The Woman I Should Have Married

Right from the beginning, it was mostly comfortable and easy, and we were very, very close.
It was the kind of closeness that many people just don't believe in.
Among other things, she could place her hand on my chest, and simply know what was true for me.

Sadly, we intentionally used this blessing, in our own service, but once.
It was early on, in the budding stage of what was growing between us.
We were laying on her bed, early one evening, talking.  Really, just talking.

We were trying to, for lack of a better word, decide, if we had a future, together.
As if we thought somehow, that this sort of thing was mostly up to our conscious selves.
We were both wondering, but it was she who was asking, me, what I thought.  She was like that.

For what ever reason, I knew better, that time, than to try to offer her my assurances, in words.
I asked her to put her hand on my chest, and to "read me".  She did these both.
As they were appearing in her consciousness, the ideas reemerged from her, as words.

What she said was partly "stream of consciousness" and partly what she took it all to mean.
As she spoke, her face was frequently serious, and she nodded quite a bit,
as if all that was then in her mind was so very significant -- as I am sure it was.

She would hesitate mid-thought, as her awareness evolved, never finishing her sentence.
She didn't need to finish.  I knew it all.  But this would be obvious, if you think about it.
The nodding subsided, and her face relaxed, and she announced her conclusion about what she had learned.

"You have some doubts, which I understand, but I know you sincerely want us to work out", she said,
or words to that effect.  And this was entirely true.  I did, as best I myself knew, want us to work out.
An uncountable collection of words could never have realized what we did, in that minute or two.

Now she knew, and trusted, what she wanted to know, at least about me.  Now she could let herself go.
Now she could want, what she longed more or less consciously for, from, or I should say “with”, me.
And so we proceeded, with ever more earnestness, to pursue our already-begun togetherness.

We were both happy, even if I say so myself.  Being together was easy, and correspondingly good, naturally.
As is so often the case, the forces of God, or nature, or ourselves, whether these be separate forces,
or merely different faces of but one force, changed the circumstances of our lives.

I was offered their choice of either moving away 700 miles, or being laid off, from my job.  Now, at only 4 months,
we talked, unlike we had before.  About how to deliberately keep, what had grown, so far, almost effortlessly.
We found it hard, each of us, to trust the genuine goodness of it, I guess because "we" just had not yet endured much.

Within adversity’s gaze, absent surety in ourselves, we wished to feel more confident than we did, each of the other.
There was nothing tangibly wrong.  It was just that neither of us wanted the curse of a bad relationship, again.
This required cautious deliberateness.  And our belief in the reality of our present, was dimmed, by past-born fears.

We are both practical people, very practical people.  Which, for the most part, is a good thing.
It helped us be together well.  We easily agreed how to schedule, and cook, and household, and spend,
and other things that often seem able to cause trouble, one way or another.  These little trials we were spared.

It seemed just too much, to risk the general certainties of a job “in hand”, in such generally uncertain times.
For a relationship, which was after all, no matter how sweet and precious, only a fledgling, really.
It felt, well, easier, to play it safe, and do the sensible and logical thing.  To continue our togetherness, apart.

We were both committed.  We would make it work.  Via some unforeseen eventuality that would, develop.
Something would change, both how and when unknown, but we would prevail, in our pursuit of "us".
Shared desire, and collective resources and resourcefulness, would be, had to be, enough, surely.

We did what we could to both preserve and nurture our connection, and preserve and nurture our hope.
We talked every day.  We traveled to see each other, a lot.  But not nearly enough, at least not enough for me.
We managed to keep down the cost of separated connection, as if that were important.  And it was, a little, I suppose.

Beyond living in a way that could not honestly be called “coupled”, nothing else was then pleasing to me, either.
I’m a person who finds it awfully difficult to adapt to newness, and nothing but the new, was with me.
Alone in a new city, I had come for a job that, for a variety of reasons, I liked less, and less, and less, and less.

Although I missed the sex too, I really missed just sleeping with her.  The warm touch – in both senses of the phrase.
Hand in hand.  Chest to Back.  Knee behind knee.  Holding, being held, never sure which was more the blessing.
I’ve since learned it really was a blessing, for us both to delight so, in such togetherness.  Not everyone does.

Beyond both sexual and physical intimacies, I missed the emotional intimacy, of shared lives.
We did share with each other, as best we could.  But our experiences, were separate, and not, “our experiences”.
“Our” experiences were each trying to find our way back, together.  With none of it simple or obvious.

How we did it is not easy, or necessary, really, to explain.  But we found a something to try.  She made a change.
For us to be together.  But we fell apart, almost immediately, over nothing important.  And she went, back, home.
And I let her.  I even helped her.  Thus prevailed our fear of loosing any bet on “us”, we dared try to make.

I now believe if either of us had had even just a little more courage, or faith, or gumption, we could have saved us.
I now believe we each were looking to the other, to ease our own fears.  What we needed to feel in ourselves,
or see in the other, while not actually absent, was lost in, or muted by, the vapors of sad remembrances.

Her tender though tentative gift, of courage and hope, had failed.  Our dilemma revived.  Resolution, ever more obscure.
We conceived one more solution.  But it carried the same risks, as any such intimate collaboration would, and did.
This too died, beginning with hesitation, and ending in impatience, as the nostalgia for what so glowed, was fading.

It was I who gave up.  She absolutely meant no less to me.  But I so needed what seemed to be impossible to have.
To be with her.  If I could not be with her, well, then perhaps someone else.   I had to find, someone, else.
It seemed sensible at the time, but it hasn’t worked out.  An attempt or two seem worth mentioning.  Well, not really.

In hind sight, I wish I had thought, to ask her, to touch my chest and read me, again, in those fading times.
When our efforts were about to capsize, and drown our hopes.  When words were inadequate, to calm it all.
When our misgivings and doubts and insecurities, were bigger than our trust and faith and optimism.

If she had but known, how sorrowful were my circumstances, and how much I loved and needed her,
I can’t help but think her fears and hesitation would have paled, in the bright, unobjectionable, truth.
Then, also seeing nothing objectionable, I suppose my own fears and impatience would have paled, too.

And today, five years later, she would long have been happily married to me.  Instead of someone else.
 
 

2008/02/29