Barren Mare

How we met

When people ask me how E. and I met, I have two stock replies: the first is that we met in a bar, which is more or less true. The second is that we saved each other lives while fleeing from a pack of ravenous wild boar which had escaped from the zoo, maraudering through the sleepy village of Aucterfachtermachter. In either case, the answer is designed to evade the full truth- which is that in fact, we met online. I don't know why I should be coy about it; all the best people meet that way nowadays. I mean, you're here, aren't you? Exactly.

But for some reason, meeting online is regarded in certain circles here as sort of...odd. So most of the time, we basically skim over that reality and offer up a streamlined version. Because after all, we really did meet in 'real life' for the first time in a bar. A nugget of honesty there, enough to keep flinging out the version with a straight face.

I've realised though, in thinking about our relationship, that I'm doing us a disservice by not telling the real story. So the other day, I went back to the very beginning. I've been holding on to my former dinosaur of a computer for the sole reason that I haven't ever gotten around to transferring those first email exchanges between us into another format. Looking through the files was like sifting through a box of love letters. He said...then I said back...then he told me about...and then I sent him...then he replied....

I remember clearly the first time I talked to him on the phone. We had been emailing back and forth for awhile, until finally emboldened, he offered up his number. It was early summer, and I sat on the floor of the bedroom in my lovely old flat with the endless Scottish evening pouring in over my shoulder. We talked for over three hours. I don't recall much of what we said, but I recollect clearly tracing the coil of the blue braided rug with my feet over the space of those hours. Around and around, over and over, while listening to his beautiful voice.

By the time we hung up, we had agreed to talk again, to meet. A week later I walked into the bar and he stood up. I had never believed in love at first sight until then. It was like being hit by lightening. He bought me a drink, which I gulped way too quickly. He had stacked the change in a neat pile on the table, toying with the spare pence while we talked. I noticed he had spilled a tiny bit of toothpaste on his blue shirt, near the collar. The first time he touched me was when he took my wrist so he could look at the time on my watch; we laughed when I pointed out the clock just above my head.

I had trouble sleeping for most of that summer. So astounded was I at my luck in meeting him, this amazing person, my heart folding with so much hope that I would wake in the night and be unable to get back to sleep. I found myself taking extra care when crossing the street, cautious that this new, tremulous joy not be ripped away by a careless step.

Sometimes when I think about our history, I believe that the lightening bolt was not entirely a good thing. I was so certain that this was what I wanted, you see. For the first time in my entire life, I was in absolutely love with somebody who seemed to love me back. But I realise now that this certainty was a gift I couldn't keep. That life was always going to intervene at some point. Life with these hard choices, hard decisions, and hard losses. And yet even now I can't decide how best to move forward or move on.

Which is why I sit here. Sifting through old love letters. Remembering what was. Telling the truth.

Fortune favours the brave

There's a TV programme here in the UK by the name of Relocation Relocation. The format is simple- the presenters, Kirstie and Phil, work as estate agent/realtors to help people in their quest find new homes. The twist (if you can even call it that) is that for the people in question (invariably a couple, or perhaps a mother and daughter), the relocation usually represents a full-on lifestyle change.

So for example: Sally and Bob live in Swindon. Bob is a marketing executive and Sally runs a business from home. Tired of the rat-race, they want to sell their current property, a nasty four bedroom bungalow, and purchase an old barn to convert in the south of France, which they will then run as a B&B. Ideally, the barn should come with acreage, so they can keep bees and chickens, plus grow all their own vegetables. Of course, not wanting to cut all ties with jolly old England, they will also keep a small flat in Devon so they can still be near Bob's parents. With the sale of the Swindon house, they have a budget of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds to achieve their goal.

Go, Kirstie! Go, Phil! Make that dream a reality!

What I like about the show is that the lifestyle changes are occasionally wacky enough to entail traipsing around a large number of interesting properties. The south of France features fairly often and I enjoy choking into my gin and tonic at what you can get for your money there, as opposed to here. Kirstie usually wears some fetching ensembles- in particular, she has this blue coat with very large buttons, of which I have become quite fond. Lastly, things don't always go to plan for the intrepid couples, so it's not uncommon for the show to end without a happy resolution. To my mind, that is good reality TV.

What I find myself wondering lately is how is people actually manage to make all these major, life-changing decisions; some of which involve a fair amount of upheaval and financial risk. Whereas when I look at myself and E., I see a couple who are hamstrung by an apparent inability to decide anything. Sure, we talk a lot about grand schemes to do things: move back to America, build a house in the country, run away and join the circus- but when the talking is done, we don't seem to be any further forward. After all that, it was just talk.

What does it take to make the big moves? To take the big risks? Is it courage? Is it desperation? Is it idealistic naive wishful thinking? Or a bit of all of the above?

Personally, I feel as if I have completely lost my nerve when it comes to going out on the proverbial limb. Which is why I am all about the small steps- one little decision, one tiny move at a time. But eventually, if things are really going to change, there will need to be a large leap.

And the prospect is scary- so much so that lately, I find myself scuttling back to the sofa with the TV channel clicker in my hand. Marveling at those who seem so much braver than I. Of course, they do have help- and some very large buttons- to accompany them on their way. But where did they get up the gumption in the first place- and how do I find some of that resolve to call my own?

Under the overpass

Here's something you don't yet know about me:

When I was nineteen years old, I cycled across the United States. As in, I rode my bicycle from Florida to California. Three months and over 3,000 miles.

