The Band Aid solution.

Love is a question I have no answer for. I am 42 now, and recently thought, what have my lovers had in common? Nothing to do with looks, or likes. They were smart. Sure. They were talented, in some way. Most of all I realized they were lonely. Palpably lonely. It was visceral; they wore it like a tattered sweater, full of holes, and patches from past relationships. Shabby remains of what once was warm and fuzzy. I remember the moment with each where I felt their aloneness. I don’t think any creature on earth can be as lonely as a man. They don’t have the means to create their own salvation from it, like women’s uteruses’ allow at times. They work hard at filling it. The searching for love, is something women don’t experience in the same way… The hunting, versus the hunted.

My current guy sat with me, on our first weekend together, and projected slides on a blank wall of this life at another time. Faces and places, peopled. His house was empty of photos, color, life, love, but the faded images projected on an imperfect wall, showed something else.  He meticulously edited out the slides with past girlfriends… for my benefit? For his? As I sat in the dark trying to absorb the relevance to him of the people flickering in front of me, trying to understand his need to show them to me, that’s when I felt his loneliness. It light up the wall. A shot of light through the darkened room. “This is when I wasn’t alone. This is when I was happy.” And this is when I started to love him.

But why? Why loneness? Of all the qualities to attract me, why this weakness? Not strength, not power… vulnerability plants the seeds for me.

So now, we move ahead five years, and his friends say, “He was so lonely until you…” and I think how that is such a subtle observation. I absorb it as a compliment. Could they see his loneliness? Paul Simon said, “Loosing love is like a window in your heart, everybody sees you’re blown apart. Everybody sees the wind blow…”  

I said to him once, “I am just a band aid on your loneliness.”  He said, “No, you cured it”… I was flattered. But why am I attracted to this specific thing?  Why did I take on this role, of rescuer? What does it feed in me? Is it the need to be important, almost necessary in someone’s life, or do I just see a problem I can solve? I feel the need to help. I know that in my life, but this is really the most rudimentary type of helping – being there. Physical presence… A door stop. A paper weight. A book mark. All useful things, but not particularly interesting or important.  Or is it a bigger thing when you’re holding off the werewolves of isolation? Am I an avenger? Protector? Is my role for him, or for me? And once the man finds the ground again, is this when I leave. Am I a platform from which he can rebuild his confidence and spring forth?

42, and I don’t know.