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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Soulmate, Myself:
The Perfect Mate

Georgia Girl and Georgia Boy

Part III

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Elenchus. I never told you this, but one of my nightmares about you…

Kairissi. A “night-time-mare in the daytime”?

E. Who said that? – some cartoon character.

K. “Heavens to Mergatroyd!”

E. I remember you liking that cartoon.

K. Ahh, but I've interrupted your revelation. You were about to offer one more reason why you hate me.

E. I guess it is a night-time-mare in the daytime.

K. (silence)

E. In my troubled “vision” I see myself going to your house. I want to talk to you.

K. You must be ill in this vision. You never would have come to my house to talk. But, please go on with this fantasy.

E. So, I’m at your house. I open the porch door, and knock on the kitchen door. Your mother responds. She’s always nice to me.

K. Be kind to animals.

E. And I ask her if I can talk to you.

K. (silence)

E. She says you’re out on a date… with that upperclassman, three years older.

K. (softly) What happens next?

E. I feel the blood draining from my head, and now I can hardly move.

K. (silence)

E. Mom asks me to come in and sit down, she’s made some of her famous raison cookies. However, I feel very awkward to come in, judge that I should not; all the while, I’m silently debating, I still want to talk to you tonight - but how can I do this without making a scene, and a bigger fool of myself?

K. (softly) What do you do now?

E. I declare my intention to speak with you even yet that night, and that I’d like to wait, but not in the house, and ask if it would be ok if I parked my car off to the side by the cottonwood trees. She said that would be fine, and I could tell she was wishing for our conversation, too.

K. And so, you wait.

E. I sat in that car for nearly four hours. Let me tell you, it's a special kind of torture chamber and mind game to wait in silence and darkness, for someone you care about, who's out with someone else. It's normal for the ego to play tricks on the mind and imagine the worst.

K. But this was rich soil with extra fertilizer.

E. Finally, he brings you home. And I'm feeling pretty bad now, of course, having been treated to my own self-induced virtual reality, all in techni-color, of the worst things that I would not want you to be party of.

K. (silence)

E. So I watch you enter the house. As I do, I monitor the state of my own sanity. I am glad to see you, but, at the same time, I find myself succumbing to a growing rage. A part of me feels betrayed. This, of course, is very unfair to you. You had every right to be out with someone... especially, since I never asked you, or even indicated a definite interest.

K. (sighing)

E. You've entered the house, and now I’m wondering what to do. I do nothing for some moments, expecting Mom to inform you of my stage-left presence. This plan proves fruitful, and soon I see you walking toward my car. I exit the car, walk to meet you, and apologize for interrupting your late evening. I ask if you'd walk with me for a short while in the nearby open field. This is where my vision ends.

K. Why does it end there?

E. I think it’s because… I feel so embarrassed… and so angry… and I don’t know what to do... and don’t know what to say to you.

K. Would you like to know what I think?

E. Of course.

K. A simple request – from either of us back then – to walk and talk would have changed the path of our history.

E. That’s plain to me now… but I was not there yet.

K. Our entire mortal lives, our time on planet Earth, might be summarized in a sentence or two: It took you almost all of your life to grow up, to fully mature and become a wise person; and, on my side, it took me all of my life, and maybe longer, to become sane, non-neurotic, with an ability to make good decisions, especially about people in my life. This has been my disaster.

E. The fact of the matter is, there was no real hope for us in this world. And I learned something about this today, from Krishnamurti, and I thought of you.

K. (silence)

E. He said that “Despair only exists when there is hope, the hope of being secure, being permanently comfortable, perpetually happy.” Does this suggest anything to you?

K. I’m afraid to speak.

E. It’s alright, I know the feeling.

K. (sighing)

E. The word “despair” immediately sends me to images of you. During high school, you wouldn’t even look at me, and, much of the time, you were the picture of despair and sadness, for all four years. Your despondency is revealed by school photographs.

K. (silence)

E. It took me a long time to put this together. I am astonished at how dull I was for so long. I wasn't able to see your suffering at the time. I now realize that, when you came to me in eighth grade, and then imagined that I’d rejected you – which was totally untrue – you fell into a deep despair… because, it is clear, you'd harbored a secret hope that we, each to the other, might offer that "perpetual happiness" of which Krishnamurti spoke. It’s so obvious to me now, why you were hurting… and I’m sorry it took me all of my life to grow up.

K. Part of what we speak of here actually happened and was no vision. It was such a long time ago now, but the wounds are still fresh, as if the injury occurred earlier today. You say that I had a right to go out with someone. Technically, this is true. But I will tell you, and I still recall, it felt wrong to me that I should be out and alone with another; my soul knew that I did not belong to him. And I know that you, too, had more than one experience like this, before you finally gave it all up as something not right. In those days, we’d never heard of “soul bonds” as the basis of true love and marriage. Even so, a deeper part of us knew full well that we had something together. If I had been just a little more mature, and less willful, I ought to have realized that “still waters run deep” and “tall oaks take time to grow.” You were a slow developer in social matters. I didn’t allow you time to grow up. Life is a very strict and unforgiving School Mistress, and, concerning you, I have paid, and I have suffered -- as you well know -- for a very long time, for my follies as for a crime. As Spirit Guide Margaret said, we cannot sin against holy romance, the very essence of life, and expect a small penalty.

E. Today is your birthday.

K. (smiling) Would you like to walk and talk, as a gift to me?

E. I'd like to but... you'll have to lead the conversation... I still don't know how to talk to you.

K. (small smile) I will teach you... I think you're a little traumatized from sitting alone in lampless cars for hours.

E. It's strange, and poetically ironic: sitting in a darkened car, assaulted by deafening silence, is one kind of torture, but, unless the root cause of trouble is addressed, one or both parties will face a lifetime of haunting shadows, of merciless introspection at 3 AM.

K. A mental review and tribunal of all that happened, and all that didn't.

E. Some wounds are not healed with time. They can even grow worse. And I'm embarrassed to report to you that, in my worst moments, after all this time, I'm still angry at you for going out with him, I still feel betrayed.

K. (softly) I know, Elenchus... but, I will make it up to you... and, for now, let's talk about something else when we walk, like our good future soon coming. We're going to have a brand new start in Summerland.