Amor volat undique...

The other night, M had said that he wanted to speak with me. After two and a half months of silence and keeping me on a string awaiting the verdict on our future, he was finally going to give me an explanation. But before he could do so I discovered, to coin a cliché, that actions speak louder than words. Last night, at the conservatoire, I found him with his arm around a young blonde, the pair giggling foolishly. I was walking behind them in the corridor and as they passed through the door in ahead of me, M said 'fais-moi une bise' and then firmly planted a kiss on her cheek. He let the door swing back, nearly hitting me in the face. He then turned and saw me, apologised for the door, and continued walking. We went into the rehearsal room where he kissed each woman on the cheek and greeted them flamboyantly, placing his arm around many fine waists. Every woman, that is, except me.

I'm guessing that he's leaving me for this woman. This is more devastating than having him go back to his wife. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Maybe he's not leaving me for her, but just wanted to illustrate that he's bored with me. Or maybe he wanted to provoke me and see what my reaction would be. Would I shout in a jealous rage and expose the whole affair to everyone? Would I cry? Would I simply ignore it as a good mistress should, knowing that it is necessary for him to ignore me in public? His behaviour was deliberately ambiguous: if I wanted to believe that she's his new girlfriend, then I could read that into what happened. Conversely, if I was sufficiently sure of myself then I'd know that it's merely to cover things up and divert public attention from his relationship with myself. As an intrinsic pessimist I'm assuming that he's going to be discarding me soon. Throwing me off like an old coat.

I am a ghost ship. My insides are stripped bare as I await the scrapyard. I feel like a prisoner on death row. The end is inevitable and in sight. But the torturous uncertainty lies in not knowing when. Now I have to sit back and resign myself to waiting to have an answer in black and white, which I want just out of principle. I have to wait until he has the courage to tell me. His cowardice disgusts me more than anything else. I am a sinking ship abandoned by my Captain. Oh my Captain.

After rehearsing Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' (how tragically ironic) I walked home through the misty streets in the bitter cold of the night, drifting in a daze. Once within the safety of my studio I put on one of M's CDs as though to recreate his presence. His beautiful barytone voice dancing through the air like silver thread. I curled up in the foetal position on my bed and, hugging a pillow to my chest so tightly it hurt, cried myself to sleep. I sobbed his name again and again like a mantra. Or an invocation. The one person who could have comforted me was the one who had ripped my heart out. I wanted to cry all the life out of me. I cried myself empty. My heart has gone from feeling heavy and burdened with grief to feeling light. An odd hollowness has pervaded me. I feel so empty. A void. As though all the love and pain has seeped through the cracks of my shattered heart. I don't even have the strength to avenge myself - I'm too exhausted. In a way, I don't want to. Avenging myself wouldn't serve any purpose anyway. It wouldn't make him love me again. I keep trying to postpone the belief that this is the end as he hasn't expressly said anything yet. I need to hear the words from his lips. I need to hear the words 'C'est fini. Je ne t'aime plus.' I want to make him know the suffering he has inflicted on me. Yet, I love him more than life itself and cannot bring myself to do him harm. I cannot even bring myself to admit that it's over.

I don't know how I can function without him. I'm just expected to carry on living for decades more in the knowledge that he's elsewhere, happily living without me. All I want to do is lie on the white sheets of my downy bed, with roses in my hair, and wait for my heart to stop beating. It slows to the rhythm of a muffled funeral tambour, but cannot let go for hope of seeing him again. So it keeps me alive in excruciating purgatory, because if it gives up then it will never know if he would have come back to me. Like a vampire I float between two worlds: I'm not dead, yet I don't have the strength to live. My heart has been filled to breaking with love and now it is empty and fissured, unable to hold anything at all. Not even hatred. My existence is enveloped in an eternal night.

Worst of all, I know I'm being cunted over. And he knows, he fucking knows that he's hurting me by making me wait. I feel so utterly pathetic and dependent. But I don't want to believe that the man who brought me so much inspiration and joy could be capable of carrying out any unscrupulous machination to hurt me. How could he do it to me? And what did I do to deserve it? I gave him everything. I’m incensed. Yet so sad. And I’m frustrated, yet I desire him, even if my love for him has been irreparably damaged. It’s like when Othello is about to kill Desdemona – he starts talking about how evil she is, yet so beautiful, yet so wicked, and so on. He fears his desire will undo his willpower to see his plan through to the end. I can empathise. Once again I realise how Shakespeare really knew the human condition and the agonising crisis of contradiction between logic, instinct and emotion.

I'm going to read some Catullus.