For when I am ready...

Je fais souvent ce rêve étrange et pénétrant
D'une femme inconnue, et que j'aime, et qui m'aime,
Et qui n'est, chaque fois, ni tout à fait la même
Ni tout à fait une autre, et m'aime et me comprend.
From "Mon rêve familier" (Paul Verlaine)

Yes, I am thinking about you while I am looking for myself out here. I don't know who you are or if we have already met. However, I needed to write these lines to you. Right now I am not ready, I know it, I know that for sure. And I keep repeating this to myself (my self) so that I understand it well. I've been bouncing from here to there, using my heart as a squash ball, always coming back to me. I never give it up and I never give it in. I have kept the key to my heart all the time. For that I apologize to the wonderful women that have had to endure me as a partner.

I hope you don't get put off by this past, this baggage I am carrying. I hope that you will understand and I hope that I will understand your own past as well. And this hope is what makes me write this letter to the wind on this snowy Sunday of December. Maybe it is solitude (the one that throws you towards the arms of lust); maybe it is listening to stories on the radio about older couples dancing around and catching each other like safety nets and then listening to a beautiful song called (as the radio essay was titled as well) Dance if you want to by Rose Cousins. Maybe it is watching re-runs of that favourite show of mine, Mad about you, and realizing I am now the age of the characters and how on my twenties I used to dream of that life, of that loving partnership of being able to laugh at each other and at oneself with each other. Of that wonderful bond.

My friend JBug says we men don't have a biological clock, but a psychological one and that it does tick in the early thirties. He must know because he is a 40-year old bachelor with a similar history than mine, I have always thought. Although he is a dear friend I really don't want to be like him in ten years. In ten years I want to be with you...

I don't know where, and I don't know doing what, I just know I want to be with you. If there are children, just our life will tell. I want to share parenthood with you and I hope you want it too. I am certain that the love I have to give (and that I have kept to myself all this time) is enough to be my share of the loving bond that spouses have and that is the basis for a family. And still I cannot give it to you right now. That much I know.

I have a promising future, and usually I use this term sarcastically to refer to the career I will have after grad school, that land of milk and honey that has been promised to those of us who have taken the long way home. But this time I am not being sarcastic about my future. I am being honest. I should rephrase that... WE have a promising future. You and me. For when I am ready the possibility of US will be opened.

For now this is what I have to say to you. You may be reading this right now or in the future. Or you will never read it. I might already be talking to you or you might be in other continent or across the street. I don't know and right now I don't want to know. With these lines I am attempting to create a dam for the torrent I feel uncontrollably every day, the drive of going after you and finding you and telling you all this. Because now is out there, in the open. And is my wish that this cold weather freezes that torrent and turns it into a frozen avenue where we can one day skate hand in hand... and then run inside for some nice hot chocolate.