About Nic

As time goes by I am finding Nic more and more compelling. I admire his emotional courage, his mind, how attuned he is to me, to my skittishness. He is secure and happy and self-aware, he refuses to be put off by my emotional flightiness, he will not let me shove him away, he knows sex is not in the picture. He stands there and very firmly, very gently says he is not going anywhere. He says the right things to me and it bothers me, because in my experience, men don't say things like that to women except as a come-on. And I told him that, and he was offended that his honesty would make me distrust him. I needed to see and hear the hurt in him, and the bit of righteous anger; for some reason I needed to witness it to be convinced that he was being real and not a player. Now he tells me that he adores me, and baldly states that he would use other words, but he knows that such words scare me. And sometimes when we talk I feel like I've been tapped in the solar plexus, and the words he says penetrate me like Michael's often do, and Janne's, when he is serious with me, and I find myself blank-minded and wordless, resonating with an inexpressible non-thought.

I've never been uncertain of myself the way I have been since I started therapy. I always knew where I was, I always knew what I wanted, and now... now I don't. Now I know that I am such an emotional cripple it boggles my mind that I have limped this far in life. I've been careful to choose friends and lovers who were good people, none of whom ever damaged me or kicked my crutches out from under me. I find myself wondering if it is because, even knowing they were good, safe people, I could not find the courage to step outside my emotional inner sanctum and meet them. But I want to. I know it is silly, I feel it is silly, to be afraid, to worry about being hurt by others. In all these years since I have been adult, there are few who have hurt me, and of those few, Stephanie is the only one I have lost sleep over or had any lasting effect from. I let her in more than anyone else, and though she caused me pain, it is her suffering, her agony over my emotional elusiveness, that made me decide to face my past and effect a reconsilation with it.

This past week I've heard from Nic two and three times a day. He's emailed poetry and photos, left voicemail messages. He wants to see me. I want to see him. But I am perverse, and I will see Chris instead. Chris, who is sweet and funny and does not profess love and so does not scare me as Nic does. Chris, whom I have not seen for 2 weeks. I do miss him, the way he smells, the way his smiles illuminate his face, the way he talks with those big hands of his, and the way he kisses so single-mindedly.

Thursday morning, after I showered and before I woke Peter, I sat at the table in the cottage and looked out the bay window. I watched the ocean and the birds and sipped coffe and wrote a card to Nic, as follows:

Nic--
I sit here, pen in hand, with so much to say and no idea how to say it. Words rarely fail me. I have long had a love affair with words, with the pictures they paint in my mind and the sensations they evoke in me. But there are things that words cannot be put to -- that words are insufficient to describe. And so I will start, and trust that you will ask if you do not undersand what it is that I am trying to say. There is within me--within all of us, I think--a beast which protects me from the world. Some days it is a roaring beast and others it is a beast that crawls stealthily, but always it is ever watchful--the lizard brain upon which the monkey brain rests. I recognize that I have defenses that I use far more than I need to, and that for each thing these defences protect me from, they cost me something profound: they keep the world and the experiences and the opportunities for growth and joy at bay. I am aware that closing myself off from my feelings freed me from having to do anything about them. I know that in barricading myself away, I pushed away my own life. I am trying to reclaim so much, and to let go of what I never should have internalized. I am trying to open myself to intimacy that goes beyond the intellectual intimacy I have long enjoyed with friends. I have come to a place where I know that venturing further will only get me lost inside myself, locked away, never to get out alive. And so I have decided to fight for my life and let life and others in. It is not easy. I have habits and defenses that rise hard and fast when I feel threatened, afraid, vulnerable. You know this, you have witnessed it, and I want you to know that I appreciate your gentleness and your understanding. You are a good man and yet, you leave me conflicted. Something within me still throws up barriers even while my consciousness works to tear them down. It makes me feel like a head-case, this internal conflict, but I know it is necessary. And there you stand, you and the others I love, in the midst of this tussle between the angels and the demons of my psyche, and you seem both unafraid and unwilling to think me less for it. Somehow it gives me confidence to push on. I am al twisted up inside and some days I think it is the knots that hold me together, instead of holding me back. Time will tell. In the meantime, thank you for being a part of my life, and for being willing to accept what I can give without pushing for more.

I mailed it off before I could change my mind. Over the years I have written so many letters that I never sent on. It was always enough that I had expressed my thoughts--it was not necessary to send them to their targets. But now, it is not. I need the exchange, the interplay of thoughts and ideas, the feedback, the emotional validation. And so I sent it.