January 27, 2005 - 11:45 PM
Confessions
“Forgive me, father, for I am about to sin.”
You will not be forgiven, my child.
“This will be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”
Also the wisest.
“This will be the most hurtful thing I’ve ever done.”
Also the most therapeutic.
“The most cowardly thing.”
And yet the bravest.
“It’s not brave.”
It is. You’ll have nothing. No friends. No family. Square one’s lonely, buddy.
“I don’t deserve any of those things.”
Perhaps not. Perhaps not.
“This will be the most selfish thing I’ve ever done.”
Can’t argue with that one.
I’ve been thinking very hard about this for months. Six? Twelve? I’m not sure. I lost count, in all that thinking. I have, in my Aquarian way, considered every angle, every possibility. I thought about the past and the future, but mostly about the present. I thought about me. I thought about who I am, and realised I have no idea.
Confession: I’ve been sheltered my whole life, and yet always responsible for other people. I lived at home with my parents until I was 21, though really it was me parenting them. It was me breaking up the constant fights, me adjudicating the latest uproar, then locking myself in my room with a bottle of scotch. I was, mostly, my mother’s defender. At least I saw myself that way. She didn’t really need defending. But I was trapped there by that, afraid that left to their own devices they’d kill each other (or, more likely, she’d kill him). It was the cancer that released me.
Ironically the time she most needed me was the time I wasn’t there. Her cancer ate a part of me, too, the part that held me together through all the shit. I had to get out. So there we were, her in the hospice, me in journalism school in Canada. The school was, to be honest, an excuse to be in Canada, to be with Carrie, my wife, to be away from England, to be free, to be alive. It was wonderful. Then she died.
Her death left me empty, alone in a strange sea. I was emotionally adrift, because she, in many ways, was my anchor. We’d lived without my dad for the first ten years of my life, and I’d grown correspondingly close to her. Life with her gone was pale and flat for a very long time. Before my marriage and after.
I don’t mean to imply I married because I was hopeless and vulnerable. I was both those things, but also madly in love. She was the one thing that kept me alive. Literally, I think, as well as figuratively. She could rescue me from the fiercest grief with a touch of my cheek. She could read my thoughts. She still can. She just knew when I needed her. I don’t know how.
So it was I went from shelter to shelter, from my parents to my wife and her three children. I love them all dearly. I do. That will never go away, it can never be reduced, it is elementary and indivisible. But as the grief receded it was replaced by a disturbing and powerful regret. It’s wrong to say I regret getting married. I don’t. I needed her and loved her as much as she needed and loved me. It was the right thing to do. I didn’t and don’t regret being married. I do regret not being single.
Confession: My wife was my first girlfriend, my first love and my first lover. I’d messed around with other girls on a few occasions, but never dated in any sense of the word. I was painfully shy and introverted. I was desperately lonely but unable to attract women or, perhaps, unable to recognise their attraction to me, because I never considered myself attractive. Often I still don’t – at least, not physically.
I don’t appreciate what I have. I can’t. I have no real baseline, no basis for comparison. My life now is better than my life in England, yes, but there would be few things worse. The grass in England was, for me, grey. Here, it is green. But how green? Is this as green as it gets? How can I tell?
Suck it up, my son. You’re whinging like a little bitch.
“I know. I just want – no, need – what everyone else has had.”
Like what?
“Life experience. Finding a place. Buying mundane shit. Meeting new people. Getting a job.”
Dating.
“Yes.”
So that’s what this is about. Pussy.
“No. Mostly not. But… If I told you you have stupid hair, would you believe me?”
No.
“What if ten people told you?”
Then I would listen.
“Don’t you think it works in reverse, too?”
In what way?
“If one person finds you attractive, that’s flattering. But it’s not enough to persuade you that you really are attractive. At least, it’s not enough for me. But if ten people do…”
Then I would listen.
“Yes.”
So your self-confidence, your self-esteem, is derived entirely from others.
“Not entirely. But mostly, I think. Yeah.”
Confession: I’ve never had a job. Not a real job with a boss and a regular paycheque. I’ve been self-employed, doing piecework on web sites and servers, never making enough to support myself. Sheltered. Ridiculously so. It’s time to stand on my own two feet. No, I’m not entirely defined by other people’s opinion of me, but we grow through feedback. If one never hears words spoken, one never learns to speak. I’m fundamentally insecure. I’ve never really learned to speak about myself.
I’ve reached a crisis point. An early mid-life crisis, perhaps, which kind of makes sense considering I was 30 when I was 13. But it’s a real crisis nonetheless. I need to find me. I need to figure out who I am. I need to prove to myself and to others that I can support myself, that I can cope with life, that when I’m dropped into water I swim, not sink.
Confession: I’m leaving my family. My wife, my step-kids.
Permanently?
“I don’t know.”
Then for how long?
“I don’t know. It’s the truth.”
Do you still love them?
“With all my heart.”
Then how can you leave them?
“I… I love me more, I guess.”
This will be the most selfish thing you’ve ever done.
“Can’t argue with that one.”
