So almost 7 months have passed since my catastrophic relationship with LA Woman and my return to South Africa. The time certainly has not flown! It has been perhaps the single most painful event in my life, bar one, and I have had a few. The other, sadly enough, was also the result of a romantic relationship. However, the pain and anguish that resulted was as a result of the love for a child, my love for her. It was a kind of Jerry Macguire (awesome Tom Cruise movie) relationship without the happy ending. I liked her a lot, this woman, but I loved her child. I did try desperately to make it work, even getting engaged to her, to be honest mostly for the little girl’s sake. But the truth was I simply brought the worst out in her and the relationship was doomed from the start. Man, I loved her little girl and she loved me! She was my daughter in every sense of the word, bar blood, and I was her father. However over the years her mother has regularly cut me out of the child’s life, and it has killed me! To lose a child is a terrible, terrible thing!
Despite the disasterous relationship, some good came out of it as I have intimated. This child (she is about to turn 18 now and is in her final year of school, I can hardly believe it!!!) came into my life, a gift so very precious, and I got to be a father. So if one was searching for meaning as to the purpose of my having gone through such an awful experience with that relationship (romantic) then of course it is that I got to be a part of this child’s life and her mine! It is something I am forever grateful for! The reason I bring this up is because I am still trying to find that reason for the whole LA thing, the good to come out of it. To make sense of it. I have yet to find it. I hoped perhaps that the reason would be that the experience was to inspire me to great heights for my 3rd year art exhibition, that I would create something poignant and awe-inspiring. It was not to be, although I passed, my marks were disappointing and my lecturers critical. I am still no closer to an answer so perhaps it is just a case of: bad things happen.
OK, so how does this fit into the whole revisiting of the Things I Know About Myself title? Bear with me I’m getting there, this is a scenic route story. The thing is I have found myself feeling again, yes, feeling, God help me, yes, those feelings. Now if you recall from one of my past posts I said something like: I love like a fucking teenager! Well the truth is I feel as teenager does, I do, for me everything is either my entire World or it is the end of it! Like a teenager! Now I don’t know if it is just the artist in me that allows me to feel so completely and almost overwhelmingly, and to express in the same manner, or whether my EQ does not match my IQ (emotional smarts don’t match intelligence smarts). So this is something I am getting to know about myself, hence the title: things I know about myself. So perhaps as a result of LA I have gotten to know myself a little better? I don’t know, feels like I am grasping for straws. The nightmarish experience certainly hasn’t killed my emotions though nor my ability to love, that remains intact!
Now you would think after the absolute horror I have been through my EQ would have been hardened and certainly more streetwise but no! As I said I am feeling again. In my defence the woman is a gem: beautiful, intelligent, talented, wonderful and so, so very special. Very easy to fall for! Plus she strikes a chord with that whole knight in shining armour coming to the aid of a damsel in distress part of me, the part that wants to protect any person of worth that is being wronged or bullied. Despite all my good intentions of being a rock, both for her and myself, I have been feeling and thinking, a bad combination for me…well depending on how you look at it. One thing it definitely does do is complicate things! You see love is a selfish beast, it wants the object of its affection. It will sacrifice all, do anything for, be completely devoted to and give all for the object of its affection, but it nevertheless needs, hungers, craves for that same object. (MMMMmmm, don’t like the use of the word object but you get what I mean). So I find myself thinking about her all the time, wanting, hell needing, to be with her all the time. I have to admit that’s pretty scary considering what I have just recently been through. But, oh, it is also glorious, so glorious, to feel such joy and euphoria simply by being in the presence of someone else. There is no drug that can match that! So I will not beat myself up about it nor rein it in, my emotions are what make me: the emotional dumbass that I am!
Of course, we both have dreams and baggage we bring to the table, but dreams/goals achieved alone are diminished if you don’t have someone to share them with, and baggage is that much lighter when shared. So I hope/wish/pray/want that we overcome the terrible things that have happened to us and that we become the companions of the soul that I feel we are meant to be.
The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain ~ Byron