Dearest Friend,
I haven't commented on your search for love previously, because I couldn't get past the terror it strikes in my stomach. I didn't want to rain on your parade with negativity. But with your last letter, you force my hand and I can't avoid commenting.
Your hopes and expectations are so open and out there, that I am afraid for you because at seventy we are more vulnerable than ever before. I also feel jealousy and admiration for your courage to try again. I don't trust my own judgment enough to dare take on another relationship. I asked myself after my last failure, why I kept repeating the same pattern and expecting a different outcome? Surely I had enough evidence that I could recognize a disaster in the making. But no, I would sail into the new relationship because this time it would be different.
I want you to be happy. I wish for your "this time" to be the right man, the right relationship, the true love, the right time. I do keep my fingers crossed for you, knowing full well, that if it works, I will lose you. You will become one of those women with partners whose coupleness underline my singleness. As for you always being the stranger at the table, I've learned that we all are strangers. From the moment of our birth, we can't go home again. The mother- womb is gone forever, even as we surround ourselves with family, friends, activities et al to hide the loss of mother love, safety and security from ourselves.
I have always felt like the stranger at the table. Even at my own table. That's how I became an alcoholic. I wanted to belong or be blotto. Story after story in AA that begins with "I always felt like I never belonged..." and I came to understand that what I thought was my unique loneliness was really the human condition. We build communities and relationships to bridge that condition. Mostly we don't succeed escaping our solitary selves. Sometimes we do succeed.
So I wish with all my heart, that you succeed dear friend.
Love,
Claire
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About Me
- kingmisha
- I'm bigger than a pile of breadboxes, but smaller than a Sherman tank. I'm overeducated, underpaid but very content with my life. I have loved infrequently but intensely. I dated a poet, divorced a Dean, had an affair with a jazz pianist, was engaged to a diplomat, and widowed by my child's father. The men in my life were all very special. Not all grand passions but much loved in their time: Leonard Cohen, Alfred Pinsky, Billy Horn, Wendell Goodin, and Elliot Hirschman. Thanks for the memories... I'm a lapsed artist which doesn't really trouble me because I'm a very successful parent. I lacked the requisite conceit to persevere as an artist. I just couldn't make myself believe that my art came before my child. The world really doesn't need another sculptor (even a good one), but it does need another good human being. It can use all the good human beings we can turn out. I present Mambolica as my evidence so judge for yourselves.