Not yet fifty and single again - J

The Story

“This is a story about a man and a woman”, I start. “They met in a beautiful place, a place of white beaches, palm trees and blue oceans…a perfect place to fall in love. Which they did. Both were young but experienced in love. The attraction was not just physical. It was more, it was mental, spiritual. It was complete. Weeks became months became years in which they fully consumed their love, not thinking about anything and not realizing they were being consumed by it as well.”

“But the man was not whole…he was not one person. Without him knowing it, various persons lived inside of him, each wearing his own face and living his own life. One person was Caring, and he only wanted to take care of this woman, make sure no wish would go unanswered in her life, and make her happy. Another person was a Joker. He always wanted to make her smile and laugh. As with caring, he too tried to make her happy, but in another way. It was his humour, that would always want to overtake when things got too serious or when the world would not only be white sands and blue seas but would fill with shades of grey, or the red of blood. Lover was the third person living in the man. He would spend all his time caressing the woman, massaging her body, make her feel wanted and desired, and give her pleasure.  

For a long time, these three were the only persons the woman met. Whereas Caring and Joker were giving and did not want anything in return but her happiness and her smiles, Lover however had a selfish streak as well. He did not only want to give. He wanted to take too. Besides wanting his pleasure, when he wanted it, he also wanted her for himself and not share her with anybody else. He was demanding and at times insisting. He was dominant, but at the same time liked to be dominated. Although being demanding, the woman liked Lover, as he not only made her feel good, as did Caring and Joker, but he hinted at some darker side of the man, that made her curious, and somehow made him more attractive. 

With time passing, the woman found there were more inhabitants living in the man. One was Passion. Passion was the engine that drove the man. Passionate in everything, but especially in his love for this woman. He was a close friend of the other three, and mostly was in their company. This made the man passionate in most that he did.   

The man and woman did not stay forever in this beautiful place, and life took them to other locations, places of scorched earth and blood-soaked soils, the Badlands.  Here the woman discovered another person that was being kept hidden from her by the others. It was Rage. Although the others managed most of the time to keep him quiet and confine him in his hole where he was kept locked up, as time moved on it became ever harder for them to control him. He found ways to move his head through the metal bars of his prison and eventually he managed to unlock his cage altogether. 

Whereas the man was composed of many persons, the woman seemed to him to be made of various materials, various substances. Sometimes he would see her as a silk veil, moving gracefully in the breeze, so soft to the skin that he never wanted to let her go. At other times he found her to be made of lava, glowing, hot and melting everything she came into contact with. Her burns felt like cleansing, cleaning all imperfections, leaving behind the perfect black glassy shine of Obsidian. 

He also found her to be made of iron. At times she would be hard, shining, proud, without a dent, and cold to the touch. In those moods, the man would struggle, who would be able to get through to her. And usually found that this was no point. She remained in that state for as long as it lasted. Caring was usually the only way to get through to her after a while, melting the iron into a softer composition. 

She could be hard and sharp as a rock. During the time in the Badlands, she was determined, as a rock thrown at a target, unwavering in its course. The rock had sharp edges, like granite, and cut deep to the bone of anyone trying to catch it, stop it.  Over the years, the man came to experience many such cuts, because he did not understand her, tried to do what he thought would be right, what he thought she needed, or when he was the one who got her in this state in the first place.”