On writing and communication

There are times when I wonder if I was not meant to live alone. I am more prolific when men are off the menu and there are no claims on my time and mind. Some of the best writing came from times when my emotional and personal plates were clear, and I have been clearing out a lot of people and things over the past few weeks. Finally, the muse speaks to me again, and she is casting gold beneath my fingers.

Of course, there is the possibility that this is all a dream and I shall awaken to find the gold little more than faery glamour, but for now, I am content to write and write and write.

I had been involved with someone for the past six years who was more gone than here and he finally got the message a couple days ago. He was sad and sorry, but he always is when I point out how long it has been since we last communicated. This time he responded by saying that we couldn't seem to communicate. I had to laugh. Only one of us was communicating and it wasn't him, unless he was doing it by telepathy. No emails for six months, no more than two phone calls over the past three years and, except for the 2-minute drive-by gifting in December 2009, I haven't seen him for eighteen months. That's not my idea of communication.

When he responded to me, he said that I didn't communicate, I wrote. I always thought writing was a form of communication. Evidently, I got it wrong. "We," he insisted, "stopped trying a long time ago."

He doesn't like to take responsibility for his actions. Stuck in some emotional adolescent limbo, he will only go so far as to share the blame, when the fault lies in him. I call. He doesn't return the call. I email. He ignores. And so I write, putting my message into a blog post because I know, I have seen, he checks that from time to time, preferring that small point of contact to a more direct approach. Of course I write. What other method of communication do I have when he thwarts all my attempts at getting closer, at talking things out?

When he read I laughed at his claim that the fault lay with us and not him, he responded in typically bruised ego fashion. He would keep reading my posts to remind himself why he "never wanted to have anything to do with me ever again." His final words were in full flounce. "I doubt I ever loved you." I doubt it, too. Had he loved me, he could not have lied to me so completely, so smoothly, so easily without a second thought. He would have communicated. Instead, he chose silence, brooding and lurking in the shadows looking for messages in blog posts instead of talking to me. He gave up on us a long time ago when he realized that for the first time in his life he felt something so deep and profound it dizzied his senses. He finally told me that two years ago after telling me for three years he wasn't sure if he ever loved me. Could I write a book about his waffling and roper dope bobbing and weaving he chose to call romance. The problem is that it wouldn't sell. People like clear story lines with mysteries that are possible to solve. This mystery has no solution because he plays the truth like a game of three card Monte where the queen is usually up his sleeve and not on the table. Emotional sleight of hand is his favorite game, after refusing responsibility and blaming everyone else -- in this case, me.

And so I cut him loose. It was not pretty and it wasn't easy, but it was long past time. Had we been roped together climbing some sheer, craggy peak and he dangled at the end of the line, pulling us both into the abyss, I would have cut him loose a long time ago. Better one of us should live than both die. I still have books to write.

Does it matter in the great scheme of things? Probably not. It isn't that love has left the building, quite the reverse, but I can no longer tend the fires of romance by myself, turning on the spit of love and desire endlessly. It's time to move on. I've given him six years to figure it out and he has spent most of it brooding in the cellar, silent and taciturn. I've no more time to give him.

Now that I have shut and locked the door, after removing the knob on his side, the muse has granted me audience and the words flow like spring thaw down the river of creativity until I am helpless in her grasp to do aught but write. To communicate the best way I know how.