If you’re me, which you’re not, but if you are and you lost your mother once at age four or five when she walked out, once at age ten or so when she declined to pursue primary custody in any meaningful way, and once at nineteen when she died a death at least plausibly considered by some to be suicide…. Well, if you’re me and if those are your circumstances, then you might reasonably really resist giving up on a woman, allowing a woman to leave. You might fantasize over and over and over again that somehow something you might do or say could undo the past, could magically return your mother to you one, two, or all three of those times.
If you were me, you might do that.
I am me, and I do do that.
It’s very hard for me to reconcile myself to the loss of any of the women in my life. That’s true of Kay, the first girl I kissed, who, if I’m honest, I still like to imagine might hold a special place for me in her heart. In spite of the fact that I have plenty of evidence that she doesn’t, that she hasn’t, for decades.
I can march forward from Kay. There’s J, my first college girlfriend, into whom I ran on the street just a couple of years ago and was painfully disappointed by her cold, distant demeanor. J and I had an amicable breakup. I don’t think it’s that she doesn’t like me. I think it’s just that I’m not a live character for her, nearly forty years after our breakup, in the way that she remains viscerally, tangibly, alive for me.
A rare exception in this litany is S, whom I dated, lived with, and nearly married, in my twenties. We lived together, we went on family trips together, we integrated our lives as if we were married. But then it became apparent to both of us, though to me first, that as much as we loved one another, we weren’t meant to spend the rest of our lives together. Well, S still holds a potent, powerful space in my heart, and I know I do in hers. We recently got together for a drink after I ran into her and her husband following one of the “No Kings” marches. I like her. I like her husband. I don’t know him that well, but I’ve met him half a dozen times, and I’ve met their son. They’ve met T, and they’ve met our child. So, with S, I suppose, all is about as right as it could be.
But then there are various other women, women I’ve dated since the advent of N and this blog. Women like Veronique early on, and Serena and Milica more recently. These are women whose decision to part with me I’ve struggled with. In some instances, simply because they are decisions to part. That’s how it is with Serena. Serena and I still text sometimes, warmly, playfully, but she’s not available to me in the way she once was.
Milica, on the other hand, simply ghosted. And this, I don’t know what to do with. It scares me. It threatens me.
And there are so many of those, ghosts in my nursery.
