I recently did something I don’t feel too proud of, it felt right at the time, in a way it was what I needed to do, in my head at least, it was a Band-Aid on a rather large cut.
I’ve talked a lot with women-friends, people that I can talk to openly about how I feel, for the main part we share the status of being single. I am drawn to these women, drawn by yearning they emanate, a desire, a want that seems to shine from them, a capacity for a deep connection with a significant other which is not fulfilled. I get that, I have that and I look at these women and I think to myself how wonderful, what capacity for love there is in this person, unfulfilled, un-reciprocated. I want some of that, I want that connection, I want to invest myself and I want love.
Thus far it eludes me, maybe I have too many other things to deal with in myself to have a relationship right now, I don’t honestly know. But I have resorted to a little band-aid love. I met a woman on a first date, we talked, we got on, we both wanted attention, we both got it. I spent the night with her, I woke up in the morning with her in my arms as I stroked the length of her back and felt skin next to skin I felt at home, I felt whole. For a while the feelings of loneliness were banished. But shortly afterwards as I walked home that morning I felt a fool, a shabby man that jumped into bed with a woman, with no intention of ever seeing her again. Just seeking Band-Aid love, a moments suspension from my mixed up mind. Band-Aid love really doesn’t fix anything, I realised it from the start, but I was hungry for connection and a moment of illusion.
As if as a reminder a few days later I come home to my empty house, the front door lies in the hallway, it has been smashed from its frame. My home has been broken into, draws rifled, cupboards opened, little things stolen. I realise its natures way of reminding me, that I haven’t learnt my lesson just yet, that I need another wake up call. I have not taken responsibility for myself, I keep wanting to be loved and to be desired and that’s the only thing that my mind sees as important. So my Karma now is to be alone, to be single, to be in pain. I have to find my own way out of the place I am in, another person is not the answer.
One evening I sit outside a bar with my friend Rinaldo, we talk about me, my favourite subject, how I am, after a while he says to me, Martin, what if you could do anything, what would you do tomorrow?
I immediately answer that I would take off and travel the world. He replies, well why don’t you do it? I am stopped in my tracks, why indeed, I realise that I want to travel far, see much and learn more, that the journey I need is through and then out of my mind and into the world, whether that is in Ladbroke Grove or Ladakh it matters not, the important thing is the journey.
fiftyfreeandsingle 