It's been so long since I've last written, I was telling myself I was waiting on closure on our fourth attempt to write it down. Yesterday it came.
I went to Retiro park yesterday in the afternoon to practice handstands before my yoga class. As I walked towards the area where I usually practice, I saw a woman looking down on her phone, sitting on a picnic blanket. I recognized the blanket and her pink running shoes, because her hair covered her face as she was looking down on her phone.
I said "Hi V!" and she looked up with a smile on her face "Oh Mark, that's amazing, I was just writing to you". I pulled out my phone and saw she wanted to talk the next day. "So what you want to talk about?" I asked, "well, what else?" she answered. Of course, what else. "We don't have to do it now you know? We can speak when you are ready", "I think I'm ready now, well—almost ready, I came to do some handstands and if I don't do them before talking I'll be thinking about them, so just let me practice a little bit and we'll speak.
I held my handstand on my first try, about 30 seconds. It's becoming more reliable and I can hold upside down for long. I love doing it for two reasons: when I'm upside down it requires complete focus. Mental dialogue ceases and my hands do their thing to keep me in the air. When I come down I experience a dizzyness which is not unpleasant, I like to think it's my healthy endogenous altered experience. She asked me if I wanted her to record me. Ok, I said. Then I tried time and time again without success. "It's always like this, as soon as I know I'm being recorded I mess up" I said. "Well, let's not record you then" she answered. I went up again on my first try when I was not being recorded. When I came back down I saw her holding her phone, "sorry I recorded you in secret, I knew you would get it done without knowing". I smiled at her cleverness.
I lay down next to her to talk. From our last attempt, three eggs had been viable, two jumpstarted, but trailed off after a couple of days, and we were again left with nothing. We met up on the weekend to talk about it. She said she wanted to do a fifth attempt, that she needed an immediate answer for the clinic. I said "If the answer needs to be given immediately, then the answer is no, I feel unsure about continuing this, and I feel my insecurity is getting in the way". Why do you feel insecure? she asked. Same things as always: I feel like I will go back to Mexico, that I will be an absent father, I will fail in the same way my father failed me, but in a different way. She responded in a strange way for her, which was to almost shake me while repeating "confía, confía, confía" (trust, trust, trust). I asked her to wait for me to sleep on it, it was the best answer I could give at the time.
In the morning I woke up thinking the answer was yes, but then she wrote me before I could say anything. She said we had time for thinking about it better. Later in the day we received an email detailing the reimbursements the clinic would do because of the services we hadn't used (embryo implantation and other things), and I assumed (correctly) the window to say yes had passed, and that she was wanted to do another new double-round, but we didn't talk about it.
Later in the week I met with a friend whom we have in common. She knows nothing about our project, nor she will in the short term as we share a large-is group of acquaintances and by her own admission she lacks discretion. She had been away in Ecuador, taking care of her sick father for the last few months. After listening to her ordeal, she asked me how I was doing. I recounted what I had done in the last few months: "oh I went with V. to Marseille". "What? are you back together?" "No, we went as friends", I said. She smirked, "yeah friends who go together alone to France... You shouldn't lead her like that", "nah it's clear we're friends, we didn't have sex, the terms of our friendship are clear, besides, it's almost been a year". We went back and forth if I was doing or not wrong, to which I'm not concerned, I don't think she is hurting in this friendship, though I hope I am able to notice this if it ever starts happening.
However, in this back and forth my friend made me realize she is very much still in love with me. Even without her knowing about our intentions, there were many reference points where I connected the dots: it's not only a baby what she would like, and that the baby know who is their father as she states, she wants me to be the father. This came as a "duuuuhhhh" to myself, it's been obvious the entire time, but as I'm not bouncing these ideas around with anyone, it was hidden to me. And this gave me a pause to re-think our endeavor.
I do love V. and I think it reflects on the way I write about her, in a bit idealized and platonic way. I can't bring myself to write about what deeply unsettles me, for fear that she may read some hurtful words about her. And even admitting that one has truths that he'd rather not share for fear of hurting a loved one is causing hurt. Rather than harm I prefer to pull myself apart, I cannot offer at this time complete honesty with the reader or with V. The true motives for this decision will be explained if I ever come to find enough courage to explain what is really going on underneath it all.
