I’ve been struggling with how and to what degree I’m comfortable talking about the people in my life I love. I have no trouble telling the occasional anecdote about a past girlfriend but I think long and hard about anything I commit on “paper” regarding my ex-wives.
Not to mention my wife. Or my son.
With my parents there is a much wider spectrum I’m willing to talk about. I figure they deserve it and besides, there’s both a long literary and psychological tradition I can follow.
The cost of this website has to be one of the cheapest forms of therapy out there. I hope you don’t mind my mind. I’m lazy and I’m the easiest person to get permission to tell stories about.
I’ve read many writers remark on how it isn’t wise to let one into your life, not if you want any shred of privacy. I’ve never felt that way. Somewhere along the line I adopted the notion that while everything in a writer’s life is fair game, not everyone’s life is fair to be tracked, cornered, killed, dressed, cooked and served up according to that writer’s whim.
Ah, but that’s where the flavor is, red in tooth and claw. Believe me, I know.
The trick is to whisk, fold, simmer over a low flame, and reduce my life so the essence of what I experience smooths away the ability to distinguish one from the whole.
For example, I’ve noticed that I definitely have a type.
Now before you ladies start sharpening your knives in anticipation of me listing a set of physical attributes, I can assure you we won’t be dining on a side of male chauvinism, medium rare.
I’ve loved short women, tall women, blondes, brunettes, and redheads. I’ve loved heavy women and those who weighed 100 lbs soaking wet. I’ve loved conventionally attractive women and those considered not conventionally attractive. I’ve loved women outside my ethnicity and nationality. I’ve loved women older than me and younger than me.
They all have something in common.
All of them were strong, intelligent, intensely curious about something other than themselves, confident, funny, and passionate.
Now some of them were more of one of those things than another, but they each possess those characteristics to some degree.
It is somewhat of a cliché to describe a scene where all of one’s past romantic relationships are gathered under the same roof. Usually the subject of everyone’s shared experience is painted as feeling awkward if not extremely uncomfortable. Putting myself in that situation doesn’t elicit the same feeling.
Maybe it’s because I’m that narcissistic but I would love to be in a room with all my past relationships. There’s something I’d like to say to each of them, beginning with Mia S. (my first love – in my youth I thought it would be high larry us if my wife’s name was Mia Hero) and ending with my wife of almost 20 years now, Toni.
All those (not that there’s that many) women are chapters in my life. Many of which I’m not proud of. To those I hurt because I did not know how to love properly, I’m sorry you were the ones to take the brunt of my long and difficult learning curve. I gladly and deservedly accept the lion share of fault for the reason our relationships failed.
In some cases all the fault.
Thank you for contributing to my education and growth. It isn’t fair that any enlightenment (or at least illumination) I’ve achieved was purchased with your pain. I ask for your forgiveness and understand if you’ll be damned before you give me a single thing.
Usually, my failing was an inability to transition from the high of our beginning into the much more difficult phase of growing both together and as individuals.
That and my inability to say no to another woman who wanted me. It’s not pretty but it’s true.
In my defense, in my room of past relationships, not everyone there I like to think would be unhappy to see me. Mia, for example, is still a friend.
Most importantly, Toni would be happy to see me. She wouldn’t be happy to be there. But she’d be happy to see me.
Not everyone can say that who has been married for as long as we have.
I don’t have permission to say more.
