Introspection on Foolishness, Wisdom and Romance

I am not seventy.

Not yet.

Still, … sixty nine and, well …, a bit, … perhaps more than a bit, …. But I still own a bit more than two months till the decades turn again. And I certainly neither look, nor feel, nor act my age. As good a thing towards the end as it was criticized at the beginning.

And what have I learned during those decades that most impacts me today?

Well, … many things, at least I hope so, but today one fills my memories.

Marriage again is more than just improbable. I have my three sons and romantic fantasies seem pretty well drained, … other than, … perhaps, … as shadows and echoes, … perhaps grey rainbows useful as inspirations for introspective poetry. A perspective it took most of those decades to attain.

Once I was careless of the concept, sought it even when I didn’t want it, and didn’t know why. As though it had a will of its own. Sought it at times, … perhaps way too many times, … recklessly.

Both times that I entered into that hardly blessed state (at least for me) I’d recently noticed that the thrill of the chase had waned and so from the start I found myself foolishly fancying all the ways my freedom might be regained. Imagining myself a grieving widower looking at a portrait of my lost companion over a flaming hearth, reminiscing never beens … with a snifter in hand.

Of course, … that’s not how things ended.

Instead, I found myself in empty rooms, contemplating emptied bank accounts, … starting over. But hardly depressed for all that. Rather, … grateful for my pusillanimously earned liberation.

Is marriage an appropriate option because another cares for us so much and in so decent and wholehearted a manner that they deserve our surrender?

For me that pressure has too frequently been overwhelming. Guilt rather than love the animator. Boredom, not loneliness the catalyst. But perhaps a trace of wisdom is unavoidable after a trail of too many decades. Hard though it is for me to resist I now know (or at least I hope I know) that a decision on that basis is wrong for all involved, regardless of apparent expediency. Relations have always been too easy to enter, at least for me, and too difficult to terminate, irrespective of how much my soul yearns to be free.

One would think that means that I’m now free.

One would be left somewhat confused.

I know I am.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2016; all rights reserved