JOURNAL, Sunday, Dec. 9th

I feel awful. Danny and I had a fight. Now he’s gone back to Toronto, and I won’t see him again for…who knows how long?

He came down after work on Thursday night as he had an interview on Friday about a job beginning in January. He said the interview went really well. He was so hopeful and his excitement was infectious. We had a lovely time on Friday night, we went out for dinner and talked a lot about the future. Later on over a bottle of wine back at my place, we mentally rearranged the furniture in the apartment to accommodate Danny’s things when he moves in.
The weekend started out so well but Saturday morning was strange. We woke up early and lay cuddled together for a long time. I don’t remember ever feeling that close before, so warm and peaceful. Later on we made love, and as we came together and the waves rolled and tossed me, then pulled away from me, they took with them all of my defenses. I lay under Danny, silently crying into his chest.

At first he didn’t notice that I was crying. When he felt my tears, he lifted his head to see me, and his face reflected back all the fear that he could see in mine. He cooed and caressed me; he hugged me so sweetly and asked me what was wrong. He kissed my tears and held me to him.

When Danny is with me his presence is usually enough to hold the fears at bay. When he’s away I rely on my protector-self to step in and keep me focused on living. I don’t know what happened this time.

I want to explain these fears to someone. I want to understand them myself, and deal with them. I rack my brain for a way of drawing a picture in words to show what’s going on inside me – what has always been going on inside me. I’m lost in a swirl of childish uncertainties. I see bogeymen where none exist. I feel threats from the kindest of sources. I hear admonitions from somewhere so deep inside, telling me that I don’t deserve to be happy. It seems as if they’ve always been there, waiting patiently for my weakness to ripen that they may overtake me completely.

Poor Danny. At every stage of our relationship he’s had to run the gauntlet of my fears, waiting for me to trust him. I guess that this next step of moving in together isn’t going to be any different.

I remember when we first met: he said he could see from his seat across the room how frustrated I was in the math class that we were taking together. He said that he thought I looked cute when I pouted. He volunteered to help me despite his ridiculous schedule with the varsity hockey team and his own schoolwork. He had to wait until I failed two quizzes and was well on my way to flunking out of the class before I finally accepted his help. Although he asked me out on a date at our first tutoring session, I turned him down saying that I didn’t think that it was a good idea. We only started going out months later, when he wrecked his knee during a hockey game and I felt sorry for him. On that first date I had him lean on me as we went up the stairs in the theatre. When we reached the top step I kissed him on the cheek as he juggled his crutches and I held on to our popcorn.

The first time we slept together, after weeks of nudging and cajoling on his part, he was only partly aware of what was happening. We came back to my room after a particularly raucous team party, and struggled awkwardly to get him on to my bed without tripping over furniture and waking everyone in the house. I sometimes wonder if it ever would have happened if he hadn’t seemed so helpless with his crutches and his drunken giggles.

And every step of the way Danny has come through for me with his patience and his love. But somehow I feel that what we’re looking at now is different. He doesn’t believe it when I tell him that the life that he wants to build with me may not be in my power to offer, no matter how much I might want it too.

As much as Danny wants to be with me, I also know that he would like to have a family. We don’t discuss it but it’s obvious. When we walk along the street, he has a smile for every kid he sees. He looks for excuses to talk to parents of babies in strollers. His own family is such a great part of who he is; I know that he would love to have children of his own.

I’m not one to leave anything to chance. When sex became part of our relationship, despite the condoms that we used regularly, I went directly to the health clinic at the university to get on the pill. I told them about my erratic cycle and they sent me to a gynecologist. She was kind and encouraging, but she did warn me that it would probably take much time and persistence, if I wanted to have children.

The pill had a strange effect on me and on our relationship. For the first time, I had to learn to deal with regular periods and the whole blood thing. I would have been happy to avoid it my whole life, but I survived. Between Danny and I however, the presence of these regular periods masked my fertility problem – Danny had no idea that I would probably have trouble conceiving. It was like a secret that I’d kept without meaning to, never knowing how to bring it up.

When Danny and I had been together for two years, he asked me to marry him on the night of our graduation. It was a hard time for me: Bill and Sophie had both come down for the ceremony and I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the flood of memories that their presence had brought. I told Danny that I could never marry anyone, and that I couldn’t have kids anyway, so why was he wasting his time with me? What a thing to do to someone. I don’t think that I wanted to hurt him, just push him back to a place where I could see how he would react to the reality of the future of our relationship; if that meant losing him, it was a risk I had to take.

I don’t know how our relationship has survived some of the phases that I’ve been through over these past eight years. In many ways, I’m ashamed of the person that I’ve been with Danny at different times of my life. As I’ve been thinking about Bill, and especially mom and the relationship that they had when they were together, my rational self knows that they aren’t the best, nor the only role models that I can look to in how to deal with long term relationships, but when I do think of them together, I’m overwhelmed with emotions that I can’t begin to understand. Yet the familiarity of the fear that those memories trigger makes them impossible to ignore.

Despite yesterday morning’s episode with the tears, which left Danny confused and even more solicitous than usual, we had a good weekend. We spent most of that afternoon in a café, watching busy shoppers taking the time to relax in the warmth of a latte grande and some light jazz music. We talked about dreams that we’d like to live together, of summers in Europe or maybe even an exchange year, teaching abroad. I was so grateful that I could play this dream game with Danny. He makes me feel like his world is a safe place, and that I can choose to be safe there too.

Sunday morning we lay around for a long time, eating croissants in bed and watching Coronation Street on T.V. We went for a walk along the lakeshore – everything seemed fine when we set out into the blustery wind. But as we walked, Danny mused about our life together when he moves in. He spoke of nightly cuddles and of so many breakfasts like the one that we just shared that we’d get bored with them. Hand in hand, we listened to the waves crashing against the rocks with such intensity, breaking into my space and chilling me beyond where I thought that they could reach me. The wind and the waves and the threat of so many changes in my life pierced through me like fingers of ice.

I said nothing.

We stopped for lunch then walked back to the apartment through streets of ancient houses and naked trees. I held onto Danny’s hand like a child being led.

When we got back, we stood in front of the hall closet. Pussywillow was winding herself around my ankles wanting attention. Danny took my coat and leaned forward to kiss me as I instinctively bent down to stroke Willow’s head. I didn’t mean anything by it but he felt that I was ducking away from him.

We worked for a while on a jigsaw puzzle spread out on the coffee table like a surgical patient, frozen in time, waiting for someone to put him back together. Danny brushed the hair from the back of my neck and kissed me there. I pulled away with an involuntary shudder. I moved off the couch and went to the window. I held myself, arms crossed over my chest.

Danny wanted to make love before he left – such a sensible, loving , normal wish before we said goodbye for a few weeks. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He was hurt. He asked me what he could do to help. He asked me if I love him. He asked what was the matter with me. I had no answers. He left, angry and frustrated.

I hate myself for what I’m doing to Danny, for what I can’t offer him, physically and emotionally. I don’t deserve his kindness or his love. He has a right to expect better than this. Why can’t I allow myself to be happy? Am I as stupid as my fig tree – reacting with the same negativity to everything that’s offered to me – good and bad alike? I don’t want to lose Danny. I miss him already. I don’t want to feel this way anymore.

Copyright 2003