Days 0859, 0860, 0861, 0862 & 0863

Oh dear. Just 107 days from the 1000 I gave myself back in 2013 and I’d still prefer to change the plans of three other people just to avoid sharing a crowded pub forecourt with Halfman and his wife.

863 days later and I’m still finding out sleazy stories about him that make me wonder how my sleazeometer didn’t kick in at all.

I know hormones and loneliness and escaping a brutal 15-years … yada yada. But still, how could I not see it?

Those lines he fed me … Even when I objectively knew I was being treated to his best ‘sleep with me’ repertoire … I still let it work on me. Some of it was me thinking ‘this is an adventure even if ill-advised but some of me wanted to be charmed and let it happen.

When I think back to the two bits of conversation that led to our first kiss. Well, it’s embarrassing to give them oxygen.

But it feels good to dig them out and mock them as well. And maybe they will float away once they’re out there.

The first is such a huge sociopath warning sign: he told me his wife had rung him at work the previous week and ‘she was so painful’ – that was his code for her wanting something from him (like support and feelings). Anyway, she was upset and not liking herself and asked him: ‘why do you love me?’

Which is just so sad to me – it breaks my heart that she had to call him to ask.

And his response recounted to me was: ‘And I thought, I don’t know why but I need to get through this conversation. So I googled ‘why do I love her?’ And got this list of 101 reasons. Things like ‘because you support me’ and ‘you make me feel like I matter’.

And that is when he turned to me and said: And I thought these are all the things You do for me, not her. This is the way you make me feel.

Pretty good line, really. If I was 12.

I had a twinge: What a horrid thing to do to your wife – to mock her cry for help like that.

And then I thought: I’ve only ever just been respectful and kind to Halfman. Funny that he interprets that as something else.

And then the twinge passed. And not long after he was bemoaning his marriage and scooping me into his arms for a kiss under the freezing moonlight.

It is humiliating to think of how sophomoric it sounds now. How revealing of his lack of respect or feeling for others. And yet I let myself fall for it at some level.

Ugh.

Day 0663

What do you see in a person’s smile?

Do you see what you want to see — a lover, delighted to come across you unexpectedly? 

 Can you trust that what you see is true? 

That a twinkle in the eye is theirs and not something you placed there? 

 There are awkward smiles. And gassy smiles. Ones that can’t be helped. Reluctant smiles that burst out at you from the edges first.

There are frustrated smiles and frozen grins.

Polite smiles. 

And huge ones that rip the clouds away and sweep you off the ground. 

 But never before have I seen a smile that is so wrong and misplaced: so irrelevant to the person it was delivered to.

It was the same smile — from eyes to lips — that was given to me at the height of infatuation. And yet there it was on that same face today: the one that thinks I’m a big meanie, the same face that has been convinced by its owner that I am somehow bad for not being compliant and quiet. The same face that turned red and railed away at me in absentia and tried to belittle me to others because his wrong couldn’t be admitted and owned.

That smile — today’s version of the Love Grin — creeped me out.

Bullet dodged indeed.

Days 0642, 0643 & 0644

Am I completely deluded to think that my trait of seeing the best in people is a good thing?
Because I am beginning to see that the line between ‘wishful thinking’ and ‘seeing the best’ is very very very thin.
And it can’t just be hormones and loneliness that shroud beings like the Halfman with a beauty that isn’t actually there – a beauty I project onto him.
If I did ‘see the best’ surely there would have been little enough of it not to interest me. But if what I do is ‘wishful thinking’ then what I saw was what I wanted to see, what I needed to see.
And that possibility is scary in a world of men with wonky moral compasses (compassi??).

Day 0614

Are perfect love and perfect eroticism totally different things or the same thing?
I have a feeling they may be the same, but that love is (hopefully) long and eroticism is more momentary – so intense and specific, it can’t last.
To me, being looked at – being seen by someone and wanted, that is erotic.
But these are also the ingredients of love.
Not having to speak. Talking with eyes and touch and sound that does not contain words – that is erotic.
Being comfortable in shared silence is love.
Being vulnerable and yet utterly safe; that is erotic.
And it is my definition of love.
So are they the same thing?
Is that perfect erotic moment the rabbit that the greyhound of love is chasing?
Wouldn’t that make it clear why people mistake erotic moments for love? Why a lover’s eyes staring into you, taking in your core, your liquid, skin covered being can look and feel like love. Even when it is just a moment’s happenstance? A moment stolen – literally – from another that feels magically connected and connecting?

