive drinking habits, pasty complexions, patchy beards, and self-laundered socks and underpants dangling off of balcony railings of the four-star resort hotel. As the days went on, we became more and more nervous about them.

There were warnings for Europeans and Americans - that they might be targets of retaliatory attacks. This was not an unjustified fear. In nearby Algeria, workers at an oil production facility were taken hostage and many of them killed. To be on the safe side, we planned multiple egress routes and a meeting place if something happened. We had phone numbers on speed-dial and "go-bags" with our passports and cash.

Eve and I knew Dakar; had spent months there. Loved the city and the Senegalese. Had friends whose children we knew. We walked around freely in town.

So here was a drunk Canadian soldier, bleary eyed, talking about carrying a gun to go into town.
"Oh," said Eve and I together. "That's not a good idea."
He reconsidered. "Then a knife," he decided. "I'm not going into town without a knife."
There was an uncomfortable silence as Eve and I thought about our Senegalese friends encountering a frightened and well-trained lunatic drunk.
"We like to use our words," I said.

So, this is the advice I offer Bruce Willis as he fights his way through impossible villains and walks unafraid and bare-armed through boxes of Uranium 235, and drives a  truck out the back of a helicopter:
"Use your words."

Tired

He's dead. 

God, why can't I just remember that? 

His "appeal" wasn't an appeal at all. It was another demand for my self-nullification. 

So why do I feel like hell? Feel like I left him when he asked for my help? 

It was so hard today. It is harder for me after the end of a battle. Every war is a proxy war for the one I was never allowed to fight: the face to face bloody battle for him. For us. For the future we should have had. He never let me fight that one. So I fight everything else. Fight for programs that matter. For people that matter. And, at the end of the day I am so hollow with pain I could tear my own guts out and hardly feel the difference. 

I am exhausted. This last battle has emptied me.

I went to work today and watched people gleefully take my ideas and work that I have paid such a price for. Does any of this matter at all? I am alone except for the ghosts. 

Tomorrow, I go back to Cameroon. I'm allowed to do SAMP again. The ease of this permission makes me feel the artificiality of every denial that came before. 

But I love Cameroon. And it is not here. It will be two weeks of intense work and learning to love a group of dedicated naval officers who desperately want to change their countries and institutions and who fight to be heard. I will give them a way to think. I will give them a way to be heard. I will spend twelve hours a day working for them. And this will have to be enough for me. It is my life. And I go on living because life is all there is. This is the only piece of hope I have left. I don't expect that I will ever have love again. Not in the way that its supposed to be. So I will keep doing this and hope it matters. What the hell was life supposed to be about anyway?  

I've ironed and folded my shirts and put malarone and hand sanitizer and band-aids in my luggage. It will be fine as soon as I'm underway. It's the limbo that makes the bones ache. 

It worked

JD saved SAMP. Eve is staying.

I don't know that I can even believe this. It seems as though the "Possible God" has somehow intervened here. I know that I can talk until I'm blue in the face and never convince anyone of anything. But somehow, JD was convinced. And he advocated. And now the program (and Eve) is saved.

Little Victories

So many things today.

It was sunny in Naples. So lovely. I sat in the sun and edited the paper with Eve. Tracey came to talk to Eve and, because she is the living symbol of her company (evil, short-sighted, narrow-minded trollops)  and not because I personally dislike her, I had to take a seat to avoid saying something that would make all the members of her company involuntarily lose bowel control.

I sat and drank my cappuccino quietly and ate my chocolate croissant.

An old Italian man was cleaning the pavement with ammonia. It smelled foul.

I never called Sjors. Never wrote. He was in my heart; on my lips all day. I wondered how he was. What he was doing. There was nothing I could do to help him. Margaret said, "you think you can help him with a phone call? Hardly! Years of psychotherapy wouldn't help him." Which was funny and made me feel better.

I didn't wait around to feel bad or wonder how he was. There was too much to do.

Yesterday, I met with the group of O6s and presented my methodology. I aimed the pitch at JD, the boss of my boss. JD had never heard this before but he believed it - and he liked it. Today, I sent him the entire paper and offered to come to his office to discuss. He accepted. We talked for 45 minutes about the method, and about SAMP. I told him the truth: if the contract is cancelled, then SAMP is cancelled because I can't afford the time and effort to do that AND my job, as well. I asked him to re-evaluate the contract cancellation. He said that he would.

We have to know by tomorrow because the movers will come for Eve's things on Friday.

Before I left the office today, my boss pulled me aside. He showed me the slides he was putting together: he and JD will speak with the Admiral tomorrow afternoon to re-evaluate the contract cancellation.

So, of all the improbable things: the plan worked. Write a killer academic paper. Give them something to talk about. Let them see the value of this program. God, I hope they can see it. I hope they will let us keep the program and keep putting it into place.

