Emptiness in Winter

Last night, I was sitting alone in front of the fireplace, relaxing with a cup of tea and trying to come to grips with myself. I was feeling out of sorts, which isn't unusual these days. It doesn't matter how much coal I dump into this fireplace I always seem to have a chill surrounding me. They say when ghosts touch you or pass through you, you get a cold feeling and it makes you shiver. If this is a ghost it won't go away, it's as if he's embraced me.

When I sit there like that I shouldn't be in that state, I should be happy. I'm married to a man that works hard and who takes care of himself. He says he loves me, and he helps around the house and supports my career. I have a wonderful son who smiles and laughs most of the time and will soon be into just about everything. My career is going well, I've even been nominated as a "superior performer" for the unit I serve. I live in the country in an absolutely beautiful quaint old home in England, not many Americans can say they've ever done that. I get fresh milk and vegetables and at Christmas we even had a real, fresh, wild duck.

I should be content, but I'm not as happy as I should be and that was bothering me last night. It's not that I'm homesick for the states, it's not that I miss my mother, it's not that I am not the shape I used to be, it's something much worse than all of this. I have felt this before; it leaves me feeling guilty, selfish and more than a bit confused. I've been told that they say the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, but the question is, if you've walked in that grass is it really the other side of the fence? If you look back to where you have been from where you are and make comparisons, is that...sinful?

My husband is gone, the military took him away to play in the big sandbox, as my uncle calls it. Uncle B. told me that if I got deployed to the middle east and couldn't say where I went, I was to write the family and say that before I was allowed to come home I had to go play in a big sandbox. Not very sneaky, if you ask me, but the phrase stuck anyway.

You know, I'm supposed to miss him, I'm supposed to desire him and want him to come back so we can be a couple and act like it in a physical way. A coworker told me I needed him to come home so I could "get some" and no longer be cranky. But that is not the reason I'm cranky; it's because of where my mind has been and where I wish it wouldn't go. It always goes back to you and I can't help it.

I know that you were my first. Perhaps anyone that comes after you would be compared to you, at least in one aspect. However, I was told this about my first crush and that never happened. Therefore I wasn't really prepared for this. But I compare everything, even the first meetings and the "warming up period" to what we'd had.

When I first met him, his room mate had told him that he had a new airman and he should come up and see me because I was attractive. He did. My husband asked me to visit him so that he could fix my lamp (it wouldn't run off British power). I didn't. The next day he offered to help me find some service on base, and I didn't take him up on it. Eventually, I was asked by his roommate to visit and see their pet hamster. I went. Once I'd arrived, had the little fur ball in my hand and my husband showed up Dan left us there alone. Smooth move I suppose. Eventually, he touched me, can't really remember why, and a spark flew. We kissed and three months later we were pregnant and married. There really wasn't much intellectual stimulation, all sexual and I don't know why I didn't notice or miss it.

So much different from what happened with you. When we met, we talked. I don't know how many lunches we burned up before you asked me to come over, we'd even gone out for drinks a few times. We talked about all sorts of things, health, politics, work, history and you were interesting and made me feel like I was as well. It seemed we could have talked for hours but there was just never enough time.

Of course there was a very profound attraction or I'd have never gone over to your home that night. I'd look into your eyes and burst into flames inside and there was nothing that would help that feeling. I tried flirting and chatting with other people there at work, some of whom were really attractive, but I just couldn't shake "YOU" from my mind before we even kissed or touched.

I was a virgin when we made love the first time, though I suppose that's not what I'm supposed to call it. I had no idea what I was doing, but usually I didn't feel nervous or worry if I was doing things properly. I just let you lead the way and would be swept up into the moment. I'd read magazines which had described an orgasm, I figured it would be something intensely physical, but it felt almost spiritual in a way. But I'm not supposed to say that or think that because of what we were. There is only so much you can expect from a relationship like ours.

