I have known Susan since I was 13 years old.
We used to giggle together in Quaker meetings and she and her wonderful family became the mainstay of my adolescence.
For her, I will always have a place in my heart.
She called me today from Oxford, where she lives, and we chatted for an hour or so about our lives.
It was so reassuring to hear the voice of an old friend who, even though we have only dipped periodically in and out of each others lives, as the decades passed we maintained a life long love for each other.
It was wonderful to catch up and maybe she will come visit me here in LA.
As you are aware I have still not made any definite plans to deal with the lumpy ball tumor situation.
I have been avoiding doing anything about it.
The emotions I have been going through with Jake seem to take my mind off the critical decisions I have to make.
The bottom line is this: I must go to London and sort it out.
I can’t afford to begin the surgery here and so have no option but to go home. As soon as I move out of my place I can think clearly about taking the next step.
I reread JB’s letter this morning and feel a little less angry with him. He is not a monster, more like a confused kid.
I have to learn to be more compassionate. I have to learn to forgive. I MUST remember that he has been through a great deal. Anyway, I did as he asked and removed all mention of his last name and occupation. It was kinda cruel to have done it in the first place.
I have had an online tantrum and now it’s time to try to put the pieces of the smashed vase back together and hope that we can go our separate ways without derision, scorn or hatred.
I have said and written things that although true were insensitive and unkind. He is just a regular guy with a broken heart. He wasn’t to know that being friends was the last thing I could ever imagining happening after we stopped being lovers.
Resentment, shame and fear (as usual) shape my relationship to the rest of the world.
This morning I tried to be of service to another recovering addict. It made me feel a great deal better about my own situation.
I really, really loved and cared for that timid man. He was quite unlike anyone I have ever loved before. Everyone that met him was delighted that I had found such a normal, sweet man. I think that we had, when we weren’t fighting the best time. We laughed a great deal. We shared a number of the same interests and in a perfect world where two unencumbered men could come together, unfettered and unaligned we could have made something work out.
It is not a perfect world. It is an imperfect world riven with complications and aberrations.
It seems that only the very few get to share their lives with those they love without catastrophic problems. I wish I could be one of those people but I am not, I will never be, I can never be.
That is why I committed to being single. To being alone. To relish and respect a single life.
I am a single man who will not hanker after my own death… because being single is perceived by so many as a crime against humanity.