Crazy, huh? People always ask what possessed me, and there is no good answer. I was bored and restless in college and wanted some time off to figure out my life. Oh, and there was, uh, a guy. Sometimes it seems like there was always a guy behind my stranger decisions.

Anyway, the story of that trip deserves to be told another time. Suffice to say it was a long, hard journey, but one full of interesting encounters and eye-opening revelations. By the time we reached the Pacific ocean, I had thigh muscles like tree trunks. And the guy in question turned out to be something of an anal-retentive fuckwit. He used to yell at me for not tying the knots on the panniers tight enough, and he would never let me put the tent up in case I somehow damaged one of the itty bitty poles or heaven forfend, got dirt on it. Even though we were camping! Sleeping on the ground! Ground means dirt! Let's just say more than one journey ended when we got to California.

But I digress. I was thinking about that trip today for a different reason. You see, no matter which state we were in, there were lots of long dull stretches of road where nothing much happened. In Florida there was lots of flat farm land, and orange trees. In Texas there was lots of flat scrub brush and cows. And day after day, we'd ride the white line, with the wind blasting in our faces. Everyone knows that the wind blows out of the west, and we were heading right into it. As far as journey planning goes, not one of my cleverer moves.

Some days we'd pass through little towns in the middle of nowhere- so dry and remote, so down in the mouth that I would shudder. The houses had crumbling porches and needed paint. There were rusted- out cars in the front lawn. The only shop seemed to be a 7-11 or a withered Dairy Queen. Some nights we ended up stopping in those towns because we could find nowhere else to camp, but if at all possible we would press through until we could find a less depressing prospect.

Invariably after one of these small town interludes, I would turn to Mr "Don't Get My Tent Dirty" and say, "I never want to end up in a place like this."

And he would roll his eyes, before pedalling off at top speed, miles ahead of me. Leaving me to wonder if perhaps there were any axe murderers lurking in the shrubbery by the side of the road. Actually, there weren't- although there was this one town on the Florida-Alabama border where a disconcerting proportion of inhabitants appeared to be lacking limbs.

Eventually, I became slightly obsessed with worry that the trip would never end, and I would find myself living in a lopsided shingle house beneath an overpass, in the kind of place where people like me pass through going "Who the hell lives here?" What was really odd is that when we finished the bike trip, I flew back to the east coast; whereupon I promptly got a job in California and two weeks later drove back across the entire country. So I got to experience some of those same charming landscapes twice.

The irony is that it seems like despite my best efforts, I've ended up under the overpass anyway. I don't mean in the literal sense, obviously. But in my head, I feel as if I've arrived at a dry, desolate place- stranded on the way to somewhere else- and I can't get out. It's exactly the place I didn't want to be, and here I am anyway. And there's not even a fucking Dairy Queen.

Still, I have hope. I believe that if every day I climb on my bike, and pedal as hard as I can, one day the dusty plains will eventually be behind me. That I will see the ocean again. And that I will get there with all my limbs, and my sanity, intact.

But right now it's just wind in my face, mile after mile of white lines, and barrenness punctuated by sadness.

The glue that binds us together

E. and I recently began making tentative plans for a holiday. Or rather, as usual, I started making plans- throwing out one enticing option after another for him to chew over like a puppy with a bone. Eventually, he will pick one he likes, and we will go with that. I already like them all, so it's good. At this point, given that our relationship still often feels as if it's supported only by wobbly foal legs, I am not reading too much into all this. It seems to come down to the fact we want to get away somewhere, and we figure we may as well go together.

You know I don't like talking too much about the various fissures in my present situation, which are deep, complicated and possibly impenetrable. However, it does seem to me that even if we hadn't been coping with our particular brand of relationship crap, we would have another major issue to sort out.

And that is: when the dream of a family dies for a couple, what replaces it?

I mean, OK, so you intend on spending your life with somebody. Usually, for the relationship to work, that entails more than just "love." There must be common goals, interests, values. Something to bind you together, to each other. Obviously in many cases, one of the primary goals is to have children- to create a family together and to raise that family in a manner mutually agreeable to both of you. So you start planning your future around that possibility: moving to a bigger house, somewhere with a garden, checking the budget, re-arranging the work timetable, imagining the reality of a couple turned into something larger, greater, more intricate.

When the option of children and all that comes with it is suddenly wiped off the road map, what is left? E. and I, we thought we were ready. We'd bought a warm, child-friendly flat together. We'd deliberately chosen to buy a car which could fit a stroller in the back. We sat down and looked at finances, decided I would work part-time, investigated nurseries close to my office. Then, as you know, we embarked on a long fruitless endevour with an unsuccessful outcome. Until everything we'd planned and wished for had not come to pass.

What I am still not sure about is whether in the absence of a family there will ultimately be anything to keep E. and I together. Whether the space between us can ever be filled with something that will take the place of parenthood. Whether holidays, pets, new cars (ones designed to look sexy rather than to be practical), our mutual careers can ever provide the necessary glue to bind us together for the rest of our lives. Whether we can give all the love we would have given to a child to each other.

I know there are a great many couples who have no desire to have kids; who in fact delight and glory in their child-free state. I am sure there is something I can learn from them. But what I wonder is: if you come into the relationship with hope of parenthood in your heart, can you ever really be satisifed with something else when that hope dies?

I don't know the answers to all these questions. But I guess while I'm figuring it out, I may as well plan a holiday.