JOURNAL: Wednesday, Oct. 17th

“If love can move mountains
Why can’t it move me?”
(Starla Way Jamieson, Sept. 1986)

I’ve just hung up the phone from talking with Danny – and every muscle in my body feels like it’s tied up in knots.

He’s so excited. He finished his work project early and will be coming down from Toronto for the weekend. He says he wants to talk about us, about what we’ll do when his contract in Toronto is up in January. He says he wants to move back here, whether he finds a job or not. He says he wants us to live together.

And I nod with the phone to my ear, and I smile to keep my tone light and say: “Sure, that's great, I’ll see you then.” And I don’t know how I’m going to tell him that I can’t be what I think he wants me to be.

Would this not be a situation when most women would cry their eyes out in confusion and frustration? But I sit here – dry eyed, my insides twisted like a pretzel.

Yet I know that tomorrow, if I hear a few bars of the Bee Gees singing about “Staying Alive” on the Oldies radio station, that will be enough to turn me into a blubbering mass. I don’t understand what’s happening to me.

Why didn’t I tell Jean about Danny? I know we got into the family thing and she seemed so interested in my childhood. But surely Danny is more important to me than people and events that went out of my life years ago.

The fact that I didn’t mention him probably says more about me than about our relationship. I think I love him but I’ve never been able to say the words. I suspect that I’ve no real idea what love is.

I know that I’d rather spend time with Danny than with anyone else. I know that he makes me laugh and makes me feel good about myself. But I also know that if I was diagnosed with some terrible disease, I don’t have the instinct to turn to someone else, not even Danny. In such a situation, I would want to be alone – off on some ice flow by myself, to die in peace. How could he be expected to share his life with someone who is so obsessed with her independence?

We’ve been together a long time, but much of that time he’s been living in Toronto, first with his graduate work, and now with this contract at the University. But soon that will all change and he’ll want to come “home”.

I’m the one who’s been relieved to have this distance between us; it’s allowed me to have a partner without having to deal with the daily demands of a relationship. I need my own space. I need to feel that my home is my own and that it’s safe. As we are now, when Danny comes to stay with me, I open the door to him; I admit him into my world.

If we were living together, he wouldn’t need the invitation – he would have his own key to my soul and could overtake my space by his very presence. Would he understand what that would mean to me?

I’ve been thinking all day about the conversation that I had with Jean yesterday.
I nearly laughed out loud when I heard myself say: “I’m feeling lost and I don’t know who’s supposed to be looking after me.” Where did that come from? I don’t want someone looking after me, telling me what’s best for me. I’ve never had it before and I’ve made out well so far, relying on my own judgment.

Actually, I liked talking to Jean. She seems very “open” and she makes me feel like I want to open up too. I feel comfortable dealing with a "professional confidant". It keeps things at a certain distance. It lets me be as candid as I want.

She wants me to start looking at my childhood. It sounds so freudian, so cliché; as if someone’s childhood holds the key to everything.

She says that many people who experience surface emotions of sadness often have important issues from childhood to deal with. She thinks that it would be a valuable exercise for me to start writing about what my life was like then. I think I trust her. I trust her enough to try it for a little while anyway, but I really don’t look forward to the experience. My general feeling is that I had enough of my childhood the first time around.

All I know is that I’m tired of being so emotional all the time and I have to do something about it. If it hurts a bit, well…No pain, no gain I guess.


Copyright 2003