Still Feeling Maudlin

His Main Bike Looked a Little Like This ~ 1937 HD Knucklehead

There is something that I want to write. I can feel it forming in my brain, I can sense it coming out the tips of my fingers, but I can’t seem to find the words. Anyone who knows me well knows that me being at a loss for words is a rare occurrence. It all started this morning before I woke up. I was dreaming of someone whom I love very much, and will probably love in absentia for the rest of my life. It was not the greatest dream. I could see him, but I could not reach him or talk to him. Something was preventing that. Space, time, maybe? I have not seen him since I got married, and to this day, considering what happened in my marriage, I do not know why I chose my ex-husband over this man who never judged me, never had total losses of temper regarding my mood swings (he just held me, and made things okay)….pardon me, I have to stop and cry for a bit. Damn tears came out of nowhere, I am going to have to buy some waterproof mascara for days like these.

Okay, tears dried up. I have no idea exactly where that came from. It is like the chances of rain in my city; it can thunder and blow and have lightening breaking across the sky and the incredibly dark clouds, and not a drop will fall, or the downpour will be so torrential that flood warnings are issued and we are warned to stay out of the arroyos and run-off ditches. That’s what feeling melancholy is like for me. Sometimes not a tear will come to my eye even when by all rights they should, and then sometimes they come out of nowhere to leave black streaks beneath my eyes (hence the waterproof mascara.)

I am lamenting a bad choice. I think that is what it is. I made the wrong decision, and am now regretting it as it was a decision that left me open to a man that did not really care about me (both as a person, period, and as a person with an affective disorder), was abusive in very subtle ways that left me questioning everything about my self as a woman and as a person, was incredibly critical and considered it constructive while I considered it simply criticizing for the sake of being contrary. The man that got left behind was never abusive, never critical, never judgmental, didn’t need to understand my mental issues to be a kind and loving friend; he just inherently understood me, and that I was different than other people. He loved me because I was me. I would wager he still does as he does not strike me as someone who loves easily or lightly. That is something we have in common; I do not love (or trust) easily or lightly. To this day, I wonder how my ex managed to pull the wool over my eyes until it was too late, and I was stuck with the creature he became after marrying. I did see my lover-friend once after I made the mistake of getting married. It was at a bike run that I drove four hours to get to just to see him one last time. 

There is something that bound us to one another that I cannot put in words. It simply was. I told him one night after we had been out drinking beer and listening to live blues at some seedy bar that I needed to tell him something and he wasn’t allowed to think I was crazy. I told him late that night that I loved him, and his response (here we go with the tears again) to me was ” I have loved you for a long time.” That was the only time we said “I love you” to each other, and it never had to be said again. It was just something that was understood. I do not remember my ex ever telling me straight out that he loved me. It was always round about in some way, but it never came out as “I love you.” It was never to the point. I think that he loved the idea of me, but that he didn’t really love me as a real person with strengths and flaws and quirks. 

The odd thing is the two men were fairly close in age, but they could not have had more different outlooks on life. Whereas one told me the last time he had use for a tie was in 1967 to tie his bedroll to his bike before taking off for Mexico, the other lamented the fact that he had no real reason to wear any of his extensive and expensive collection of ties. How did I make the choice to abandon my true lover-friend for my ex? Or maybe the question ought to be how did my ex convince me he was someone he was not; that he was open-minded, quirky, silly, serious, funny, liked the same things I did, had a similar sense of humor, liked to make me blush with some comment that usually took me a while to figure out completely, liked to tell me when I was walking to “stop fast”, wished he could play blues on the guitar and had since he was a boy, and was basically a complete pervert (but in a good way, not a damaging way?) That’s the question I cannot answer, and that is what I ponder frequently when I wake up dreaming of my lover-friend. 

Old Lovers Enjoying s Quiet Time by the Lake