Journal entry, 11/5, John Oliver Simon, Oaxaca and promises made under the stars

 Last night was particularly rough, I was feeling the loss of John, and so much more. I suspect my abortion, my grandmother’s death are all coming out to play as well. It seems like it is a free-for-all.

Last night I went out to look at the stars. I couldn’t remember the names of the first magnitude star the one by the Pleiades is except that it started with an A. Andromeda, Antares, Aldebaran? I was so sorry I never learned the names of stars with John. Something I enjoyed doing when he took me out under the canopy of night sky, telling me all the names but I couldn’t keep up with them. Orion‘s belt. I sang Lee’s song Hunter, I swear I love you for all of winter if I could love someone at all. 

At this, the dam burst and I couldn’t stop crying. The fear of not being loved, ever. What I want. A man, and a family. I’m exploring it again. Now it’s yes. Last month I was on unsure, but I wanted time. Perhaps I could do it this time around without children. Timing is everything.

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I got a strong image of a woman in jeans bending over two kids, dark hair with blonde streaks like the sleeping girl in my dreams. The kids were about two and four years old, and they were dirty, happy kids. The woman was wearing jeans and boots since she had hair like mine she looked like me but I couldn’t tell as her hair was full in her face so she went down to kiss them. 

It couldn’t have been me, but she was thinner than me, and she seem preoccupied with her life as a mother. The artist life was still simmering within. It was morning. The observer was looking in from the greenhouse section of Geoff’s house in Alderpoint. I couldn’t tell if I was looking at myself or at another woman. All those what might have been‘s… 

I could’ve been just looking in through the window. Am I seeing his fantasy of what he wants? The woman who dreams, his family? Am I a voyeur? The woman’s hair was much shorter than mine, a little more wavy and with grown out bangs. The whiteness of her skin so like the children’s a domestic scene of temporary bliss.

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I am sorry I never learned the names of stars with John. I’m sorry I never got a chance to take him off to Calistoga overnight at a B&B for the weekend, a romantic weekend for two. I’m sorry I never said yes, not even once when he asked me to marry him. I am sorry I had to give up a baby. I believe in half the stars that night, drunkenly returning home from Sergio Bautista‘s with the rug of his under arms, in Valle de Teotitlan, the place of rugs and it’s midsummer. Under stars, in the center of the universe. 

To commit to each other like this. I was afraid of his intensity and his passion, I was afraid of him. That night he plowed for a universe of my womb, not hearing my warning cries, that I was fertile it wasn’t the right time. It was not quite rape. I remember him saying to himself, what the hell are you doing, John? But then he was gone to the pull of the stars. 

And in the morning he said, it’s over, I don’t love you. We manage to whimper away to Puerto Escondito. Seeing the dead man was my fault, said John. If only I had not insisted on driving up to the laguna instead of snorkeling as we had planned. We had to stay the extra day. If you hadn’t seen the dead man, you wouldn’t have gotten sick.

And in Tikal we realized I was pregnant. He said if you have a baby I will not stay with you. I felt trapped, a prisoner of my own body, knowing that I had taken the antibiotics, knowing there was no way out. Then a reprise. When next morning he crawled into my bed and after making love there was blood on the sheets. And the joy we had that we were in the clear, or so we thought, as if we were given a second chance, but that was not to be.

If only we hadn’t stopped to look at the stars, coming home from Sergio's. If only we hadn’t promised the universe. If only he hadn’t bought me that rug as a pledge of his intent and his love. If only we hadn’t made love, if I hadn’t seen the dead man, if I hadn’t gotten sick, or taken antibiotics if I had had a healthy child, then what? If, if, if, the decision for the abortion. If I had explored my options. If only I got the abortion partially to prove my love to him, of something I really wanted, for him. He made that abundantly clear. I was too afraid to risk it all by myself. 

And in the end it’s over anyway. He got his vasectomy, his choosing. So back to square one. No matter what obstacles were thrown in our path, we kept on trying to make it work. And still there was always an excuse not to. He’s right. He is unable to connect to me, to love me as I deserve. I guess we could have broken up, and if I did have a child it would be a lifetime tie between us that would’ve been stronger. There would’ve been a compelling reason to resolve it because of the child whom he named Isaac. Sea lo que sea.