Not so pleased to meet you

16th May 1995


I'm lying in my bed, listening to the rain drumming
relentlessly against the window. Naturally, I'm alone. It feels as
though an eternity has passed since I last experienced the euphoria of
being in love. My body feels like an empty void, my head is pounding.
I'm trying to remember those happy times when I still had someone there
to hold me, someone to make me feel special. Of course, no such
memories exist. How could they when all that I have lost never truly
existed?


I used to dread being single, hated the thought of becoming
yet another stereotype, another of societies outcasts. I really
couldn't bear the monotony of each Friday night, weighed down by
meaningless self-talk and a Chinese meal for one. I can hear myself say
it even now. "You are inadequate, a defective undesirable, marked down
by society for your failings. You are a reject. His
reject."


Where is the consolation in that? Where are the kind words
and comforting reminders that it was he who had no worth? Oh I know he
had never been the man I'd honestly believed him to be, or rather more
accurately, the man I had desperately wanted him to be, but he still
lives and breathes amongst the winners. His pride has not been
mutilated by the cruelty of love. The world still accepts him with open
arms, admiring him for his promiscuity. His is the pat on the back, the
admiration for all that he has achieved. Mine, in comparison, has
always been the proverbial smack in the face.


You may well ask, where do these negative beliefs come from?
Why don't I just move on, say farewell to the past? Move on to what?
You tell me that. Can no one see that I would welcome a ride on life's
roller coaster, if only I could get off the bloody
carousel?


I saw her again this morning, the woman behind my mirror.
Staring at me through swollen features, the mark of her husband's
fists, I knew that she pitied me. I wanted to take a pillow and shove
it down her condescending throat.