I always say that I have a built-in delay: it takes me a while after the facts to see things as they are, and this is added proof of that.
I’ve been sick this past week, had strep throat, so I had a lot of pain, in my throat, head, ears, and neck. Not pleasant. And because my head hurt all the time, I couldn’t read or write much, I watched some Netflix but that tired me too, so I mostly slept. And with all that free time my neurons got working again.
During my time of convalescence, I realized two things: one, that I am sad, very sad. I suffer from deep sadness. Sadness that takes away the joy of life, the beauty, and paralyzes me. But this sadness is not only the product of the last break-up. There is sadness also from before, from two, five years ago at least, from the miscarriage, the divorce, but probably more, more, much more, a sadness bordering on the permanent, a subterranean, all permeating sadness. Depression you might call it, but I call it sadness, elephant sadness, lack of joy. That’s why it’s been so hard to create lately. The spark is missing. That was the thing: he brought the spark with him, but then, he took it away. So especially these past few months I’ve been bare, because of the break-up, but also due to the realization that I am at the end of an era. I recently came to terms with the fact that I will never have children of my own, from my own womb, because I don’t want to do it alone and if I want to do it I have to do it now, and now there is no man on the horizon, and there is not going to be one for a while, and there are too many other things I want to do. Maybe it represents the end of the path, a cul de sac, and now I have other roads in front of me. *
But I also realized that I am angry. I am angry at men that say, You are so great, you are awesome, gorgeous, fantastic, but I don’t love you; tired of men that fall in love with the woman that don’t love them and reject the one that does, and tired to be the woman that falls in love with the men that don’t love her and rejects the one that does. Tired of playing that game.
This guy in Sweden, for example, lets call him Pedro. Recently, a month ago perhaps, Pedro offered me $1,000 to go visit him in Stockholm and bring him the stupid sculptures he bought on Ebay. One of them, especially, takes a decent amount of space in my room. It is in a big box and I don’t want to go through the hassle of sending it by mail. The sculpture is made of plaster and it could break, so, he wants me to go to Sweden and bring it with me. I haven’t said yes or no, I am in between other more important things right now.
But this friend, Pedro, well, I could write a book about us. I’ve known him since 1992, we dated for two years in Buenos Aires before he departed towards Sweden and I departed towards Paris. While I was in Paris in 1995 I got pregnant and he was the main suspect, (I had visited him in Sweden a couple of times), and although, yes, I have to admit, there was another possible perpetrator, in my heart I knew it was him. But he was so adamant about his innocence, he didn’t even blink, he was like, Me? Not possible. I am too good, I could not possibly have made that mistake. So, I had an abortion, and then we continued to see each other from Paris to Sweden until I told him some secret I had been keeping for a little while: a fling I had with a friend of his after he left Buenos Aires and after he had said “I want to fuck as many Swedish girls as possible.” But his honor was hurt so he refused to talk to me for a long time… Anyway, of course I loved him even more after that and I wrote him many love letters to which he always replied, You are so talented and beautiful, but I don’t love you and I never did. But in 2008 when I had the miscarriage he wrote me an email saying, Well, that baby that we never had a long time ago was maybe the only one I would have ever had. He was getting worry about his own posterity. So, in April 2009, when he heard that I had broken up with my boyfriend of 5 years, a pretty bad break up too, he proposed something to me. He was married to an infertile woman so he couldn’t have kids with her. When I dated him he was around 26, and he didn’t want to have kids then, he was like, Why bring a kid to this awful world? But after he turned 40 he became fearful of disappearing from the earth without leaving a sign of his existence, because he realized that he was not going to be this great artist he thought he was going to be and leave behind a wake of beautiful creations known by the universe. In 2009 he was 44 or so, I was almost 39, and his wife was 46 or something like that. But they had a terrible relationship; they fought all the time. He was always telling me that he was going to leave her. He would call me sometimes and complain for hours about his wife, and then when she would come back to the house, because he would only call me when she was not around, he would hang up immediately leaving me in the middle of a sentence. He was afraid of her. He even told me, a few months before April 2009, that in the summer he was going to move to his house in the country by himself and leave her. I remembered this because, even though we haven’t seen each other for more than fifteen years, I was always still kind of in love with him, kind of having hopes (what an idiot!). So when he called and proposed me to have a child with him, first I was happy, because it was what I wanted to hear all my life, and he knew I wanted a kid too, but then I started asking, You are going to leave your wife, aren’t you? And he said, No! Leave my wife!? Why do you say that? And I was like, Well, you said you had problems with her before, that you were going to leave her, and if you propose me what you are proposing me, I will want more, you know, what are your plans? To visit your child once a year and in secret? Oh yeah, it has to be in secret, he said, because now I am going to therapy with my wife and I will not leave her just like that, So you are going to therapy with your wife and you are asking me to keep this secret from her, to have your child in secret? (Silence) I will send you money… Yeah, right. So, that was it, I said no. And I was angry with him for a while and didn’t talk to him. But time passed and a year later he asks me to keep some boxes for him. Some junk he buys on Ebay and people don’t want to send to Europe to him, so they send them to me. I said ok, why not. Now I have three of these things in my house, and as my roommate pointed out, they come with his energy, because every time I see them I think about him.
The thing is now he offers me $1,000 to go visit him and bring him the boxes. And I asked him, How is your situation? He divorced his wife and is now living by himself in a little house close to the metro station in Stockholm. Aha. And so, are you going to offer me again that deal of the child once I am there? And he said, No! I don’t have any hidden agendas! The reason I asked you last year, he said, was because I knew you wanted, I wanted, my wife couldn’t, so the only way I could have a baby was in secret, so I asked you. But now I don’t need to do that. Claro, of course, I thought, now that you are free you can find yourself a nice blond Swedish fertile young girl that can have your kid for you, so you don’t need me, and who could you have asked when you were married other than me, the always understanding me, the compassionate and all loving me? Nobody. Nobody else you could have asked other than me. And now you don’t need me, because you are free and so you are not interested in me anymore. Me is only good for the half-ass option.
So now I say: you want your boxes? Of course, I’ll give you your boxes, dear. You just send me the money and I’ll be there in a few months, and you’ll see, I’ll get to Paris and I’ll send you a text saying, “Oops! I’m not going to make it to Sweden, sweetie! Your box got broken in a thousand and two little pieces so it is not worth going there anymore. Bye bye! Thanks for the trip!”
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| I draw La Femme after another break-up, a Swedish actually, in Paris 1997. Notice the little smashed head under he foot and her second, fiery mouth. |
*Check next blog entry on this. There is more to say …