On Saturday, we travel to Cameroon to execute the program. This trip has been cancelled twice by the Command. I had not expected that they would say "yes" this time. It shocked the shit out of me. Now, I'm scrambling for a visa and glad that I ironed out at least some of my Africa pants.

Bless you for being a forward thinker, JD.

Thank god Wednesday is over. One way or the other, Sjors made it through his hearing. He would not love me one iota less or more if I had written him back as he asked. He does not love me. The man I loved is dead.

countdown

here I am.

It is Tuesday night. The last opportunity to contact him.

I've managed to keep myself to myself.

Thank god.

There is only pain for me behind that door.

But, god help me, I would help him if I could.

Do I answer?

From Sjors: "Last thursday I received the news I will be heared about your case.Please send an email with your phonenumber so I can call you." 

From Eve: "Wtf?! I thought he has your number.  What are you going to do?  You surely don't owe him anything....."

I thought I would never hear from him again. 

The man I knew no longer exists. That was clear in the station. 

This person doesn't love me. I walked away and did not reach out again. He told me he didn't want to hear from me again. It was easy to comply. There was nothing left for me to go back to. Only ashes. 

During the past two years, I have begged for answers and knowledge. I have searched for him, sought him out. Tried to find him. Help him. Free him from his trap. Reached for him. He did not reach back. 

Now: he does not ask. He does not give me his number and ask me to call. He wants my number. 

What can I tell him that he doesn't already know?  How can he get more information from me than he has already? I have told him I have not disclosed his name. And I have never acted to punish him. If he distrusts me, then even if I answer him he will not believe me. 

What would he do with the information I give him? This case is, as he says, my case. I am seeking answers. I am seeking an apology for what they have done. Will he help them give me answers or will he act to undermine my request? 

He has been cruel and awful to me for so long. I could tolerate it when I believed that his team was compelling him to write and say such awful things - but I believe now that he bears much of the culpability. He has acted to preserve the trappings of his life, rather than to aid our relationship or to help me. I believe he would do this again.  Can I hope that he would act to help me? I think I can be sure he will act to help himself. 

Communication

I need people to listen.

I write reports. Travel. Observe. Measure. Write. Take pictures. Format. Write more. God, I need people to read and understand. 

I wrote an academic paper in three days. From research and start to finish. Eighteen pages. With graphs and charts. Eve helped. Emily, too. And now the Leadership reads my report because it is an academic paper - and NOT a paper I wrote for them. 

It's a good paper. It solves the problem I've struggled with for years: how do you build partner capability? How do you measure it? 

And I solved it. God, what a thing to do. 

When I was trying to get Sjors away from the bastards I used every last piece of intellectual detective work that I had. I scrutinized months of communications and notes. When did I know what? How did I originally make the guess or the observation? This was my one piece of leverage. If I had known it wouldn't work, would I have done it anyway? Probably. I'm not designed to let the bastards get away with it. And they took something precious. Now, whatever paltry victory I had: any slight consternation I caused them, is ashes in my mouth. 

And now, as I struggle to figure out how to keep the Command from cancelling this one good program. This contract for Eve to work and execute SAMP, I knew I needed leverage. How do you lever an institution? A bureaucracy? So I used my idea. And I wrote a paper in three days. 

Is this what normal feels like?

Sort my laundry. Shall I wash the towels first or the gym clothes?

Organize the dresser drawers. Listen to Italian lessons on the i-pod. About damned time I learned the language. Every time I walk past Massimo's shop, he scolds me for not knowing the basics.
Pizza Thursday. Fileto pizza. Grazie. Non lo so. Mi dispiace. Vorrei capire ma ho bisogno di provare meglio. God, I LIVE here. In Italy. How lucky should that be?

I feel the tension in my body, flexing in the back of my mind. I make a stack of clothes I'll never use again and put them in a paper sack. Put my "Africa Gear" into a separate box after a half-hearted attempt to iron. Dry cleaning in another bag. And the tights away for the season.

I fight. Everything. The alarm. The traffic. The Command. The contractors. Pathetic little girls with their limited minds and unimaginative inner lives and greedy fingers. An ignorant leader has cancelled Eve's contract and her advocates are too stupid to support her or keep it going. This kills my program. And I lose my friend. I will be alone here.

I ate Dutch brown bread for breakfast. With coffee and Dutch cheese. And thought about that first time Hans made me breakfast with cheese and rucola. He scooted his chair next to mine so that our legs would touch. And he looked at me. I don't think a person has the right to get that twice in one life.

Do the dishes. Grocery shopping. Grapes. Onions. Peppers and smoked salmon. More mint-chocolate chip ice cream. Diet root beer. I put them in the freezer. Fridge.

