“We are probably wrong to suspect that each individual has some secret passion, some mystery, some weakness; if Jean-Yves’s father had had to express his innermost convictions, the profound meaning he ascribed to life, he could probably have cited nothing more than a slight disappointment.”
“I continued to wonder what exactly I had done to deserve a woman like Valerie. Nothing, probably. I observe the world as it unfurls, I thought; proceeding empirically, in good faith, I observe it; I can do no more than observe.”
I have had such a hard time feeling any enthusiasm about much in my life since Berta’s sudden departure. All the people connected with her have faded away from me over the last year. It almost feels as if the whole relationship were a distraction in a long period of struggling to find something more than getting through another day. It is so hard to figure out how we got together in the first place and how she attracted my attention and held it long enough for me to get to know her enough to invest more than empathy in her situation. The Berta who loved me was not the mother that raised 4 children while living through a marriage with a man who abused and neglected everyone in his life. She had not worked for many years and had been homeless and abandoned by everyone she called family. At some point I showed her enough of who I am that she knew that I would take care of her. I don’t know how she knew that especially since I held her at a distance for so long while I made sure she was cared for. Finally, she made it clear that I was her choice, and I had to choose her.
Now I am back at that point where I am trying to figure out how to move on with my life with some kind of deeper commitment to anyone. I am starting to go through some motions of reconnecting with family, my grown-up children, my siblings, and my mother, after these last few years of disconnection and dissociation and the final separation of death. I can’t really think about any of this clearly anymore so I will let Jackson Browne illustrate some of the feelings involved. I am too tired and it is so late and tomorrow is another day of trying to figure out what I am doing here. I have come back to this album so many times in my life and now I find it resonating again and helping me move forward.
Myriad Ways 