On Friday we went to a Halloween party with the friend I mentioned before, and her boyfriend. That morning I had woken up at 4:30 and couldn't get myself back to sleep, so before the party I warned them I might arrive a bit late. I went to sleep, and in my dream I was sleeping in V's bed. V. came to lie behind me, in a kind of big spoon way. It was pleasant, but then she started passing her lips near my cheeks, it was very intense but in an unpleasant way. I pulled myself apart. She pulled me closer and I tried to pry myself out of her grasp, each caress more becoming more painful than the one before. It wasn't upsetting in any way and even though this seems signify repulsion, I didn't doesn't pass the "rings a bell" intuition that is felt with dreams, this wasn't about repulsion but of a kind of escalation that something inside me is warning me to keep it from happening. In any case, I arrived 45 minutes after them.
Our friend and her boyfriend had to be sober and had an ok time I guess, but it was in stark contrast of the past year. They had dressed up as a crazy scientist and a lab rat, and they were commended by plenty of strangers at their creativity. This year he wore a cheap bee suit and she was dressed as a sunflower. V. had a nice dress with black angel wings. I was dressed in an almost suit (a jacket that looks like a suit) with a red tie and a white shirt, supposedly to impersonate Hitman, but instead got asked twice where the bathroom was, thinking I was a security guard (admittedly, I was dressed exactly like them). After these two I learned to roll with the punches, and joked that I had dressed as a security guard. One guessed correctly after having mistaken me.
We danced a while before V. excused herself to go somewhere. I can't hear anything inside of clubs, so I thought she'd go to the wash. But she was away a long while and we wondered why, when our friend recalled: there was tarot reading, and she wanted to read her luck that night. My friend raised her eyebrows towards me and I couldn't help but laugh, there are many layers to the story in which the veneer looks vain, but there's substance to it. My friend went to search for her, and found her at the precise moment the fortune teller was doing her job, grabbed a picture, and came back to us. When V. had come back, she showed us the photo. V. seemed equanimously happy about whatever she was told and was thrilled about having the photo of the precise moment.
Dancing with V. was a bit of dancing with a mirror of myself. I understood so much about why people don't engage with me when I dance, she has done a lot of somatic work this year and we both kinda know how to enter into ourselves while dancing. Or we didn't want to dance with each other. I don't know, it seemed like she was more into dancing with herself than dancing with me, and I probably projected the same, so our mutual dance was unremarkable because we rarely danced with each other. Now that I sit down to write it, I'm sure she was respecting my boundaries, if I wanted to dance with her I would have to unmistakably initiate it, and she would have happily danced with me. I was waiting for an invitation on very lukewarm energy.
Our friends left and we didn't stay for long. I was tired and explicitly thought it would be impossible to hookup with V. by my side, but then again I haven't hooked up at all this time since we broke up, what a convenient excuse to have. If she said she was tired and can leave on her own, would I hook up? Of course not. I let go a sigh of... I guess the worst breath because I drank my three vodkas on the rocks (water bottles for friends!)... and a certain exhasperation at my own situation. It's all impossible to explain to the reader. This shall remain concealed until it's appropriate to open it.
We had dinner at a kebab place and I walked her home. We said goodbye with a 20 second hug as she always demands (and I indulge), and I went back home to sleep, alone (as if it needed clarification).
Now, let's go back to the Park. This long story with me encountering her at the park, as she was writing to me. "Ok, I've done my handstands, so what you wanted to talk about?". "Well, our topic, of course". I indicated I wanted to say something, and I would speak. I said the answer is no, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm sorry, It's all so difficult to explain. I've lost hope. I feel this not going to work out. Oh you let fear get the best of you? We'll be alright. You don't understand, behind all of this: the desire to please you, the desire to change, the desire to make myself a better man... There is no desire in me for having a child in itself, if there was, it would conquer the fear I have if we are successful in this project. I am not ready for this, nobody ever is, but I this time I am still particularly unripe. I will always support you in this endeavor but I must also put myself apart, if—by saying half-yes I'm also saying no—How is it that I receive bad news with relief and good news with alarm? Energetically I'm asking the universe for this to not happen, not like this, it's like I don't remember why I wanted to do this in the first place.
This is what I would have said if I were writing, but in speech this turned out to be a back and forth, and I said "We're just playing 'find an excuse and I will find a solution', I already came to peace with no, I feel I'm already too enmeshed in this not to be at least an uncle to a child of yours, but I'm not the father. She insisted on a timeline, I'd have time to think, if she could ask just one more time. I thought about it. No, and here's why: if I feel it I will feel it clearly, and I will let you know immediately. If the deadline passes and I haven't given an answer, the silence means no. There's no point in asking.
She sent me two whatsapp messages later that night:
- Thank you for your support.
- I hope you change your mind.
I have closed this knot. Unless the invisible hand unties it.