Tuesday, November 21, 2017

The past is a foreign country

The whole thing began about 2 years ago. A casual flirtation on Facebook. An exchange of jaunty emails. A chaste evening in one another's company and a sequence of increasingly less chaste passionate and affirmative correspondence. Culminating in what ridiculous levels of "good breeding", and atrocious communication, would preclude George from admitting, was an embarrassment to him....

 Me, arriving at his bachelor pad, to find him bachelor no more.

If he ever looked hard enough at this tableau to truly engage with it, or admit to his part in it, I think he might feel some guilt.

And I for my part, as I said in a previous post, as a function of my mid-life state of mind, my ennui for my home country, my readiness to fall in love, embued him with a lot of significance he just didn't have.

About a year ago, the pain was still to intense to bear, and I was still in counselling trying to let it go. Then in about February of this year having ignored me for a long time, he said something a little rude to me in a Facebook comment. A tiny string broke. Finally when he retired from Facebook, just before his Birthday in late August thus severing all contact. I was able to let it go

And in the quarter that has passed since then, the whole story has become strange and unbelievable to me. I don't recognize myself in the story, or how I felt. It is a foreign country, and I was a foot soldier in a battle I never chose to fight, and which I fought alone.

10th Anniversary





Originally written December 2016
I meant this milestone to pass with some ceremony. I was going to reflect on the last 10 years maybe claim my place in Blog history. I thought I might defect to Wordpress even. But late November and early December was a very lacklustre period, and so it just passed by. I can't believe the rise of Blogging in this period. The Blogging stars and YouTube sensations that have emerged as I simply got by day by day. This is so typical of me. I  am often an early adopter of things, but miss the boat at the same time.

I was an advocate for women in IT in 1994, but was somehow encouraged to let it go in favour of becoming a role model myself.

During Y2K I was holed up in a minor university at the end of the earth, and my students graduated and immediately earned three times what I did.

I've been on Twitter since 2009

And I have been blogging since 2006.

Sigh..

Roy Hattersley's dog


I do not pretend that my grief was unique - I merely state, as a matter of fact, that nothing has ever caused me as much pain as Buster's death  
Roy Hattersley was evidently  surprised by the depth of his grief over Buster, and by analogy I have been totally bowled over by the depth of my grief around the loss of a "potential" relationship. I sometimes wonder if I am somehow preparing myself for the greater losses that are bound to occur in my life, of my parents for example.  Like Mr Hattersley nothing caused me as much pain as being rejected by George. The only thing that came close was a late miscarriage of twins when I was 34.

Maybe the mere fact of him was masking a whole lot of other stuff around my family of origin, the circumstances of my migration, and my own choice of husband a few years after we left school. I imbued him with a significance he just doesn't have.

I offer you no explanation. I just hope that the universe will hand me a solution in the next decade or so.