I believe I started to look for her quite young. I remember fantasizing about finding and embracing some vague notion of a magical potion of love. Not possessive, you understand. It wasn't that I desired to cling to her or an ideal of her, to capture, or win her like in the Song of Solomon... that she could be pried open for the sake of love... She said, "I don't love you."
It hurt but I accepted it as a verdict. After all, one can't be forced to love. I asked, "Did you ever love me?"
"Yes... maybe no. I'm not sure."
Thinking of our daughter I asked, "Do you still want to be married?"
"Yes."
"To me?"
"No."
The hurt... it was "the hurt". I call it "the hurt" like "the hurt" is a thing that possessed me. It wasn't about me clinging to her or feeling as though I was losing control. See, if those were the feelings it wouldn't have been losing a love. That would be more of a feeling of losing a separate thing from her. No, it was quite the opposite. It had become ungrasping. I let go.
"Why?" I asked.
"You are clinging. I don't want to be owned by you. I live in your shadow."
"I never meant you to."
"See, that's what I mean. You never meant to do anything with me. We trapped each other without seeing it happen."
"Sounds like you are saying you still love me."
"No. I don't hate you. I care about you. I care deeply about you, around you, and sometimes through you, but I don't love you. I never did."
"What is love if it isn't caring deeply about someone?"
"I don't know but it isn't love."
With those words I became owned by "the hurt". I would call it pain but pain is something that goes away. I carried "the hurt" with me in every relationship after that.
I went on. Some tried to love me but I never tried to love anyone. I no longer cared deeply about anyone for a very long time. I didn't mean to feel that way but from that day on... the real day... not the dream day I bumped into people unattached but longing... longing...
I ask the sky, "Oh, Buddha, are you full of shit?"
The sky answers, "Yes, I'm full of shit."
My second novel is about a man going through what happened to me... how I was opened to beauty and love through the unconscious and unrequieted love of another. This prepared me for what I became able to share with another. I couldn't share that before because all I had to share was "the Hurt" until then.
It became such a monstrous being... a horror I had to face. Only then was I ready to allow it to fade. No violins... no rays of light through the clouds... a simple onion soup... an act of kindness was enough...
Is it gone.
No. When Bonnie died it came back. It wants to take me down.
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