Relationships
The first person I met when I arrived in the US in 1985 was the son of a family where I spent Thanksgiving. Even though we dated, our communication was so poor I was never clear on whether we were officially together. I moved from New York to Los Angeles and in 1991, on a layover flight to Europe, he met me at JFK and we kissed again. There was a technical problem with the plane, which never took off, and all passengers were bused to a nearby hotel. He came to pick me up and drove me to his home outside the city. The ride was extremely familiar. 19 years earlier, I had been in a similar scenario, being flown to JFK on the private jet of a perpetrator, taken to a similarly somber hotel room where I was left for one hour or so, to be picked up by a gopher who guided me to the backseat of a chauffeured sedan, where the owner of the private jet was expecting me, smiling. As we drove to his home in the night, I took in the atmosphere and surroundings like manna from heaven, believing myself to be deeply loved because, contrary to my expectations, I was not going to die, but instead offered nurturing touch and praise: sexual abuse for sure - but of the kind most confusing to a child - the kind that calls itself love.
On that same drive in 1991, I was triggered back into that blissful feeling from my past, as my friend drove me on the very same long and winding road to his home. I spent two days feeling the out-of-this-world bliss high, absolutely loving every observable quality of my lover, always having been impressed with his extremely rational mind educated in the most prestigious institutions where he had graduated summa cum laude.
He always occupied a special place in my heart, much because of those two days of bliss, which were fed by the familiarity of the drive and the surroundings of a past with an entirely different man. My confusion between my attachment to my perpetrator and the stand-in lover, had us rekindle the romance some years ago, many years after we first met. Me, having spent my adult life healing, and he avoiding it, I found his old habits alive and well. I first re-experienced the bliss, all mixed with the substitute nurturance through sex where partners feel deeply, and are connected yet not intimate. Sex always triggered abuse for me - there had been too much of it during childhood - and soon childhood fears reared up that had me run.
Recently, my old lover and I met for lunch. I noticed I was very different, and he was the same. We hugged to say goodbye, and for a moment all the feelings, expressed and unexpressed over all these years were felt in a surge of energy and emotion, and then we parted.