John

Breaking up with John in 1999 was a pivotal point in my life, of course I didn’t see it as such, it defined me and more than anything me face the person I was to become.

The arguments had been there for years, the emotional drama’s the ‘cheating’ the lies and also love, and a deep concern. John had problems, haven’t we all, and amongst the memories I have is the first day we met, and the day parted and in-between listening to Geoffrey Howe resign, the holiday cottage in Wales (bad asthma attack included) miles away from anywhere on Halloween. I remember having to drive him to hospital even though I had not passed my driving test, I remember lots of things.

I remember coming back from London, by surprise, to find my Flat turned into a Chinese Laundry as John was busily washing all my clothes and ironing them for my return, I remember the trip back from the Airport when I first flew back from New York.

Over time I remember less of the hurt and the pain and more of the good times.

I remember a blazing row when I stormed out of my own flat, slamming the door as I flounced down the street, I remember an argument in a pub that led him withdrawing into his shell when we got back, having to talk to him as I would a child – a broken hurt man, that somehow I was responsible for. I remember tearing the heart from his soul when I told I had met ‘someone else’.

Within a week of meeting him I had handed him £1,700 because he had got behind on his mortgage, and the debts were rising, then it was £300 here, £600 there. Giving money to John was like giving drink to an alcoholic. I will say this for John that he worked damned hard to get out of the financial hole he was in taking on part-time work above his normal job. He would make an effort and then it would all be gone again, another crisis.

Leaving John made me grow up, and for a long time I was still in love with him, in a sense I still am. I remember a couple of times when I was in Sheffield pushing notes underneath his door, but the stench of sadness seeped from his house, and that hurt. It hurt that someone I cared for was not enjoying life, it hurt because someone was hurting.

I had consigned John to a passing reference, until recently when he got my address from the internet, from one of the photographs I had posted of a train.

To cut a long story short he is dying, and his wish was to give me the money back he had borrowed.

I have snippets from his life, his has found someone who he is married to, they went to New York for their honeymoon, I am really happy for him. The money he borrowed is welcome, I can foresee uses for it, mainly to put away ‘for a rainy day’ but still I feel sordid about it.

I left for London in 1999 and to an extent I thought I had left John with the history books, and like Renton from Trainspotting I have seen that life changes, and that my life has changed. I am no longer the person I was, I have become someone new, someone that the person who headed to South London 14 years ago would hardly recognise, I am doing things now that would not have seen possible all those years ago, and yet this boy from Sheffield is sat here, wondering what I should do.

Should I try and make some meaningful contact with him, accept the money and finally bolt the door on that part of my life. The former is what I want to do, though thankfully doesn’t seem to want to do (and I totally understand why) and yet the latter means my heart grows a little harder.

John and I had been together for about seven years when we split up and I find it impossible, even if I wanted to, to eradicate those years. The emotional assault of the sudden contact has left me reeling, like a sudden blow to the chest.

The next few weeks are going to be difficult for me, and my partner. Of course I have tell ‘H’ why I am suddenly vacant and distracted, why I need more space, and why I am become more ;tetchy. I wonder whilst I am doing this I can make him see that though this is hurting me, and probably him indirectly, it was a necessary part in the process of us coming together?

As Piaf sang in “Je ne regrett rein”

No, nothing of nothing
No! I don’t feel sorry about anything
Not the good things people have done to me

Not the bad things, it’s all the same to me.
No, nothing of nothing
No! I don’t feel sorry about anything
It’s paid for, removed, forgotten,

I’m happy of the past
With my memories
I lit up the fire
My troubles, my pleasures
I don’t need them anymore

Broomed away my love stories
And all their tremble
Broomed away for always
I start again from zero

Non ! Je ne regrette rien
Ni le mal, tout ça m’est bien égal !
Non ! Je ne regrette rien

Because my life, my joys
Today, they begin with you.

It makes me sad, but I know it’s time to move on …

I have known the truth for a long time but have been too scared to admit, I have been wrapped up in a kind of grief to acknowledge, unable to cope with my new reality, but I have finally admitted it is time to move on. The admission is more painful in that I have move from my ‘safe place’ where I used to worked nearly five years ago and move into the place I am now, despite my feelings and the imperfection of my reality, it is time to own it.

Working for a brilliant employer in London, meeting some wonderful people who were there when my relationship ended with T, I moved to Swindon where the grieving process started.  I was told it would take 18 months to like my new job and learn to love Swindon as much as I did Southampton, I never quite managed it to be honest.  For years I have fruitlessly compared my current employment to where I cam from and the people I knew.  I have to let them go, I have to tell myself how lucky I was to meet such people and yes keep in touch but be aware that they have moved on as much as I have moved.  My life has changed since meeting H, I am off to Germany for the fourth time this year – or is it five, I forget – which I could not have dreamed of. I am to intents and purposes married, we are working the relationship as best we came, like so many other people.

