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.