Tuesday, April 23, 2013

A2

WOMEN 74
(a follow-up to WOMEN 57 - http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2011/02/blog-post.html)

I kept in happy touch with A and her new family when i moved north. I went back for an extended FL visit three years later, and stayed at their place a good deal. Their child was over two now, and so wonderful - little V cooed like a pigeon. Any memories of my years of being in love with A were out of my consciousness, as i continued to love she and E both as a couple and individually. They talked of getting me to move back. But all was not well - i'd known they'd been having troubles (mostly sexual). It was worse than i knew. One evening i got a call from A, asking me to pick her up. She was in Bonita on foot, having left E and their car. Once i got her, i found out that a lot of the worst behaviors from her horrible romantic past were being enacted anew, most notably physical/emotional violence lubricated by alcohol. I found out they'd even separated a few months back. The next afternoon, when E and V were on the porch and i was inside with her, she told me she'd been thinking about being with me. My spirit suddenly went looping into a space i'd never known. If you'd told me beforehand that a simple handful of words could ever affect me so, i wouldn't have believed you. I felt my being splinter. I'll be eternally glad i was able to respond in an unaffected way (my spirit was in piecemeal tatters for the next few months, living between my love for them and the feelings she had released in me). The next day, she spoke some words that may have been the most resonant of my life. She was talking about massage, asking whether i were still into it. I replied affirmatively. She said that E hated massage, and wished she were rubbing my feet that very moment. Why those words tore me down and left me quivering and alone in the universe, i can't exactly say...but in the months to come, a sentence churned through my spirit over and over, a sentence to her i hadn't been able to finish - "To be the one who gets to rub your feet every night..." I couldn't finish it, my mind wouldn't let me, i couldn't enunciate what i would do to be that person...but i'm sure it was the most profound unfinished sentence of my life. My word choice bothered me, though. Why did it have to be "the one"? In the months and years to come, my mind tried to come up with a solution...perhaps TWO mates for her...she could thrive with two (of course that probably applies to all women, but ridiculously so for A, with her sex drive and paradoxical personality). However, while she'd been saying these massage things, E was right in the room! I'd always been so grateful that he was at peace with my nebulous, quasi-romantic history with her. I knew how rare such acceptance could be. And here she was, blatantly comparing him unfavorably to me, right before his eyes. I cried inside. A had always had a blunt quality, it's one of the things i loved about her most dearly. But her bluntness was sometimes pseudo-intentionally destructive. A few nights later, she was tucking V and i into bed. He was already asleep, and she spoke of sexual desire for me. Such profound inner conflict (in me, but no doubt her too). I also experienced another sensation that was a first in my life - my brain literally scrambling words i was hearing. It happened once in FL, then again later on the phone. A was talking, and my brain just turned her words into a jumbly muck. I could hear the components, but my brain randomized them. Just stunningly bizarre. One of those times, she was talking about how she felt a kind of peace with me she couldn't compare with anyone she'd ever known (or something like that). What she said the other time, my brain fuzzed so well that i can recall no part of it. My reaction to V had been singular too...it was easy to imagine slipping into his life, as a parent figure. Where did THAT come from?? I'd never had a thought like that for any child. I talked with E, commiserating with him and trying to get him to open up. But he couldn't fully do so. A told me he was angry she'd involved me in their problems. There were other moments on that trip...she would share her perceptions on life and living, and once or twice i was just dumbfounded over how some of her views were so like my own wildflower ways. A couple months later, A and V were visiting E's parents in Connecticut, and she invited me. I hopped on a bus. I was determined that, in E's childhood home of all places, i would never do a destructive thing. It was a lovely couple days. A and i had some nice moments, including a freezing, nighttime skinny dip, but neither of us spoke about the things that had passed between us. After my FL visit, i'd sent some e-mails to E and not heard back (but that was typical for him). The worst thing i did in Connecticut was follow her up the stairs one night after she'd gone to bed with V. I stood outside her door. When she'd said goodnight, we stood face to face and had a long few moments of silent soul-sharing. I finally turned around and went back down. A month or so later, i got the sense that she was re-dedicated to E, and sent her my support. I asked for one small favor, on the phone - to let loose my spirit's turmoil, which i'd written down. She listened, and a great load was lifted. The difference between the new feelings she'd stirred in me and the drowning love i'd experienced those years earlier was that, for the first time ever, my spirit rose to a place of possibility where she and i were together...and the beauty of that dream shook my foundations. Dreaming of some improbable three-way marriage, i went back to my lonely life. I knew that her shadow would loom over my spirit (and love life) for a good while.

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