Hindsight it a wonderful thing, isn’t it?
But make no mistake, I loved the woman … or, at least, I held a genuine perception that I loved her although, viewing the timeline from 20 more years on from the experience, I know recognise that such a naive outlook of life was simply a manifestation of how I viewed the world in general anyway. eg. I was always a glass half full person and rarely dallied with or fixated on the negatives of anything.
So sure. Whatever concept I held about falling in love or comprehending being in some kind of loving relationship, well, (pause), I guess I truly believed I’d accomplished and manifest that sort of a reality; certainly my own version of it anyway.
Love is blind
And yes. My persuasive illusion remained entirely intact for nearly two decades despite Jackie’s flaws and failings being entirely visible and illuminated in the gaze of so many other folk, especially the family she, herself, had been adopted into.
But what am I inferring? What am I actually saying>
I’m saying that the woman I spent, possibly, the best 20 years of my life with was actually quite a bitter and cruel woman. Someone who was entirely intransigent when it came to compromising or accomodating the thoughts or feelings of anyone unhappy to endorse or go along with the path or course that Jackie was always determined to follow.
And in Jackie’s world there was never enough time or a space or place for pause or reflection because Jackie was always battling an internal stopwatch informing her, unrelentingly, that she just doesn’t have the time to contemplate or, God forbid, actually stop and allow her hectic mind to correlate her thoughts with the goal of achieving a more cohesive understanding of how they might relate to each other.
And this constant hectic chaos, a frenzy of always having to bite off more than she can chew sets off a very uncomfortable atmosphere that everyone else around her then picks up on.
It was only after I dated other people after our marriage was over that I realised I’d spent the previous 20 years manuovering around Jackie like a male spider, always with an ambition of stealing a kiss without ever getting devoured!
And love story?
Turns out, it was only ever in my head!
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