Counterfeit Love

The Winter always leads me to thoughts of contemplation about snuggling up with a loved one and drinking hot cocoa while making plans for the future.  This of course leads me to a place of contemplation I don't want to be which is simply, why haven't I had that by now?

I think back to the last feeling of being "in love" I've experienced and I would not be the first woman, nor the last to say it started off innocently enough.  We started off as just friends, I never meant for it to happen, if I could take it back I would.  The horrifying part is that there is a small amount of truth in all of those statements, the problem being that there was a definite turning point, something I refused to acknowledge at the time but I knew in my heart the innocence had turned to intent. 

Results that emerge out of any relationship are the result of the relations that happen within the boundaries those two people establish.  The first time was the only truly accidental time, every time after that was precalculated and predetermined with no misunderstanding of what would happen when we got together.  Each time the intensity grew, as did our will to continue along a course that never should have been chartered in the first place.  It’s no mistake that as our secret grew so did the ability for our boundaries to dissipate within our interactions with one another. 

I stand before you today as the Woman at the Well, the Woman with the issue of Blood, Bathsheba, and eventually Blind Barthemeus.  I sacrificed the morals and values I’d grown up with, I sacrificed the belief system I’d been raised under but I also sacrificed my self-worth, my belief in true love, the power of knowing I am beautiful, worthy and well-loved.  I sacrificed normal relationships under the alluring ruse of a clandestine one that would never come to be anything more than what it was. In the closet our lust and fraternal agreement we professed that there could be no love truer than ours.  For five years I lived a life riddled with lies that I believed, promises that could never be kept as well as a convenient escape from reality that I could call upon whenever I so desired.  I gladly embraced a myopic relationship that allowed me to believe I could walk away whenever I wanted, that allowed me to believe I belonged to someone, I mattered to someone. 

I am not proud of this time in my life. I am not proud of the actions that I performed during this time of my life and furthermore, I am least proud of the results of this affair that consumed five years of my life and nearly led to my destruction.  I am not proud to say, that out of the same mouth I proclaimed to want to be a mother, a wife, a sister-in-law, a lover, and a provider I tore a family apart, leaving only the fragile remains of my own soul in the rubble of destruction I created both in what I did say and what I did not say.  The two most powerful words in the English language, you may be familiar with them, yes and no.  I used them both inappropriately, I used them both to destroy myself and others.  I reversed their importance, using them both in the exact opposite way they should have been used.  I underestimated their importance, misunderstanding the lessons they each prevented, bypassing the opportunity they presented. 

Getting to the point: I find myself still alone even after all this time because of an ever residing sense of  loving but feel unworthy to be loved in return.  Of wanting you but also wanting more for you than to be forever tied and bonded to the woman I stand before you as.  I want you to understand that who I am isn’t always who I was. 

Six years ago I went to hang out with a friend, innocently, at least that’s what I tell myself.  Looking back I realized there is nothing innocent about a single woman getting on a plane, flying to another city and spending the weekend in the same hotel room as a man who was in that city on business, having left his wife and child at home.  I wish I could tell you that he was some rich older man with whom I had little acquaintance with and who charmed me out of my panties, but would that make it any different? In truth he was my best friend, the only man in the world I thought I knew everything about, a man whom I had helped through the worst of times, celebrated through the best of times and loved immensely as a friend.  So, however it is that I ended up there, my immediate intentions were innocent.  My choices were not as much so.  We talked, we talked and we talked some more. In addition we drank, but it’s not fair to blame it entirely on the combination of ethynal alcohol filtered over coals and conversation that led us to what we swore would be only a one time thing.  What’s more is that we sobered up and at that point we consciously began to make choices and continue on a path that would eventually come to ruin a huge part of my life, rob me of who I was becoming at that time and who I would eventually become.  Sober, but still lost in that atmosphere we continued to make a mistake.  

For a short period of time even after we had landed back in our own hometowns and thus back on Earth we admitted that we had operated within an abyss that would never be possible to recreate.  In the beginning we swore that if it ever happened again it would only be within that exact same spot above the Bermuda Triangle.  Obviously, a mythical creation of our minds that never existed and thus could never be recreated.  Instead of admitting that and giving into the reality that if we could not recreate it we should leave it entirely we began working to recreate it at every possible opportunity. Suddenly, what was only supposed to happen one time was happening every night, with more intensity and more fervor and more passion each time. In an instant we had lost ourselves to this manufactured passion we had created.  On this next part I want to be clear, for two reasons: one, because I used this as a repeated justification, and two because I don’t want to hide from any form of the truth, even the worst parts.  I behaved in such a way that I will never again be able to trust myself and that has become the barrier in allowing anyone else to trust me either.  For the first five years this was an emotional affair.  We did not have sex although we had phone sex and engaged in many inappropriate texts, e-mails and comments between one another.  Clandestine trips to see one another become commonplace and at one point a necessity. 

Finally, the turning point.  At every point in every affair, whether illicit or honest there comes a turning point, a point when you are faced with a decision that will change entirely the course your own, prevent you from ever turning back and continuing on the path you were once on.  New York was that turning point for us. Before I even went to New York I knew that it would be a turning point for us, mainly because I knew for a fact that if I went we would be having sex.  We both were looking forward to it and dreading it within the same breath.  We even had a conversation about how we had to be prepared for all the consequences of our actions because they would be so different than anything we had embarked upon this far.  The truth of it is and the hardest part for me to swallow is that I wasn’t going to go.  I felt loved, that’s what made me go.  Like I said, it was a turning point.  I have never in any interaction with anyone felt as safe as I did with him, I have never felt so comfortable, so relaxed, so natural with anyone as I did with him.  

Have you ever been in a room and you know everyone and these are your closest friends and people you adore the most but you still find yourself hovering next to that person, because with that person nothing can go wrong? That’s how it was with him.  Even in a group of our closest friends I never wanted to be far from him.  Not because of the affair but because with him I was just me.  A me that I have not seen since and sometimes wonder if I’ll ever see again.  Never again can I get lost in someone who will end up getting lost in the truth that we’ve been working so hard to get away from.  So, I look away, I cancel bonding time, and I put up what I believe to be an impenetrable shield but which most easily see through.  I want so badly to be in love again, to be loved and to allow myself to relax in the presence of love.  I want to stop running from love and I want to start running towards in and I want to relax in the arms of the one who loves me.