I gave Sjors my memories. I wish I had not. Now they have left me. They used to live in my soul. Refugees. Poor battered things. We kept each other warm at night. Until the police came with their searchlights and guns and started banging on the storage containers and still I protected them. And then, when I thought they had gone, left us alone, there HE was standing in the dark, looking like the man I knew and I gave them to him. Offered them up on the altar of "Please God, let him still exist". And now they are gone. "Tread lightly for you tread on my dreams" and "cast not your pearls before swine" co-exist in awful poetic juxtaposition in my self-aprobation. Eve says, "You get to keep the memories". But I don't. The sweetness is gone. The tenderness. I might as well have sold my soul or my body.  There is only bitterness and sorrow where he was once.

There was once a superposition of states: the reality of my life without Sjors and the alternate universe where we had a life together. And now the other life is gone and I am in this life.

At work, I am a machine. I analyze. Ten reports and one academic paper in six months. This is all I do. I should do something else. Chances are good that nobody listens anyway.

Emily tells me, "write about what happened. Write about your detective work. Write about MIVD fucking with you and how you fought them."

But I lost. In every possible way, I lost. Would it hurt them more if I wrote about them - made them look like the asses they were? Called into question every decision they made - and the decisions he made. God, he KNEW it was real - as much as I knew it - and he still lied. Distrusted me. Left me alone. Fought against me. Believed he was the hero while he did it.

He told me he had protected me - that there were things they wanted to do and he had stopped them. I wish he hadn't. Don't do me any favors. Let the bastards come. I'll eat their hearts out.

I can't even look at my memories with Hans. They cut me too much. His picture brings a pain that cannot be soothed.

I bought an antique writing desk today. just like that. It had so many beautiful drawers and a secret latch to release another drawer. I picked up the painting I bought for my friend. It is wrapped and ready to send. White boats on a blue sea.

The baobab on my porch has so many leaves. And spider webs between the branches.

Alone

Einstein called it "Spooky action at a distance": two particles so intertwined that action on the one implied action on the other: instantaneous information.

It was November 27, 2010 when I felt this with you. I was in a dark hotel room in Rome. It was 3 AM and I sat upright. I felt you. You were there with me and every part of my body ached for you, cried out for you. You were at Doorn then. In pain, you had wandered outside and, looking at the night sky, called out my name.

Ever the scientist, I tried to make rational explanations. I used quantum mechanics. Many world theories. There is such metaphorical richness in quantum theory I didn't need to evoke god. But I knew that we were connected. It happened the first moment I saw you. You talked about it when I flew up to Paris and then Dakar. You wrote: "Elisabeth, I am trying to make it amusing for you to read but to tell you the truth, what's happening is very strange. I can actually feel that you are gone. I felt that you first closed me to Paris, only to increase distance to Africa. It feels like someone that has a cookie and gets the cookie in inch in front of your mouth, when you try to bite, the cookie is eaten by the other person. Water in your mouth, no cookie. That is how I feel. I missed you several times now, when I left Naples (twice), when I left Paris and when you left Amsterdam. But, even though I haven't seen you, this feels the same way. I feel pain in my soul for not having you with me, even though you were not there before. I don't know how to explain. I just feel sad and I miss you. I really love you"

The double entendre was funny for a while. "Spooky action at a distance."

But the real connection, whatever it was, became hell for me whenever you were gone. I felt you, ached for you. The absence of you was a physical thing. So many strings of soul stretched out across the distance.

When I tried to leave that August, it nearly killed me. How do you walk away when someone else has your soul?

Your absence was so painful because so many parts of me reached out to you. Longed for you. Felt you.

And for the past two years I have lived in hell with these lines to you. I felt your indecision. I felt your resolve. I felt your self-loathing. I think I've felt your blame of me and your hard thoughts of me. I felt your hatred and fear. It was like backwash noise across a connection that I couldn't close. I've been tuned to some radio frequency where the words were harsh and screaming and terrible reminders of the hole in me. I could not send enough love to you along those lines to overcome the darkness that overflowed into me.

And then, in the train station, you said three words to me: "It was real".

In fairy tales, there are magic words that break a curse.

When I met with you, I hoped I could break your curse. I wished that there was a way I could help Kai spell "Eternity" with those shards of ice. But you were dark. There was something malevolent inside you. I couldn't free you. What were the words I could say to you? I would have paid any price for them.

But you spoke the truth. And you released me. I felt it: a breaking. A death. A severing. I turned, and I walked away.

In the eleven days since that day in the train station, the noise is gone. I do not hear you in my head. I do not feel you in my body. The connection is gone. I don't know if my soul was fully retrieved. I do not think it could be. But I am finally alone.