A Hard Day in the Classroom.

It’s hard to know how to approach this post. It needs to be made because it’s hugely important to me (and that’s what this blog’s all about,) but it also needs to be as brief as I can get it.

The last year has seemed grey and uneventful to me. I’ve said so often enough, and on the surface it has been. But I’m only just coming to realise that under the surface – in mind and heart and spirit – it’s been hugely significant. If it’s at all possible for a mind to be literally blown, it’s been literally mind blowing. Looking back on it, it’s been like spending long, tedious days in the classroom on a fast track course to higher management. Today I looked back on it, because today the lessons were so intense that by six o’clock this evening I felt shattered. The insights have covered many subjects, some of which I’ve written about. Today, the final pieces of one great jigsaw puzzle took their place and I could see the whole picture of what’s been malfunctioning in my relationships with women.

Oh no, JJ’s going on about women again. Change the bloody record, JJ.

Sorry. My blog, my problem, my choice of subject matter. And don’t worry, I’m not going to go into detail: too complex and too personal. I just want to commit the principle to my pal Blogger.

I’ve sailed in and out of ‘long term’ relationship with a regularity that might disturb a person of sounder mind. People have been known to tell me that it was simply a matter of not having met ‘the right woman.’ I used to tell them they were wrong, explaining that I was simply not equipped for long term relationships. Well, now it seems possible that we were both right.

I’ve long known that a large part of the reason for my lamentable lack of success was the demon, that creature I’ve mentioned several times over recent months. I’ve known he existed all my adult life, and for most of that time I gave him a simple label. But then, a couple of months ago (remember the priestess?) I got a blinding revelation. I suddenly understood where this demon came from, what his root was and what gave him his strength. That was a major step forward, but it still didn’t explain where the root came from. Today I was bombarded with layer upon layer of understanding. That was what left me shattered. Now I know where the root comes from, and why I’ll never beat him. That left me a bit shattered as well, although it hardly matters as long as nothing happens to feed him.

But of course, the demon was only part of the problem. The other was my addiction, and now I understand where the addiction comes from, too. This really is major league stuff, and so there’s something that, for once, I’m not going to leave unsaid.

There is a woman out there, far across the sea, who might – just might – have been the right woman had circumstances been different. I’m sure I’ve never known anybody with the intelligence and the right emotional wavelength to understand the complexity of the problem. There is also a quality of will about her that makes me think she would have been capable of keeping the demon quiet, as well as an inherent air of mystery that might have proved a constant source of sustenance for the addiction.

I’ll never know, of course, since she doesn’t qualify by reason of age. She has a life to lead that certainly doesn’t include helping dear old JJ finally get it right, and she’s never given any indication of wanting to anyway. That’s as it should be. And maybe she wouldn’t qualify in other ways either, even if the point were worth considering. I don’t know about that, and I don’t want to. What I know about her so far has her standing high and proud on a plinth like Pygmalion’s statue, and that’s where I would rather she stay. She’s far too rare and special to be seen climbing down and wandering off with some dissolute sculptor. We all know how Pygmalion ended up, don’t we?

So there, I stuck my courage to the sticking place and didn’t leave it unsaid.

And tomorrow the joiner is coming to spend the day fitting some new windows, so maybe the rapid plummet into mundane material matters will pull me back to something like normal. I wouldn’t want too many days like this one.

Was that brief enough?