A Place of Safety
I expect simple behaviours here. Friendship, and love.
Any advice should be from the perspective of the person asking, not the person giving!
We have had to make new membership moderated to combat the huge number of spammers who register
















You are here: Home > Forum > A Place of Safety > General Talk > Musings on Love Lost or Love never had
icon7.gif Musings on Love Lost or Love never had  [message #1956] Tue, 09 April 2002 09:48 Go to previous message
tim is currently offline  tim

Really getting into it
Location: UK, West of London in Ber...
Registered: February 2002
Messages: 842



I've been doing some. A lot of quiet thinking I suppose. For example, "How did I lose my obsessive 'love' for John?"

Part of it was a book. Now & Then, by William Corlett. I read it last summer and wept through most of it. Part of it was friends and the ability to weep on your shoulders while you wept on mine. Part was a decision to take control of my life, part by part.

As I was pondering I re-happened on this poem. It seems W H Auden had his John too

Oh the valley in the summer where I and my John
Beside the deep river would walk on and on
While the flowers at our feet and the birds up above
Argued so sweetly on reciprocal love
And I leaned on his shoulder; "Oh Johnny let's play";
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

O that Friday near Christmas as I well recall
When we went to the Charity Matinée Ball.
The floor was so smooth and the band was so loud
And Johnny so handsome I felt so proud;
"Squeeze me tighter, dear Johnny, let's dance till it's day";
But he frowned like thunder and he went away

Shall I ever forget at the Grand Opera
When music poured out of each wonderful star?
Diamonds and pearls they hung dazzling down
Over each silver or golden silk gown,
"Oh John I'm in heaven," I whispered to say;
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

Oh but he was fair as a garden in flower,
As slender and tall as the great Eiffel Tower,
When the waltz throbbed out on the long promenade
Oh his eyes and his smile they went straight to my heart;
"Oh marry me, Johnny, I'll love and obey";
But he frowned like thunder and he went away

Oh last night I dreamed of you, Johnny, my lover,
You'd the sun on one arm and the moon on the other,
The sea it was blue and the grass it was green,
Every star rattled a round tambourine;
Ten thousand miles deep in a pit there I lay
But you frowned like thunder and you went away


The thing that pleases me is that now, while I see how the poem affected me in the past, and I can weep the tears of the poet, I no longer weep "Tim's tears". The whole thing lets me see how it is possible to grow through an obsession, an dhow one can come out the other side into sunlight.

It was almost exactly the 37th anniversary of my meeting John that my obsession left me. I wonder if anniversaries are significant? Somehow I doubt it. He was cute, gorgeous, wonderful, sexy, desirable, aloof, elusive, loveable, loved, adored, all of those things. He was also a real boy with aspirations of his own. I think I missed those and became too concerned with my own troubles.

I wanted, you see, to have a friend. A real friend, one I could look up to. Instead I found a sort of love, one sided and awful in the prison cell it created, and I never had the friend. And yet intuition tells me now that he was in some way attatched to me then,and that I am 95% sure we were two boys separated by terror, not seperated by orientation. And no, it is not wishful thinking. Instead it is the most objective view I can see of the facts of my teenage years.

Now I just have to regain the years when I was lonely and stop being lonely, and the years when I was afraid and forgive myself for them, and the years when I was not happy and learn to be happy.
 
Read Message icon7.gif
Read Message  
Read Message icon7.gif
Read Message icon7.gif
Read Message  
Read Message icon7.gif
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message icon7.gif
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message  
Read Message icon7.gif
Read Message icon14.gif
Read Message icon7.gif
Previous Topic: Background
Next Topic: They are trying to justify circumcision again
Goto Forum:
  

[ RSS ]