This one life

I still haven't found what I'm looking for

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in the fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire

"I still haven't found what I'm looking for", U2

I am wide awake. A convenient state for a concert, admittedly, but not if there are almost two hours left and you desperately try to take a nap. It has become a sort of ritual for me: After the sound check, I withdraw to some quiet place, which, depending on the location of the concert, is anything from a dressing room to a trailer or even a car seat, to take a nap, before I dress and get ready for the big show. But today, sleep won't come, and I am reminded of the evening in the Marriott in London when I also lay awake with my mind going round in circles. Of course, I have already been through these thoughts a hundred times, but now that the evening is actually here, my mind seems to have hit the restart button on every single question that's been keeping me occupied this past week. The biggest question is still the WHY. Why has she been crying on the train from Munich airport? How much of it is my fault, and could I have done anything to make her feel better, to prevent her from crying? Next question, then, is, of course: Why am I so interested in finding this out? And why does this bother me more than the fact that I seem to finally have hit a dead end in my discussions with Joelle?

Yes, believe me when I say that there have been many of those in the past 10 days! After I had left the platform at the airport and made my way to my car, I had a lot of time to think about everything, and the only thing that I drew from all of these thoughts was that I needed to make my marriage work again, because life was too short to be wasted fighting. Jasmin's fate had painfully made me realize that I still had a spouse and that I should be grateful for that. That being said, Joelle did not share my opinion and had been somewhat reluctant when it came to certain topics so that the bottom line was that we had moved neither forward nor backward. That is, until yesterday, when she called me to announce that she would apply for a job in Rotterdam and if she got the job, she would find herself an apartment there and ultimately move out. Of course, this was not what I wanted to hear, and I almost found myself begging her to not do it, but her mind seemed to be set, and she only asked me if I had changed my mind on in-vitro fertilization. I hadn't, and still haven't, and to be perfectly honest, I doubt that I ever will, which is the last thing she wants to hear, so I didn't say anything and just hung up.

Within the past couple of days, I have been honest – but professedly almost exclusively to myself. I started with admitting that I could not make myself stop thinking of Jasmin and granted myself the right to accept that fact. Unfortunately, this has not prevented me from frequently wondering why. Why do I think of her so much when I should instead be thinking about my wife, and why am I occupied with tonight much more than with ideas to win back Joelle? I have not found answers to any of my questions, at least not good ones, and the only thing that I am absolutely sure of is that I need to see Jasmin tonight to sort this out. Which is probably why I am lying her, awake, when I should be napping. I have to admit that I am somewhat nervous, and this is a sort of nervousness that has nothing to do with the pleasant anticipation of going on stage, with the adrenaline that's always flooding my body when I am about to perform. I am nervous because of her. There, I said it, so it must be true. The funny thing is, I don't even know if she will be there. Of course she said she would come and I have no reason to believe the opposite, so I have her scarf and a requiem T-shirt ready in my dressing room, and a note prepared to be handed to her by the big guys that are part of the security staff here in Munich. But still. I cannot be absolutely sure. The reason why I have doubts is simple: I have not heard from here since last week. Sure enough, there could be plenty of explanations for that; she might not even have seen the phone number on the back of the note that was sent with the tickets, or maybe she assumed that number would reach my manager or someone else and not me. Which is partly true, of course; I do not hand out my private phone number, and the number on the note is a sort of semi-private number where people can reach my management and leave messages. But there was no message from her, and since I don't have her phone number, I had no way of contacting her. But this does not prevent me from considering all sorts of scenarios, many of which include her not coming tonight for a variety of reasons.