My husband want me to be his conselor. I would be flattered except I know that with every confession roots would grow, sever, force themselves, break the earth while they bind, suffocate the ground and deprive the relationship of breath.
I like to breathe free, especially around him. We struggle to free ourselves from eachother, fighting the instincts to bind and be bound, knowing all the while, because we’ve experienced that too, that total seperation is like death. This is just another tip of the balance, that he’s come to my studio unannounced because he can’t find the address for the new counselor I found for him. “Where is 2926 Flanders?” he says with a smirk that says there can’t be any such place. “Northeast,” I say and he’s immediately disheveled, presenting excuses, it’s too late, my phone is dead, I was just out there, what an idiot I am. I just tell him to go. I’m laughing at him, but later I realize the situation is serious.
I say he is my husband, but you won’t find any marital papers in any government office. We’ve never said any vows to eachother. We have repeatedly declined offers – he mine and I his – to wed eachother. And yet, in every subconscious moment when his presence comes to mind, the word “husband” is at my lips. So I accept the commitment that my soul impresses upon me as I write to you; I accept the term just as surely as if, perhaps in another lifetime, I had made eternal vows to be faithful, to hold, to honor, to cherish this man and no other. Just as surely as I know this to be true, I know it would be fateful to become his counselor, the one who he would turn to to reveal his dark nature, to unload his scary thoughts, to bathe his soul in my caress and come away clean, leaving the dirty water in my care. This is not my role! I do not accept!
Yet the pull of the tide is there, and I know too, that it pulls even at my suggestion of a counselor, it tugs when he accepts, it pulls tighter when he comes into my studio unannounced looking for an address which doesn’t exist.
If I could become the innocent bystander, I would note to the world at large what a pitiful condition our human race is in that this man confuse a mistake in mental thinking, a need for sounder rules in his brain, for deep drama, even fate. I continue to make the mistake of believing I am an innocent bystander, as when I suggest counseling, expound on the benefits, tell him what it is, what it shouldn’t be, even where to go – and then expect him to take care of the details himself without involving me in finding a phantom address, without needing me to be on the other line while he struggles with trying to please me and do what is best for his soul.
Our dance of freedom from eachother sometimes feels like unnecessary reprimands to refrain from the sweetness and gluttony of being together.