Guy Fawkes Day today. Children throughout the empire burn effigies of the Gunpowder Traitor.
She left me last night. “Sent me away,” to borrow her parlance.
Any of you who know me personally have some idea of how head-over-heels I’ve been for the past two months. At her request, I refrained from writing about her on this blog, which has led to some abortive postings. I couldn’t write about the penultimate show on Springsteen’s tour without discussing the joy I felt at holding her close while the band played New York City Serenade.
My entries from Utah last week are incomplete, nowhere mentioning that the trip was the terminal end of a 16-day period we spent apart. They don’t mention that, the moment I landed, I raced through the airport to my car and drove to the ferry at Weehawken, so that I could see her again.
How did I manage to write that Robert Parish entry (Sept. 6) without adding, “Last night, I met the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with”?
I’m not sure how adequately I can write about her (and myself) right now. I feel like a shadow, which is hardly a descriptor of what’s raging inside me. It doesn’t encompass the fury, the futility, the loneliness of going to bed and knowing that there’s no possibility of holding her close again.
Holding her close: the only moments in my life when I felt I was in the right place. I had no idea a person could feel that way. Which is to say, I never really knew what it meant to be in love. Now I do.