In Dreams Awake

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

(Henry David Thoreau)

Monday 6 April 2015

Bewilderment

 I've broken my reading glasses - typically, on a Bank Holiday weekend when I can't get them fixed until Tuesday. I'm wearing my old glasses as I write this, which is OK but a bit annoying. It sums up the last few days.

 You see, my fiancee Caz has been away, visiting friends in Exeter. And I have been lonely.

 I'm a bit of a lone wolf. Always have been, and it's been all right. I haven't been happy, usually - but I haven't been unhappy either, and experience has taught me that I should settle for mild contentment, because trying (or hoping) for more just leads to heartache. Feeling not too bad is, well... not too bad. It gets me through the days.

 Now there's Caz, and I'm happy. Ridiculously happy in fact, delirious half the time, when I'm not stopping in bewilderment to wonder what the rubbery f*** has happened to me. But when she goes away, oh dear me, things are difficult. I can't do the usual 'being alone is not being lonely' thing any more. I miss her voice, her scent, the awareness that she's next to me even when she isn't speaking, or when I swim halfway out of sleep and reach over to make sure she's still there. Finding an absence is horrible. There's a wrenched place inside me that won't be soothed until she's back, and laughs with my arm around her.

 All this is new to me. I managed to reach 46 years old without falling in love, but when I fell I fell hard. Of course it's grist to the mill for a writer, new experiences to use and expand on... but I don't much care. My writing can go hang. I want Caz back before I start weeping in public.

 So there it is. I'm a wet end. A sad truth for a man who's always been so independent, but somehow I can't really feel sorry about it. Funny, that.

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