I will always treasure and speak highly at my time in London, of the kindness, and lack of malice in the banter in the office, it has changed me, but I no longer plan to make a visit in the Office, to many people have moved, and I am less known than before.

The process has been painful for me, and others, as I have tried to live a dual existence, as I have tried to live an alternative existence.

I think this is a good thing, though a sad thing, because in moving I can begin to shape where I am at the moment, I can become a full person rather than a shadow of a person at work, I can become who God intends me to be, right now, in Swindon and not the person I was living in Southampton, I have to grasp the moment not the cling to the past, afraid to move on.

I will always treasure my time in London, but I cannot live life yearning for something that cannot be recaptured, a unique combination time and place, and of people and circumstance.  I look to that time and say ‘thank you, thank you much, it has made me a richer and better person, but I am here now and must live today and not yesterday.

My partner lost his Mother just over a year ago, and we going to remember his Mum’s birthday, and the grieving process seems much the same, yet losing a mother is far more painful.  I see his, well my, family make the first tentative steps to living again, to moving away from the black hole of pain, and step cautiously into the light, nervous of what it might bring, this totally alien experience.  Their journey will never end, I am still on that journey of daring to be happy without someone you love, but each day we translate the pain of loss into a hymn of praise and thankfulness – little by little.

In many ways I am the same, I am daring to move from the past into the present, it is a little scary, and a little sad, but I have raise my hat to the past and say ‘thank you’ and bid adieu because I cannot, we cannot, grow without the light of the present or else we just live in a memory, and a memory that slowly drives us insane.

Tomorrow wil be better ….

Berlin Party Girls

The problem is when people attack me verbally I shut up, trying to cope with the abuse, I try to deal with each statement, I am mute.  This happened on Friday when I was told to attend a meeting – the subject is really not important – but I was subjected to a torrent of assumptions, perceptions and worst of all lies.  I was stunned.

I was told to shut twice, no room for the ‘other side’ of the story here.

I came home and cried, I was indeed worthless, of course people didn’t like working with me, it’s all true, it must be.  It must be because my Boss told. Everytime I asked for examples or reasons it was ‘hearsay’ or he couldn’t quote a specific example, but it is all about the perception game.

I am not sure how people can work with me and not tell me what I am doing is wrong, I am not sure how someone can be friendly to my face and then stab me in the back, I am not sure of anything or anyone, apart from H and some wonderful friends at my former employer where I worked for six years, who I worked with and didn’t find time to backstab.

I did the usual roll call of suspects of who I could have upset, but couldn’t believe anyone of them would not have grassed me up, after more tears and an emergency call to the Partner who got in his car and drove 75 miles from Kidderminster, I had hoped it was over.  Saturday was better, a little, crying in the street is not normally my scene, but Saturday it was as prepared myself for work. I got through the day.

I began to cling to the good things, grasping for images I latched onto the inset photo I took in Berlin at the CSD March.  It was a fun day, H and I lost each other for a while, we joined the Parade, we got drunk in the Tiergarten surrounded by gay and gay friendly people – we were effectively in heaven, the dodgy Leather Club with people walking around with less than a thong on, misordering drinks in broken German, the drunken Man we met who had found his Wife carrying on with a Lesbian, and me trying mischievously to convince H to take him for a drink into the Leather Bar.  I took this picture and at the time it was just a picture, it is a picture that has depth.

On the surface it is just some Drag Queens posing, outrageous and funny. Looking deeper the picture began to mean more to me.  The costumes are very pink and very girly (the Pink Heart on the Apron) and the people are of a ‘certain age’ – I love the contrast.  Not only are they breaking taboo about cross dressing they are breaking about age, they are also outrageously pretending to something they can never be.  The poster at the back, the Young Blood, in my imagination ghosts of their misspent youth – et Arcadia ego!  I love the fact that each of them are totally different in character, that each has a character.

Digging deeper in the picture, these are people who will have ‘came out’ in a time less amenable today, they would have been exploring their sexuality whilst Section 175 of the German Penal Code which was not repealed until 1994 in West Germany, or they could have been East Germans, who knows?  They have known repression, rejection, and acceptance.  To me the picture celebrates their acceptance and yet harks back to their youth. Berlin CSD was amazing, everyone joined in, it was a street party like I have never seen, and I can cry because I belong somewhere, somewhere that does not think I am weird, or to some people who can accept my weirdness.

I am clinging onto this picture because tomorrow will be better, they have proved it.

I really want to meet these ‘girls’ because they are getting me through so much at the moment – that sounds dramatic, but these are dramatic girls.

pax