Never-ending opening

It’s so difficult to know where to begin. I’ve been thinking long and hard.

Being stuck in a never-ending opening.

At first, it’s the real thing, sheer delight. Its that part of the relationship in which one is at ones best : fun, charming, excited, exciting, interesting, interested. It’s a time when one is most comfortable and lovable because one does not feel the need to mobilize ones defenses, so ones partner gets to cuddle a warm human being, a big teddy bear instead of a giant cactus!

But beginnings cannot be prolonged endlessly. They must move on and develop – or die of boredom.

One moves onto a series of protracted reopenings – some separations necessary and most manufactured.
One goes further than intended and one stops short of what the other sees as the next logical and lovely steps.

Both parties have a vision of something wonderful that awaits them, but then how do they move from here?!
Especially if one is faced with a solid wall of defenses. Walls don’t protect, they isolate!
One longs for richness and fullness and fulfillment of further development, while the other ways to avoid it.

Both parties are frustrated – one unable to go back, the other unable to move forward – both in a constant state of struggle, with clouds and dark shadows over the limited time that is allowed to both!

This constant resistance to “that” something wonderful – often causes pain on one level or the other.

And then the fierce inexplicable cutoffs.
Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. Not knowing which to do is suffering.

Away and apart or together and apart – it is too unhappy a scenario.
One of them cries a lot, for it seems that pity is necessary before kindness is possible. And this one knows that one has not come this far in life to become pitiful.
One is starting to accept the failure in letting know the joys of caring.

One is now saying this softly, even tenderly without camouflaging an underlying anger. There are no accusations, no blames, no faults.
One is simply trying to understand and stop the pain after being forced to accept that there is no development, much less the glorious climatic expression of a relationship grown to full blossom.

But despite the pain, one is happy to have known the other in such a special way. Both have grown and learned much from the other and both are today much better people for having touched one another.

Our life is like the chess game. Each party has its own singular objective even as it engages the other; mid-way struggle develops and intensifies and bits and pieces of each side are lost, both sides diminished; an end game in which one traps and paralyzes the other. And in the bargain – both the king and the queen are lost!

A promise so rare and so beautiful is going to go unfulfilled.