Friday, December 10, 2010

Old Lovers And Friends

If you are a 70 something woman, and I am, then with any luck at all you you have list of Old Lovers And Friends.  If you are really lucky there will be few that are both; both lovers and friends I mean.  Yesterday when I arrived home there was a letter and card from one of my, lets save time and refer to them as L&F.  His name is Jim and I know that he doesn't know how to use a computer so probably he will never read this; in a way I wish he would.  I really have nothing bad to say about him anyway.  I met Jim on a bus going from Fenelon Falls to Hamilton, he was going from Haliburton to Toronto, in any case we were on the same bus.  I was at the end of an abusive relationship, a relationship that wasn't quite over yet.  During the bus ride we exchanged mailing address's.  I wrote to him from my place of employment and he sent me letters there.  Within a couple of weeks I was ready to end the abusive relationship.  At that point in my life I was into periods of hurting myself, hurting myself with abusive men, alcohol and other things.  Thank God I didn't have to do that for all that long.  In a letter to Jim I told him I was ready to leave and when I got his return letter there was a bus ticket to Haliburton included. I planned my get away, rather hurriedly and carelessly, as I was more than half drunk at the time.  I did this in the middle of the night, then I passed out.  When I awoke in the morning the man I was with at the time had taken my suitcases, put them in his car and gone to work.  I did the only sensible thing I could think of; I called a cab, went to the bus terminal and got the bus for Hailburton with what was in my purse and the clothes on my back.  I was 38 or 39 years old and I was running away from home again.  That began a relationship that lasted for over 8 years.  This was the man who helped me to finish raising my youngest child.  Jim had quit drinking some months before I arrived and I was to quit within a year or 15 months.  Time seems kind of blurry surrounding this period of my life.  The first year was certainly blurry.  I probably could figure out the exact year this all began, however, that isn't my main interest or point of this blog.  I really want to write about the events as I remember them and particularly the 'feelings" around the event and person.  In the letter that arrived yesterday Jim said something to the effect that he had finally getten old.  To me he will never be old, he will always young, handsome and a knight that helped me to save myself.  And even thought this relationship ended painfully, is there any other way for a relationship to end? I would like the opportunity to explain to him why I did what I did, why I felt that I had to do what I did.  I kind of think he already knows.  I hope so.  Tonight I am grateful to this old L&F and I hope he can remember me with the same fondness that I remember him.

Saturday December 10th, 2010           11:04p.m.

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