Dead Time

Forgive my indulgence on this matter, but this is a blog site and it is likely to contain a smattering of both personal and practical insights.  This is a very personal one, but I’m hoping that by writing this it will perhaps find a common soul, or maybe in some way alleviate the horrible symptoms I’m feeling but not really resolving.

After my recent entanglement with a broken heart 7000 miles from home I thought I’d managed to cope with it quite well. My cheeriness at my apparent successful handling of this personal crisis was it seems a little premature. Following my return journey I had roughly two weeks of holiday still to enjoy, and all things considered I spent it quite well. I can tell you that this strange recovery was isolated to the holiday period. Having returned to work, and my default emotional state, I find an incredible weight of sadness and worry has consumed me - a darkness I’d hoped never to feel again after the last time. I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy returning to work.  It’s never a particularly enjoyable thing for anyone when they’ve had freedom and time to be themselves (even a break as uneven as the one I’ve just experienced) but in concert with what I suspected was a heart healed too easily, I find that it has come as a real shock to return to my old life.  You see, for six months prior to the holiday I had cultivated this glorious long distance relationship with a wonderful girl.  In one very important way it felt better than a conventional relationship in that by virtue of it being “long distance” it forced me to work and appreciate the “person” I thought I was getting to know, free of any immediate physical distractions to coerce my heart - the achilles heel of any male.  This only made the very real emotions in my words, and her replies, all the more potent. In retrospect I have discovered that the pain inherent to all relationships can take on more forms than one might immediately imagine.  From start to end all I had managed to focus on was the personal exchange, and in doing so I really believed in the connection which was unfolding.  Her photos gave some hint that she was attractive physically of course, but without actually standing before her those looks seemed somehow quite secondary to the matters speaking from the heart, which I was certainly doing - by the ton.

It feels as though I am living one of those strange Faustian parables, delivered with a bittersweet punchline in the way only the stories from the Twilight Zone or the old Hammer horror anthologies can - like the man who asked for eternal life, and finds himself one day still miraculously alive and unable to die after a horrifyingly nasty accident.  Here I am, living the ironic parable. “Okay son”, Cupid says to me, “You’ve wanted to feel a perfect love so badly all your life, here you are – have it”. For six months it is breathtaking, at times feeling so overwhelming in its intensity as to drive me almost mad with pleasure. It then gets taken away and I’m pushed back into my prison. “What’s wrong?” says Cupid, “You wanted to know what love feels like, and now you can say you tasted it in your life, can’t you?”.  As a man who tries to guide his life by Buddhist principles of compassion, tolerance and understanding I don't generally condone violence, but if someone tells you that "it's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all" please punch some sense into them.  After the subsequent events and my return home I concentrated on the “firsts” which I had survived/experienced and took some pride in them – I still do.  My failure was in not anticipating the strength of the massive emotional fallout yet to come.  Every day now I am back to looking at my old boring self in the mirror, the single romantic, going through the repeating, five day alternating existence of work, home and sleep - my own personal prison.  Truthfully, the last four days have been the hardest I have had in a long time.  By the way I feel even as I write this I have a very real worry that my heart may have been pushed a little too far this time, and with respect to the few friends I do have I fear also that this time I am more alone in this particular dark episode than I have ever been.  There is another all too familiar harmonic dischord though this – an emotional numbness which leaves me walking through my days like an emotional zombie.  At this point I have to say that only someone who doesn’t really understand this feeling (or lack of) can possibly tell me in their own frustrations to “chill out”.  With respect to the friend who asked this of me, this statement is a little like telling someone how to use a hammer after they’ve hit their thumb.  Aside from the crushing despair I keep getting in waves, all I know is a horrible emptiness.  Something might catch me out temporarily, and I smile (I am normally prone to taking an absurd amount of pleasure from seemingly trivial things), but it passes quickly.  I then return to this strange emotional limbo I find myself in – a mental whirlwind of frustration where I can see my entire life from this point onwards being a drawn-out hurt, filled with beauty of great potential which simply moves on by.  These are familiar old teenage emotional scars I am facing - being able to talk with women quite freely until I meet with one who is instinctively attractive (a very rare thing), whereupon my personality and character evaporate and I’m left unable to be my jovial fun self, and forced to watch as they slip away out of reach to the future arms and life of someone more fortunate, leaving me untouched, unheld, unkissed and alone.  Even with all that I’ve seen and done in my life, I still can’t seem to overcome these old emotional blocks which seem to persistently steer me away from that which I want most in life – the very basic human need to love and be loved.  In this state I find myself in, it seems that my heart’s natural resistance to western women and desire to find love within the Asian culture is an evermore hopeless dream.  As I think back I fear that it is true that I’ve always simply fallen luckily (or unluckily) into any relationships which I’ve had in my life.  I also fear that I will always be this same old timid person with so much to give, and yet so easily crippled by beauty.  To never have that control in my life when I most need it, and to feel that my life is predestined to always be this way is a terrifying prospect.  Part of the deal I made with myself in life is that I would never take love for granted and in spite of the way in which my life appears to have played out thus far, in my own heart I don't think I have.  I've always tried to appreciate every moment which I suppose makes it all the harder to tolerate. Although I am told that I am still young at 38, I feel my time is running out. This is why I can almost cry – except that for the moment my unfeeling state won’t even allow me this simple release.