a searcher

july 12 2007

At the blog of MightyMorgan is was reading about the way people are.
We want to feel wanted, accepted, approved, and in the proces we forget who we are.

It made me remember a very important time of my life.

I had a friend, long ago.
A searcher. A very interesting person, I thought. A traveller.

He struggled his way through school, being in conflict with those who cared for him.
The only way he could see it was that they wanted to mold him into someone he wasn't.

Now I think he was afraid to discover he was as normal as us all.

I was his best friend. A kind of little sister.
Seeing him made me feel happy, because he made me discover parts of myself I'd never known.
In his presence I wasn't shy. I danced the night away. laughed, and felt a freedom that made me embrace the world.

In my presence he was the guy he wanted to be. Telling long stories about his travels. Baking unions and eggs, smoking sigarettes slowly, holding them between his long fingers.
By the time I found out I loved him, he was over loving me and was courting a sweet little lady I could never compete with.

So I struggled with my feelings, and I guess they never disappeared completely.

At university we saw each other often. Laughing, having endless discussions about life and being.
I can't count how many times he told me I had to be myself, I shouldn't smile when I was talking about something serious. When I tried to find out more about my feelings he told me I needed to go in therapy.

His search for freedom made him tell people who loved him that they didn't fit into his life.
I was one of them.

He walked out of my life with the feeling he had done his life well, but with each footstep he crushed my feelings of care for him.
Something might happen in those strange lands... a snakebite perhaps...

Years passed. I became aware of his importance for my life.
Far too long I had taken his presence in my life for granted. Like brothers and sisters do in some families.

Many years later we met again.

I felt the same comfortable feeling of being with someone I could completely trust.
But life had matured me.

I saw how unacceptable he was of my smile.
He was old enough to know it was my way not to burst into tears, to be able to tell the stories of life that hurt without placing the burden on someone else.

When I tried to talk with him about my experiences with mediattion, he told me I'd never meditated properly.
Like I was taking away something that was his precious belonging.

When he showed me his keyboard and I was enthousiastic about it, he told me I didn't know anything about music.

I grew up with a musical family. I joined my father's choir when I was 4, and I've never been without music. I've sang in the schoolchoir...solo too, sang in a folkband, and at 45 in a rockband. LOL! I've played piano, churchorgan, guitar, whistle..oh...and triangle once too. LOL!
And lots and lots more.

I suddenly saw why we were like brother and sister in the past.
I provided him with the adoration he needed to feel whole.

He kept telling me how to be, and it made me snuggle into the way I was... not needing to grow or develop beyond the boundaries of the moment.

The years that had passed before we met again enabled me to have enough distance to see hwta had happened between us and what was happening.
First it felt like the roles were changed, like I was accepting of his struggle to find a way to accept himself.

I was.
And it made me feel old, a bit wise maybe.

And I saw him building cages around me, fences, walls.
Each step I took aside met with him telling me in words or deeds what I was supposed to do.

But I was myself, and couldn't stop being the person I am.
A bit shy at moments, longing for music, watching the clouds and enjoying the sounds of an old town in the rain.
I loved to see his movements in his son, read stories with his spitting image before he was going to sleep.
Telling him just to be himself and don't give in to the stupid way of thinking of those who bully others in such a way that they don't know what to do anymore.

While the clouds faded away above the buildings at the other side of the street, it was like a circle was closed and his son just opened another.

Again he told me I didn't fit into his world.
His son did, but I wasn't allowed to see him anymore.

He's 16 now.
Forgotten the fun we had before he went to sleep.

I feel I've lost a child...
I feel I've lost a brother and a great friend...

If we'll ever meet again?

I don't think he'll ever accept me in his life again with welcoming arms, because he was never good at acknowledging his mistakes.
He judged others very harsh.
He wanted them to fit into his images, his boxes.

But my heart goes out to him.
He's a searcher... and he'll never find...
because he'll never look well...