Days 0560 & 0561

So the Halfman haunted my dream last night. And the worst part of it? I found myself enjoying his quiet, whimsical company. It was the pre-Halfman in my dream: the person-constructed-by-Halfman who I had fallen in love with and cared about.
It made me so angry with myself that I was pleased to see him in my dream.
Distance means I can see this:
When I discovered the Halfman betrayal I had been 3/4 of the way through the process of mourning the loss of what I had believed was a sincere and gentle relationship with someone whose brain and company I enjoyed.
Halfman’s appearance sent me to a place where I couldn’t mourn that person any more: he hadn’t been real. He’d been deceiving me the entire time. I was a bloody fool and he was a fucking bastard. I wanted that person I’d loved to hate me and be scared of me.
So I didn’t finish the mourning because it didn’t seem real. And it hurt to mourn something that was just an illusion. I felt like a fool and a horrid person for what he’d done to his wife with me in tow.
And I refused to remember anything about him with joy or even a quiet happiness because he’d destroyed it all so thoroughly.
Now I’ve reached a point where I’ve forgiven myself a bit at least. And I think it might be ok to stick a tentative foot into allowing myself to have fond memories of some of our times together: even if they weren’t ‘real’.
But see, even writing that down in a sentence makes me want to puke — and a BIG LOUD PUKE, not some ladylike barf in a handkerchief.
So while the thought has entered my mind, I still haven’t come to a place where I can enact it. Where I can allow myself to think fondly of a bastard who screwed me royally both literally and figuratively.
One day though, perhaps a fond memory or even a non-angry one won’t lead me to this place of self and Halfman hate. One day the warmth I feel about this won’t be a burning anger but a fond remembrance of how a young, immature man who was able to sit a metre from me for a whole year and fall for me in spite of it. It will be nice to arrive at that place.
But until then: This middle finger’s for you, Halfman.

Day 0547

So I was away last night and called my kid on FaceTime. He looked happy at first but then his lips began to quiver and he couldn’t look me in the eye. I asked him if he was ok. He …

Day 0545 & 0546

I aspire to get to a place where I have even just one uncomplicated, sincere memory involving Halfman. Even the most pathetic of my relationships have always had some pleasant thought or feeling I could hold on to.
But that one …
At least I’ve come far enough to know which moment it would be. I just need to slough off the anger, lies and betrayal before I can remember it with a sweetness.
Telling that it was a moment with not many words. One removed far from our lives. And stolen while others slept around us.
I can see in the description I would give it is quite beautiful – one of those gorgeous moments, rich with skin, and scents and eye contact. With deep breaths and short ones.
And that feeling of melting into one.
Just a shame he ruined it afterwards. That it sticks in my throat like wet hair knotted into the drain of an uncleaned shower: tangled, disturbing, clingy
What a bummer.

Day 0525

I like my dad. He’s a good man who tells me he loves me. And shows me too.
That’s got to be a pretty precious commodity.
In many ways I am extremely FRICKING lucky.

Day 0522

When I was 25 I watched My One True Love fall apart near me. I say ‘near’ not ‘beside’ because he always denied it was happening. In fact he shut me out completely. And that, added to how he actually treated me was enough to make me realise that it wasn’t working for either of us.
I’d seen inklings of it before – the falling apart – when we were hoveled in a basement flat far away from family and friends. I was working in a shithouse discount toy shop while he was ‘between assignments’, staying at home all day making mix tapes of political debates that turned audio grabs into funny sequences. And growing frustrated.
I pulled us out of that one – getting us back to the other side of the country and into a lovely house sitting house.
But here we were a couple of years later – very much on our own at the other end of the world.
I had a job, was making friends, learning stuff. He was hitting walls and ego fueled impediments at every turn. I had thought he was so strong inside.
But I remember him coming home that worst afternoon and just crumpling into a fetal position on the bed beside me (our $2.50 couch was truly uncomfortable).
The ego of one of his supervisors had taken over and he had crushed my lovely one into a tiny ball. I managed to get him to call the supervisor to try to talk about things. The supervisor just told him to leave him alone.
My love was devastated, knocked over, crushed into a hopeless nothing. He was so genuine he’d never realised the political and egotistical mechations happening around him. He’s never been able to play games and it made him both beautiful and horribly vulnerable.
I know I could have helped him now but back then I had no idea. I just tried to love him, but that didn’t work. I watched him grow hollow, aimless and hermit like. He didn’t go outside for three months unless it was dark out. He became cruel to me. He played video games constantly and do nothing stimulating but told me my news of the outside world was boring and tedious.
I can still feel that terrible hurt at watching that glorious man crumble in front of me.
I wish I had been so much more than I was. Even if our relationship was already dead, I wish so much I could have helped him.

Day 0507

Oops! Turns out Love does not actually = Kindness. I’ve spent my life thinking the two things shared the same definition, which makes me a real turkey cos I’ve certainly experienced all types of love but relatively little kindness over the years.
In fact, when I think about the possibility of meeting someone new – and it has begun to cross my mind once in a while (a nice change) – I want to find kindness before almost anything else.
Almost anything equals: right wing political views, unkempt nosehair and an exhaled wheeze instead of a belly laugh. And, of course, anyone who says while naked and in bed: So do you think less of me now because you know I cheat on my wife? … This is the first time of course!
SO how does one identify kindness?
I can recognise love: big, warm, blinding, deafening, stomach churning, electricity making love.
But kindness, it’s much gentler and quieter cousin, how do you identify that? And how do you distinguish true kindness from just being polite or gentlemanly? How do you know that it’s a kindness that will last into the intimacy of knowing someone really well?
Is the only way to test it? Because I don’t have a great batting average with that method?
I need a Cosmo Quiz!