(My son is in the revision period of some big public exams and it is a long 4-day weekend here. I am not that busy but am not undertaking leisure activities (going out for golf for instance) so that I can appear to be working and role modelling good behaviours!!!. Seems wrong of me to be having fun when he is studying. So, there might be a few more entries in this diary while I have some spare time!)
This weekend I was supposed to be travelling north for a good friend's wedding - but, following my father in law's death - am staying down south with my son as my wife has flown to be with her mother, brother and rest of the family.
So, P..
She was the one I wrote about in Entry 37: The One that Got Away I was in love with her and, I suppose, I still am. Another prescient friend of mine asked me a few months ago whether I had been affected by the news that P. was getting married - or had I assumed that she was someone who would 'be there' should I get to separation from my wife.
And, look, yes, I admit I did have a glitch when P. first told me that she had 'found a fella' and, in turn, she mentioned that she had struggled to find the right way to tell me. Because I believe she, from time to time, may have had a soft spot for me as well - but we never explored that, though we may have hinted at it now and again. I still have the card where, while congratulating me on my marriage, she joked about who she would spend time with in an old people's home - and we often joked about knitting socks together in our golden years!
But all that does not matter any more as I am now at a stage where I hope to 'be alone but not lonely'. I have no wish to think about someone else and I do not want to let anyone else down. And it's not all self-deprecating and modest. As I wrote when a friend of mine opened up to me and told me she found me attractive, 'to place an ounce of my happiness into someone else's hands and to be even minutely, formally accountable for someone else's is now beyond me.'
In this context, I met up with another friend of mine the other day. She is in her late forties, divorced early from a marriage that was not working and is now in a relationship again. One that pretty much models what I might have wanted - independent, separate places, companionship, sex, travel and, I suppose, a loving environment. Sounds ideal, non?
Probably, and I am very pleased for her. However, she told me a story that - later on - reaffirmed where I want to go. She is a strong academic and a feminist. So, her partner really worked his way round and agonised and explained the thoughts behind giving her a Valentine's Day gift! It was a funny story, of course it was. But why should one partner have to agonise over this? Give a present if I want, not if I don't or forget - don't worry about things, just know that there is love and security underneath it all.
Anyway ... back to P..
She and I shared a house some twenty-five years ago and, even then, her mother was not very well and nor was her father - her close sister also then began to suffer from a degenerative illness. So it was that, when her mother and sister passed away a few years ago (her father had died some time before), after 16 years, she finally had time to herself.
P. is the most lovely person - warm, kind, hard working. And to see the universe paying her back generously is to see virtue rewarded - and I wish her and her husband all the luck in the world. Take good care mate! xx
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