The Apostate’s Diary, Feb 10, 2005

London
My dearest Manpreet,
I’m only addressing this to you because I feel I often write better, or at least more comfortably, when I adopt the letter form. But I shall probably not send this to you or even let you read it. I used to keep a journal, and have done so on and off since I was about 8, I suppose. I can’t remember, since all of my childhood journals were lost when my mother died and my father remarried and sold the house. The Great Fire of my life, the catastrophe that burned everything to ash and forced me to start over. It was my mother’s death that propelled me, I think, into recognizing that my marriage was not what I had expected it to be, not what I had been pretending it was. It’s so much easier to imagine that I am telling you these things, as I think of you as the most sympathetic and loving listener I could ever possibly meet, than to think of writing just into the wilderness, as it were, into the air. My childhood journals were lost, thrown away, most likely, and the books I’ve filled since then are stacked in a closet at home in the states. I can’t bear to read them. And in any case they are only halfway accurate. I have never been able to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth, when I write “in my journal.” Always there has been some nameless, critical reader looking over my shoulder. So I shall imagine that I am telling you about myself, and trying to be as honest as possible, while also admitting from the outset that there are things I won’t say, because I want to present myself in the best possible light.
I have often wondered, though, what it would feel like to set down everything, absolutely every sordid thing I have done and thought, without judgment or analysis. So much of my journals have been about analyzing my actions, thinking them through, rather than just recounting them. What a relief it would be to find the courage to narrate the events as they come, without worrying about what people might think about what I imagine is my scandalous life. The things I do that I can’t tell anyone about, the things that I hate myself for. And to do more than that. To narrate, also, the mundane, the ordinary, the strange, the days rolling past.
Today, for example. Not much happened. I felt inspired by you to be more responsible about my work, and therefore got myself to the internet café by 8:30 to take care of email. Then I realized I didn’t have the address of the student I was supposed to write to, and had to write to someone else in the program who might have it, and ask her to pass my message along to him. Rather discouraging. Then I bought groceries, grapefruit and rye bread, because they are lower in carbohydrates than other foods, and, since high-suger foods only fill me up for a short time and I am trying to eat as little as possible, both to save money and to lose weight. I also bought the paper, some apples and ham, for my lunch. 8 pounds. I can’t seem to get through the day without shelling out at least 20 bucks, and if I spend that much I will soon be out of money all together. I am constantly worrying about money. It seems that I never have enough. I am awake at night, like half the people on the planet, worrying about it.


But I did not sit down to record my anxieties, but rather what seems too important to neglect.

Starting again, then: Last night I had a conversation with my son, Brendan that made me feel so close to him, so very able to understand him a… [This part of the letter was not sent]

[also taken out of the letter]
I have loved Ian this way—I have loved the god in him, as well as the man, but he has not loved me as much. He only sees the disappointing, ordinary woman in me, not the divine. He sees little of my spirit, I think, but still he loves me. I don’t quite know why. It has been so hard, so painful, to love him. I am so tired to loving this way.

What I dream of in you, and perhaps foolishly, is to be loved in return as passionately, as tenderly, as I love.

It is so sad with Ian, for the root of my great love for him is still there, still strong and deep in the ground, like an old vine. But there are few leaves and less fruit these days than there ever were before. How can you continue to flourish when you love where your love is not watered? When your every branching out is regarded as an excess, a limb that ought to be cut back? So I am somewhat puzzled by his desire to come to see me.

I do not look forward to feeling the need to restrain myself with him again and again, as I always do. He is nice, he is passionate, he is loving, for about three days. Then he withdraws again, and I have to learn to put on yet another hard layer of bark, to protect myself from the pain of it. He always makes me cry.

I have loved him so well, and for so long. And for what? For dry, parched ground around my feet. For a bit of dew and lots of dust. Why he has been faithful to me, why he has continued to come round, I cannot explain. He has been, ironically, the only one I could trust.

I have not known Craig long enough to say for sure, but my gut feeling about him is that I cannot trust him very far. I will be okay with him as long as I hold myself together and do not crash.. When I tell him about how it goes with me sometimes, how forlorn and devastated I feel, he falls silent. My sadness frightens him, because he has never felt it and therefore can’t understand it. And once, when I was really in a bad way, which had everything to do with Brendan and the hardship of that situation, he repudiated me for being depressed. We nearly broke up, and I have never quite trusted him since.

Ian, for all his untouchableness, knows melancholy and can talk to me. He usually comforts me. I know that I could go to him in utmost need, and that he would help me. But I would continue to grow only in a twisted and half-withered, parched way.

Do you understand why I haven’t been able to give Ian up, even though, on surface of things, Craig is more generous and more affectionate? I have held on to both of them, because they give me different kinds of love that I need. Both leave me feeling rather desiccated in the long run, but they give me what I have needed to survive. And I have needed them. I hope you don’t think less of me for this, my need for them.

The letter I sent:

Thank you for taking the time to speak with me about my concerns. And for such a lovely time yesterday, meeting by chance in the station and walking around Kensington, then sitting together in the cafe where there was an old lady hacking away and feeling ill on one side, and, on the other, a lonely old man, who, happily, soon joined the crown of white-haired gentlemen spending the afternoon talking about the war. And how we smiled at them and at one another as we watched them bidding one another farewell so affectionately.

I do have a lot more hope now than before. You always make me feel better.

Do know that I really never do want you in any way cause you harm or anguish or worry. I hope you'll sort things out soon.

With lots of love,

J