To write or not to write... in All Good Things

I’m not writing here because I’m not writing anywhere. Since April, I’ve given myself a bit of a holiday from writing. I’m not sure why, it wasn’t planned, but it’s turning into a habit that’s rapidly becoming addictive.

And yet....

I AM writing. Just something different. For people. Lots of people. I spend most of my time online writing everything I used to write in journals to very specific wonderful new friends. My best friend lives in New Zealand. She told me she googled it and she lives in what is officially the furthest city away from London on earth. How bad is that? She’s coming here in five weeks, though, and I can’t wait.

I have so many new friends. My life is so full right now, fuller than I think it’s ever been. So many wonderful, wonderful people all around me, all seeming to value me and enjoy my company and love me as much as I love them. I know I’ve talked about that a lot over the past year or so, but it’s exceeded my wildest expectations now. So much has happened in the past three months that I could never have imagined.

Meanwhile, my friendship with Annette is over. It’s an interesting process I’ve been going through during the past year and a half, gradually shedding what harms me or drags me down as I change and start becoming what I always wanted to be instead of self-destructing. Leaving Will was a large part of that, and ending my friendship with Annette has been another. It’s been traumatic, very shocking, because I never realised just how bad she is for me, how harmful, and it got worse and worse week after week until it all exploded in Leicester (although I was in Dubai at the time, only flying back overnight) and the relief I felt when I thought I’d never have to speak to her again was stunning. That’s what confirmed for me that it’s the right decision. Of course, we’re still going to have to see a lot of each other, and in Sheffield somehow we managed to find a way to be civil - in fact, I suspect she thinks it’s just like usual, where she can treat me appallingly and I’ll forgive her and let her act like nothing ever happened....but for me it’s over. I’m done. I was done that night in Dubai as I cried until I felt no more pain, felt nothing but a cold sort of clarity.

Meanwhile, the universe has brought two amazing new female friends into my life along with all the wonderful male ones it’s been blessing me with. No, actually it’s brought at least five lovely new female friends to me, but these two in particular, Niki and Jenna, I love completely, especially Niki. The bond I share with Niki I’ve never shared with anyone else before who wasn’t a lover. I’m not quite sure how to do it with someone of my own gender. Just like with E, who I share such a strong physical relationship with, but he’s gay so it’s a whole new way to learn to be, with Niki we’re incredibly intimate on a psychological and emotional level, but since we’re both straight, that’s all.

Speaking of E, a couple of weeks ago I was feeling particularly down and needy (a lot of the Annette thing was coming to a head) and I was desperate for comfort. Out of the blue, he turned up the next day in Canterbury. “I suddenly decided late last night to come,” he said with a grin....and I didn’t tell him that late the night before had been when I’d been begging the universe for something, anything, to help me breathe again because things were so tense and awful. Instead I just bathed in his sparkling golden eyes and bounteous love for the first time in three months and marvelled at the workings of the universe.

I can’t begin to describe the amount of miracles that have been taking place like that over the past few months. It’s been rather a difficult, upsetting time, but whenever I get to the point where I feel like I can’t cope any longer, something wonderful happens. Often, many wonderful things. Sometimes, so many wonderful things that I’m left reeling and struggling to believe it.

There’s somebody. Somebody who’s been lurking in the background for the past year and a half, who’s been there with enormous eyes and that quirky half smile observing everything and filtering into my life until now I can no longer imagine life without him....and somehow I never even noticed it happen. (Yes, thank you, S, for driving me insane last year!) How have I been so oblivious? He was just....always there. Even when he wasn’t, we kept in touch. He was the one I’d exchange messages with when we weren’t together. He was the one I was the most eager to see again at the end of the summer break. He was the one who kept turning up during the winter, every few weeks, just when my need to see him became overwhelming. He’s actually the one who indirectly has caused the cataclysmic end of my relationship with Annette. He’s the one who watched everything happen with S last year and is probably the only person on earth who even suspects what happened between us. He’s the one whose family I’ve somehow been welcomed into with open arms and warm friendliness. He’s the one....

....the one who’s actually got me through the past year and a half.

How did I never realise what was happening? Yes, the chaos with S was distracting, and my precious Andrew was (and still is) unbelievably special (I couldn’t love him more if he were my own son), and of course E, my beloved, helped me through the winter, but when I look back at what I’ve written, right from the beginning 19 months ago, it was always C.

Always.

And yet it took until two months ago for me to click. That night he opened his arms to me in Wimbledon. To me. He came through the door and I was the one he wanted to celebrate with.

I think that was the first time I understood that he reciprocated.....something. And somehow that shattered the denial that had been shielding me from the truth right from the start.

I don’t know where to go with this. As usual, with me, he’s not free. No. In fact, he’s getting married in 58 days to the woman he proposed to the week after I first met him, his childhood sweetheart, who’s very lovely and sweet and adores him the way he deserves and will give him the wonderful life I want him to have. I would never do anything to jeopardise that.

But it hurts. At least with S, I wasn’t in love with him. It was all passion and frenzy and no more than physical. I wanted his body…but didn’t particularly care for the man. With C.....the more I’ve got to know him, the more gorgeous I discover he is. Not just the way he looks or the way he moves, but the essence of the man he is. The way he cares, so deeply, about everybody and everything. The way nothing escapes his notice. And then, as we started having more in-depth conversations, as it dawned on me just how intelligent he is on top of everything else....that was the final blow. I could resist him until that astounding conversation in Manchester....and the month since then has made it so, so, so much worse.

That’s the main reason I haven’t been writing. Because I knew, if I wrote, I’d write about him and I’d no longer be able to pretend to myself that what has happened wasn’t happening.

I am constantly surrounded by love, and I treasure all of it. I just wish I hadn’t fallen IN love so catastrophically. Life was so much easier when I could just talk about loving him the way I love everyone else, when I was so consumed with certain enraging individuals that I never noticed the calm, steady presence always there in the background, observing everything and sharing silent jokes with me and such open raw emotions they left me ravaged and yet still somehow oblivious. HOW was I so fucking oblivious until it was too late and I was lost?