In my life, words are like compounds. They are the inadequate vessel for my thoughts and emotions. The older I get, the more I have learned to control the emotions and modulate my tones, so that my words get across. I have to learn how to communicate. I have been trying to communicate with Sweet Thing, trying to get him to talk to me.
It is hard, because he is very skilled at diverting too much serious talk about us. There are times when we are on the phone, and I try to ask him about his life, what’s happening with him, because I always want to know–it’s like pulling teeth. I know better than to broach the topic of what has been happening and not happening.
Somehow he finds a way to throw the focus of the conversation to my life and what I am doing. I wonder if he is doing it deliberately, or if he thinks I don’t notice.
I pinned him down recently and told him in so many words the things I had to tell him. I couldn’t tell him everything that I had deduced in the long, arduous months since this roller coaster began.
Instead, I shared the most salient points; revealed the main thematics in this mosaic of emotional, karmic and carnal ties that are binding me to him at this time. I shared the most valuable part of this insight with him, told him the revelations in divination; I invited him to see what I see… the value in himself and his value to me. I spoke my truth, and went placidly amid the noise and haste, Desiderata stylee.
It is hard, sweaty, fear filled work….. I keep confronting his deep seated quietness. I keep trying to pierce the surface–the deceptively calm surface–looking beyond the smokescreens, the inky dyes he uses to hide behind. I sense he wants to say something, but he is suppressing himself, for what reason, your guess is as good as mine.
Many of the things he is defending matter to him, and his defences are so strong. I can hear the restraint in his voice…. and yet, he doesn’t tell me to leave him alone, he doesn’t tell me to stay forever. And all Big Mami has is words. Words that scare me to tell, to organise into a fashion; choosing them like compounds in a Great Spell Breaker, hoping they will fall in fertile places inside him. I use them like a nullifier, trying to counteract the self defeating, self fulfilling prophecies he has been creating, living with and manifesting in his everyday life….. acidic self immolation that he performs, like a puppet on a string, with seemingly no real attempts to seek anything else. He has accepted and lived with it, seemingly not making a connection between these unhealthy relationships with others and himself with the allergies and insomnia that seem to plague him. He has convinced himself on multiple levels, that that is all he deserves, all he will get.
I can only imagine his terror that he has managed to attract me.
He has told me so, but not quite in so many words.
I am battling his own fantasies of me as well. His own, years long fantasising on me, his own holding of a torch for me…. no doubt in which I am something transfigured and far from my actual reality. Now, he thinks he fools me by not talking to me, secreting the knowledge of his heart in the hopes of throwing me off, but he discounts my empathic nature and the connections we created and the confirmation and guidance system I live with as a part of my faith.
The things is, I may be sure down to the marrow of my bones that he is meant for me, but I can’t make him love me. I think he already does and is living in deep denial because of the negative space that he has been living in. For me to love him, something is so wrong that he just can’t accept it, he rebels against it. His fear of abandonment is probably choking him into the silence he keeps.
I can feel the powerful instinct inside me, quite ready and willing to take him and work on him. Bathe him in and infuse him with herbs, annoiting him with honey and sweetness and helping to heal the wounds he has sustained and helping him; but I can’t force him into doing anything. He has to want healing for himself. He’s going to want to leave limbo land.
So I use my words, hoping words will be enough to draw him to me, so we can work on some of this shit. I guess one of the fears I am trying to face is that he may not be able to do that. I am not being judgmental, because I don’t want or like it when people judge me in situations, so I try not to do that to anyone. It’s a hard road to travel, but it’s where I do most of my walking.
So I choose words that soothe, and dodge as much shrapnel as possible…. choosing words that I hope can penetrate the fog, and using words to unveil my mind and my heart, words to encourage him to do the same. They are the compounds in a formula, a concoction grounded in reality, and are my only tools in this fight. This fight of my life. I feel inadequate, somehow as though I am fighting something I cannot win, but my sense of loyalty and my heart won’t allow me to give up yet.
Maybe he will surrender his fears, his false evidence, the phantoms of his own making and the negative behaviour of his past…. but I fundamentallly know that I am asking for nothing less that radical change. I am willing to accept that he may not be able to do it.
I am not afraid of failure, because like all fears it isn’t real, it exists only if I give it power and I choose not to do that. I choose instead to find my lessons everywhere….
I keep hoping that I am reaching him somewhere, somehow. At the very least we are talking again, and as long as we are talking, I guess there will always be a part of me that thinks there is hope. For me, as long as I have hope, I am going down fighting, words, heart, spirit and all.
He still will not talk.
He still won’t let me in.
I have faith, but I have so much more to say and no matter what I say, his response is, “Okay.”
That’s the only word he is giving me.
Everything else is short sentences that speak volumes.
Right now, I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but only my Mother can change his heart and sweeten his tongue so the words can flow between us the way the used to. All I want now are his words, for him to speak and tell me story after story about his life. Tell me what he did on his way here and who he met and saw.
I want to hear words, words like compounds, like minerals and salts, nutrients to feed me. I need his words like nails, wood, steel, iron and grease to get across the gulf the last five months of silence has wrought.
I need his words, whispered in my ear and heating me from the inside out, I want his words to flood me with honey, because I miss him still and ache for him.
Where are his words? Where are his stories?
“Okay” sounds so hollow, so not there, so disbelieving, so without life.
I cannot tell if he is being flippant or affirmative, if he means yes or he means something else.
I need his words like waterfallls, like flowing rivers. I want our conversation back the way it used to be; lasting hours and hours and traversing both great depths and lightly skipping. I miss the sound of his voice.
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