A Day to Forget

Sometimes I wonder if I am really honest when I say that you have never disappointed me. Consciously you have probably never done so, but to deny it would be to create a utopian illusion or fantasy, which does not exist and will never exist as long as we are human. But this is a memory, a day I want to forget.

But I can remember the day it all started, where jealousy took hold of my soul, sure, one shouldn’t be jealous, but when it comes to love, I can’t just close my eyes and let it all pass by, like a bribed judge. There was a time long ago at the beginning of our relationship endeavor that also broke down sometimes. Probably it was because of me, I don’t really know sometimes. But I can remember the three parties involved, all with different perceptions of what happened, and feel violated and humiliated by the memory. It would be interesting to know why this memory is coming back so strongly today, because right now I don’t need to face the memory that can crush what has risen from the bottom of the sea and is in the process of becoming again. But still it comes like the storm, unannounced, for I have not seen or familiarized myself with the weather report.

I can remember how we had shyly approached each other and I had wondered how a woman worked, that thought had come over me many times since the day I met you for the first time, for I did not always understand in what way you were thinking. We had met and I was in love, but still hesitant, I wanted to think things through and really feel that I was making the right decision and it was precisely in this situation of uncertainty that this third person came in. Where the uncertainty in me was about the repetition and eternal love, and in you whether I really loved you in my inertia.

I can understand why this man courted you, you were and are extremely beautiful and attractive as a woman. You were like a wonderful dream, like the most beautiful of dreams, which in my eyes was revealed most strongly in your vivid immediacy and hidden naivety, which sometimes came out into the open. Your shyness has always attracted me, speaking to the depths of my soul and making my heart both rejoice and tremble with anticipation. You had just spoken out and asked the question so incredibly spontaneously and directly, like an arrow hitting the target, slowly it went for me and you were always that little bit agitated, spontaneous and wanted an answer right away.

You had left me alone for quite a long time, but the questions were there, expressed but unanswered. Then he came, a man whom I would like to call, in my aversion and irony, a butter churner, or the erotically fulfilled grand charming who apparently has everything. A dazzling smile, witty remarks, superficiality, which can feel good at times when melancholy and seriousness often prevail. A man who suffers from self-confidence, for he does not always understand his hurtful intrusion.

On closer inspection, one does not know whether to laugh or cry. I know that I had asked you, my shyness got the better of me and it wasn’t very convincing, not with a look that made you tremble with anticipation, not with a tone of voice that made you realize: “Do you want to do something”, a little bit dry, all because of my own fear. “Sure”, you replied, exuding both disappointment and a little anger at my awkwardness. Then came this other guy. Dressed in jeans and a colorful shirt, like a playful child, with his dazzling smile, he began to explain how incredibly beautiful you were, how lovely your femininity seemed in its own glory, how much he wanted to be close to you.

This comic clown who enchanted you with all his phrases, with all his well-articulated phrases that only enhanced you as a person. He talked about how beautiful you were, how wonderfully beautiful and enchanting your eyes were. He picked out body part by body part and gilded them, rightly so, but what he wanted was seduction, this aesthetic knight who, with his reflection, lives in the illusion that brings death to life.

Years later, when I read Sören Kierkegaard’s book ‘The Seducer’s Diary’, I was struck by the thought of how well this person corresponded in some respects to this John the Seducer. And this superficiality in the midst of it all lit the erotic fire in your mind and enchanted you. He deceived you with all his tricks, he tied you to himself by luring you away from yourself.

And the shyness came over you without any ambivalence seeming to pull you in either direction, and so the female cunning, or was it the ambivalent female essence that began to work? You answered as slyly as only a woman who recognizes her attractiveness can: “I don’t know,” but your eyes said yes, the ones that already seemed to have forgotten love for excitement, romance and eroticism. You forgot and I left you both, me disappointed and you dreaming, far away in an unknown land.

Tragedy came upon me, for the tears I did not dare to let out burned hot, burned hot with the longing for you, who already seemed to have disappeared on the horizon with this other, who was only a first-class seducer. It burned hot again as if I had lost what I had once won, as if I had lost the life you had given me. For if you were the life in me that disappeared, life slowly but surely disappeared. You were the fuel in my fire that burned, but it was taken away, log by log.

By his mere presence he created a shimmer around you that was impossible to resist, you had never felt so appreciated, so beautiful, but also never so chopped and split. You stepped out of your Thou-world into the It-world and there you became the blind object to be used and exploited, someone who was emptily loved for all its good external aspects. You were forgotten and reality became the dream that appealed to your deep longing, which also seemed to stem from some hidden need of yours.

I have never really told you how painful it was for me but it hurt me badly, but you yourself had never shown me how great your need was to hear how much you were loved, how much I loved you, not on this side of our relationship or I was just blind to your need, slowly I have always understood, you know. But this episode always stands as a warning to me, in the unconscious. To never forget how important it is to express your love for the one you love, to acknowledge her needs and her love, to respond to everything you receive, because what you give you get back.

But he went on, the charmer of this dazzling virtuosity, he went on making a success of your heart and he didn’t know how hurt I was.

Some time passed and I saw less and less of you and less my life was worth, I thought I had lost forever the one I loved, but what I did not lose was my love for you. But the more time passed, the more you became aware of his deadly charm, which only played on the erotic mirror in every man’s heart, you finally realized how deceived you had been. For what he could give you were only momentary representations of what you needed, because security and love were not with him, this Don Juan who only had problems with his manhood. This Casanova who loved only himself and you were to confirm who he was, what did not exist, for he owned nothing. When you came back you were cold and slippery at first, but as time went on we were able to talk about what had happened, to sort out the problem of guilt, because we were both guilty of what had happened. We both talked out our disappointment with pathos, and it was all to the good, for now we found what we had both doubted, our love for each other. It was indeed pure and true, and it deepened in our forgiveness of each other.