Perfect Life?
Isn’t it quite humbling to confess that maybe we get things wrong in our lives? I enjoyed an idylic 20 year love story of a marriage with Jackie, my ex wife (ouch) before finally comprehending that my pursuit of “business, success and celebrity” had eventually undermined that perfect life?
Jackie and I met while I was serving as a barman in our towns must popular local haunt. This beuatiful blonde girl glided into my life, slipped up to the bar and ordered a vodka and coke. Transfixed, I fumbled with the optics only to discover that there was not a full shot left in the bottle.
Fumbling with a fresh replacement bottle, I rescued the situation with an apology for the delay and an extra shot, just to keep her happy! A little later in the evening, I noticed that just about every boy / man in the place was circulating around her like butterflies around a budlia bush!
At closing time, everyone was preparing to descend on a local nightclub. Me? I had to stay to wash and dry up glasses.
Jackie came up to the bar with Caroline, an attractive, exotic china doll type I had dated earlier in the summer. She told me that Jackie and her thought I was the most sexy man in the bar.
I asked Jackie what she was planning to do that evening and before she could answer, added that I wish I had some help to clear the mountain of glasses piling up on the bar. Jackie grabbed a tea towel and said it looked like I need some help.
Everyone left for the nightclub but that beautiful girl stayed and helped me clear up.
We dated from that moment on – but only at weekends. After about a month though, Jackie said she felt our relationship seemed to be only “part time” so we kind of let things rest. A few more days passed then something extra – ordinary happened to me. I realised there was suddenly a vacuum in my life – and for the first time ever, I experienced an exquisite pain, a panging for another human being.
I had fallen in love.
A sense of urgency overcame me. I darted out of the house and tracked Jackie down. Back at my flat, I told Jackie exactly how I felt about her. I told her I thought I had fallen in love with her. We married about 4 years later and Oliver, now 16 and Sophe now 13, made up our perfect little family.
Without Jackie, I would never have found the ambition and verve to “get on” in life and for that, I shall always be grateful but (20 years later) that same ambition eventually sowed the seeds of the destruction of our blissful life.
The Gravity Venture, based on a fixing and security system I first patented in 1994, would one day take all of my free time, energy, passion and concentration. It would bring me international acclaim as the creator of an entirely new engineering principle, earn me a raft of international awards and eventually satisfy my apparent need for recognition.
BUT one day, it would take everything I ever held dear from me.
It is now 2 years since Jackie and I separated. We both understand we let something sacred slip from our grasp. Jackie has a new life, a lovely new “fella” and seems to have recovered quite well – and so have I.
Neither Jackie or I intend or expect to be a couple again, both understanding that the actual life or space we shared simply does not exist anymore.
Neither of us ache or pine for each other anymore – a blessing and the only practical way we can acceot the tragedy of our situation.
Meeting Jackie shaped my life and is still influencing it because I know I am a man that has an ability, a passion to truly love and share the heart of another human being.
Many people are or have been in relationships where either they or their partner have not truly loved the other. For Jackie and I, the sun shone from both sides.
Perfect life? It was but now it’s time to find another one!
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