Apr 20, 2010

the tower of solitude

Once upon a time there was a young woman who opened her heart to all and sundry. It got trampled. Over and over and over. She kept on putting it out there and it kept getting thumped on and broken and cracked and burned and yet it kept on working and she just kept on opening the door in search of happyness. Try as she might - she could never find that one person that everyone kept telling her was out there waiting for her. She thought she had a few times, but she was wrong, and those were some of the worst heart rendings because the ones she found had MOST of what she was looking for, but they were to far flawed, but still she made it through. Her heart was a little raggedy when she glimpsed certain profiles out the corner of her eye, there were pieces missing that she would never recover because she had given them away never to be returned, and there were a few dead patches where the burns had never really recovered after the torching of the original heartland, but the majority was still pumping away and attempting continuous self repair.

The last serious "friendship" she engaged in was based on just that friendship and shared joy. It worked for a while, neither side wanting the permanency of the whole living together thing. It was great for her, but he was quite a bit older and eventually wanted to find someone more in tune generationally. The more mature yet still young at heart woman took it harder than she had imagined because the heart strings had not followed orders and gotten tangled up in some minor chords when they were told to stay silent. The untangling was sharply painful for a short time and after that the woman decided fuck it - enough.

She built her tower back up (the foundations were still there from teenhood and two divorces) - where the heart can be defended and not defeated. She isolated herself from those intimate friendships that only lead to heartache. Sick of pain, she detested the wrack of self doubt that was the end of every such friendship because no matter what they said she always felt it was something about her. She embraced the abnegation of society's dictum that every woman NEEDS a man, or at least that special partner in her life.

For almost seven years she kept true to that isolation. Sure it was lonely sometimes. Sure she missed the intimate companionship of that "someone special", but those momentary lapses didn't even begin to copmare to the benefits of growing a whole new set of real friendships, of determining what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, purchasing her first home, or being truly single for the first time since she was 16. Learning to live with all her good and bad parts and working through decades of previous resentment and regret until she could stand on the top of the tower and see for miles and miles an miles and maybe - look herself straight in a mirror. Oh yeah.

The last couple of years in tower she started to build a deck at the base, inviting a select minority close enough for the heart strings to perk up. Then she began to wonder if the self imposed solitude wasn't now more of a hindrance or an escape instead of a haven of safety. She eventually decided that the tower would have to come down, and not being one for general procrastination, timber... and away it went.

Starting over. So there she was, kind of shiny and new, still tentative about her physical self but grounded spiritually and on balance (for the most part) emotionally. She took the big step and was truly joyful that she had, but it opened other doors long shuttered.

And then she met a gentleman who had also been spending time in a self imposed tower, and the door to his seemed to be swinging open. A quirky coincidence in a world full of them. They looked each other right in the eye and they weren't strangers. They spent long hours on the phone and talked about everything under the sun: politics, culture, music, framily, even religion all sprinkled with interjections that both cherished their independence and did not want a "relationship" because both had been burned before. He made her smile and laugh and feel womanly, and his laugh was a smooth deep rumble that came right from the belly. When they were together the sparks flew, phantasmagorical would be a good word.

Then he called her because he had this gut feeling that she was interested in some one else - NOT. She hadn't even looked, she denied it. He only half believed her - he told her directly. She was seriously confused. Where the hell did that come from? They'd spoken just Yesterday and seen each other less than a week before. After much discussion he admitted he was stressed because maybe he was becoming too "attached" to her.

Figures: Everything was going too well, everything fit. But he was completely freaked about it growing into a "relationship" in which he was sure he would get burned. She had assured him at the beginning that she wasn't looking for the "commitment". He saw that the more time they spent together the more attached he became and since historically he always got burned, he did not want to work through that pain ever again - that was why he built his tower in the first place. Both of them thought they could be "really" good friends without commitment to more than intimate exclusivity. He finally decided to believe that she was truth telling when she said he was the only one. She tried to get him to understand that just because she was not actively looking for that "relationship", that didn't mean she was adverse to considering it if it happened to develop. He said it'll hurt even more if it lasts a year. The intimacy that they had been sharing had grown despite their denials, it had become more than "just casual".

He told her he really cared for her,it was all him and his fear of betrayal. But they could still talk on the phone right? She told him how much she enjoyed the conversations and said yes. Then he asked, "we're still good friends right, so they could go out for drinks, or visit each other. Do things more slowly"

And she was confused: was the intimate part of the friendship ending because he was more afraid of the possible future pain and did he think that if they stopped the physical part of their friendship the attachment would go away?". Because as far as she was concerned their conversations just made the attachment all that much deeper - but maybe it was different for him.

And he hoped she wasn't angry and she was still his friend.

And she started hauling stone for a new tower of her own.

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