2006-09-20
‘I just wanted you to know I’m not that horrible demanding person I was this time two years ago. It was a bad summer for me that year, and I didn’t understand what I think I do now about being able to leave.’She went onto another analogy: ‘I think of it now as being like the European Community. It starts off and everyone claims all these things are possible and it will work wonderfully, and yet the reality is everyone has their own agenda and priorities and although it’s still something that kind of works and everyone pretends it is giving everything they wanted, they still fight to keep control of their little bit and don’t go for it whole-heartedly. And it’ll never be what it was claimed it could be. I think now I was being as naïve as the people who signed the Treaty of Rome. And I think you knew all along that’s what we were doing. And I was unfair because you kept telling me but I kept arguing for perfection, and you just knew it was always going to be too difficult to get past very good.’
We were sitting on the high stools in the bar on Friday night. And I kind of hope people weren’t listening in – although come to think of it we were a lot less controversial than we maybe seemed in public five years ago. She’d been given a late-pass by Dave because it was somebody’s leaving celebration – and that in itself is encouraging. We stick together on these occasions, because I know that’s what she wants. There is, these days, a little nervousness in me that says we ought to socialise more - a recognition that there is danger in being alone so much that perhaps betrays the fact that my desire to be with her all the time has softened to the extent that I’ve lost that obliviousness, that ‘don’t care what they think’ attitude. Where there used to be a complete over-ride, now there is a degree of caution and insight.
And she makes me tense. In reality we had a good week – sociable, no fights. But I was never, ever confident that the ice we were skating on wasn’t going to collapse beneath me and I would be plunged back into the freezing water. I know when she sees me talking to certain people without knowing what it’s about she’s suspicious and questioning. She’s as wary as I am – her believing I could undermine her, me believing that at any moment there could be more unfounded accusations to defend. She seems to look for evidence that she is no longer the centre of my universe, while at the same time needing me to accept that the centre of hers is more crowded. The trust is fragile – we both surely want it to be there and can go through the semblance, but it is cracked these days. I think, more than anything, she fears she has lost my good opinion, mentions that she worries about things I have said, twisting bad meaning or innuendo out of the words. Which from my side feels like she too has lost good opinion of me – if she can believe those things are what I meant does she still really know who I am?
And so it goes. Will it get better? I was prepared for it to take a while to settle down after so long apart, I was ready for doubts. But despite the assurances that she now understands how I felt better than she did, and I believe that to be true, we go on finding it difficult to trust. And I don’t know how to recover that.
They say time heals. And from what she says I think perhaps time, and the children, have worked to heal a lot (or some?) of the damage done between her and Dave. The problem is she and I didn’t recognise for way too long that we couldn’t sustain what we had in the face of the damage done at home. In thinking she needed a constancy in our relationship (and heaven knows how hard it seemed to give it up) to help her cope with the trauma of home, we didn’t see until long after that we had to put some form of distance between us. That happened two years ago against an extreme emotional background, but still didn’t get to finality. Even the break of the best part of a year hasn’t brought that. We are still skating on the ice, still holding onto each other’s hand. And I’m still believing we can do (only) that forever.