You were married and never going to be available to me. I knew that when I undressed for you, and I knew that even though I cried when I left home to never see you again. We'd not been together many times since I started working at the factory day shift, but I still felt things I wasn't supposed to feel when I'd see you somewhere.

Sometimes you didn't even know I was there because I wouldn't address you or call attention to myself, but I always looked. When I went to the apple festival, I looked. I looked at the mall, I looked anytime I was in a public place and sometimes I'd see you there and my heart would turn over almost painfully. I wanted to run up, wrap myself around you and pray that you would say she was dead or had left or something. That you wanted me.

I wasn't supposed to feel like that, we just had sex. And sometimes we talked. We were "friends" to anyone who knew that we ever spoke. I wasn't supposed to feel I'd left a piece of me behind when I went away, but I did. So, when I was home on leave, I stopped by work on the pretense of needing stamps and we got together one last time before I shipped out to England.

I slept with my husband because I was lonely and feeling sexual and seemed to need to be touched. It was well enough I suppose, but then I got pregnant. I wanted to come home with the baby, to Dad's, and raise it alone, but my husband wouldn't have it. He followed me for days saying he loved me and wanted to be a father. Eventually I broke down and accepted his offer. He had to love me badly to follow me around and make a fool of himself like he did...and he had to love me to even want to be around me once I'd found out I was pregnant. I was sick all day and night and blowing up like the Michelin Man. When we married we hadn't had sex in at least a month because of my body's rebellion.

We hardly had any after wards until after the baby was born, so I didn't really notice much was wrong. I was too busy being sick, being tired, being a blimp to even want him. But, eventually I started being the person I was before I had the baby, at least in some respects. I never got back down to that weight you noticed the day we met before I left to come here. I've tried everything I know to do so, but it won't happen. But I still look good, just curvier. What can you expect, I had a Cesarean?

But then it started. I started noticing that I really didn't want to have sex with my husband. In fact the idea nauseated me; it was almost as bad as touching that uncle that had trained me so well in that technique you seemed to like. That's not supposed to happen.

Why is it that when I touch him, I don't feel that feeling I felt when you'd hold my hand in the car? I know passion supposedly fades but, it wasn't necessarily passion I felt then, just warm and...special. Why is it that when he kisses me I want to bite his tongue off and spit it out? It doesn't make my stomach flip the way your kisses did. And when he touches my naked skin, I don't feel passion, heat, flames or that sweet anguish between my legs no matter how hard I try to make it happen. His hand on my breast feels cold, his hand between my legs feels rough, his tongue just doesn't send shivers down my spine or make me feel like I'm melting and burning at the same time no matter where he puts it. You did all those things to me.

Supposedly I'm in love with him, supposedly you and I weren't in love. Isn't sex between people who love each other supposed to be better than that which happens between people who just meet for sex? And that is not the most disturbing part of this whole thing. I was a virgin when I had you, and maybe this made you "better" than you really were. It's possible that my experienced husband is just "bad" in bed. It's also possible that if I told him what to do in a way he could understand and in a sexy enough voice he'd probably do it and I'd be happy, sexually.

The problem is times like last night, when I'm alone. It can happen anywhere and at any time, but it's worse then. Sometimes when I"m alone I can still smell you near me. Not just that cologne, but the whole thing, your body, your cough drop, your sweat, your breath, the salt of your skin. I've even smelled the scent of the two of us. I've woken up alone in the dark and remembered wishing that I could wake up beside you and smell that in the room and it was as if you were there. Sometimes when I'm alone I can hear you laugh just as if you were sitting right there beside me and I'd told a joke. Sometimes when I'm alone I can feel you breathing on my neck, and sometimes I see you when I know you're not there walking and looking back at me like you did a few times after lunch.

If we had been ever been in love or married, or if I weren't married to someone else, I could understand all this. But I deliberately left you behind, why can't I make you go away?

(written Nov 1990)