While we were all sprawled on the sofas watching a film, with H's head so near me, I slipped into the idea that we were all a family again, and it was very, very hard not to reach out and stroke his head. It is what I would have done before he left. I never stopped being affectionate with him even when I felt great anger and bewilderment, before the bomb. I had to pinch myself to stop myself believing that the last two years had not happened and that we were just carrying on as a family like we had done.
I was scared that just touching his head might trigger off a reaction in him ("I still have hopes which he is inadvertantly 'encouraging'") to send him scampering off back into the dark tunnel again. I guess even showing affection at this stage is just counter productive.
I agonised over why, when I have never stopped loving this man, and have never banished him, he still resists me and prefers to keep close to two other women who ulitmately care little for him and have known him rather less than I do.
I wonder if there is ANYONE in his life who loves him as long or as much as I do. His parents are dead. His full sister he was out of touch with for years and years (didn't even know how to contact her to invite her to our wedding) and around the time of the bomb he said he was back in touch with her by email. Lately, when I asked for news about her, I got the impression that they were not so much in touch. And he has NEVER even spoken affectionately of her, only disparigingly, saying she is the most selfish person he knows. (Uh, though *I* had that title last year??? )
About his original (from college days) close friend, whom he followed out here to this country to visit and shared a house with for the first two years, he told me was not so close to him - he was very 'self-contained and self centred', in fact another (incidentally gay) friend of his was his closest friend. Yet about two months ago, when I asked after him to H, he said, oh, I have had enough of him, you can have too much of him, it is always the same converstaion that I have with him... I haven't seen him in a while .... His 'close' and 'good' friends seem to come and go with alarming speed.
* * *
I had to stop myself from vounteering to help him out financially. As long as he doesn't wish to be my husband, I have to take care of my interests quite selfishly.
* * *
H was also quite mean to me a couple of times, not deliberately, I don't think, but in an unconscious, thoughtless way. He told me that my present hair colour was much better than that 'awful' colour I had last summer, though he preferred me natural (grey!). I have prematurely grey hair that many folk used to say looked stunning the way I had it, cut short. I just said, thanks, in a rather sarcastic/hurt way.
Another time I showed him a composite portrait I had made on a website to use as an avatar. You choose the eyes, nose, mouth etc and make up a face as you like. I was aiming to make one that looked like myself. When he saw it, he said cruelly, that's rather optimistic! He didn't sound like it was a joke, and he heard my rather hurt 'thanks!' and later said it did look quite like me...
* * *
What scares me about his visits, is that after just a few hours here, I have to remind myself that H is NOT home and he will go away again, and I have already begun getting used to his presence. It takes a while to detach again.
And while I didn't react too often to H's barbs, I did forget to NOT TAKE THEM PERSONALLY, and was hruting a bit inside.
These days he is like a verbal cluster bomb, yet I*I* have to be very wary of stepping on a mine...
I guess I have take my detachment (what I have of it) and develop it rather more.
More work.....
Livnlearn
"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates
)
His 'close' and 'good' friends seem to come and go with alarming speed.
