Men are not everything
Actually, I had just forgotten my cell phone in the car when I visited my girlfriend Ilka on a Saturday night. We ate boletus risotto, drank Chardonnay, watched the first two episodes of a weird comic US series on DVD. Only later did it strike me: something special had happened that evening. It was the beginning of a big change. The annoying loop in the brain - where is he? What is he doing? When does he call? - she was suddenly gone. Gone by the background noise that had accompanied me for the past two years since I had managed to refine my single life with a man.
Appointments: Premium time with the longed-for man
In theory, we all know it: that the invisible wire, over which pairs are permanently connected, can become a knit. When the man stands on the pedestal and the love relationship is the center of our universe. And of course no self-confident woman wants to be a relationship junkie. Of course, everyone wants to rule as sovereign in their own lives. But if love - long missed, longed for and so transfigured - has become existentially important, emotional mutations sneak in once before. They dry up our once-river-flowing life. Separate us from our source and let the tributaries dry up. Until our girlfriends are only extravagances of free time, while in truth we wait for the next act of the main character.
How many lamb legs did I roast, how many movies did I watch, how many photo albums flaked through the neighbors' grandchildren - just to kill the time between the last and the next meeting with him. This created a whole new category of time: meanwhile. And that means nothing good. For many years I was a master on hold, a bridging artist. My diary: bridge building from date to date. The beautiful life shrank to a few days and hours - those with him. These were not just the highlights of the week, it was the moments that I thought I was living. At some point, I was just staring at the phone again and wondering which of my girlfriends could play the gap filler today, it suddenly became clear to me: What a gigantic, idiotic waste!
The little time we have in addition to job and everyday organization, does not allow such a ranking: Premium time with the much-longed-for man and brave resignation of the intermediate phases with various spare jobs.
What if my girlfriends notice: that they are just filling material.
I asked myself the question: where does this strange time division come from? After all, I know many women who follow exactly the same defective patterns. The obvious answer: They were brought to life. The man was the greatest of all beings during our mothers and grandmothers' lives (also because he was limited in and after each war). Anyone who hunted one had to hold it, care for it, serve it.
"Man is man, and if he just sits on the edge of the bed and coughs," my grandmother always said. She was serious.
I already knew better then, but with knowledge and discipline such mechanisms can not be mastered. I really struggled to feel good when designing the split times. But effort is not wellbeing. It is effort. And that messes up the mood that you just want to be happy about.
The thoughts are free and wander away from the place where we are - to the great goal of longing: the absent man. Feelings do what they want, at the latest after the first glass of red wine they gallop towards the heart or, depending on: a little deeper. And the stories of the girlfriends are filling material for times that you just have to go through. The times without him.
More and more often I thought about it, how sad it is about the evenings with candlelight and beautiful music, which I found only second-rate because he was not there, but for example, Jana and Didi. Sometimes I even feared they might notice something: that they are just a distraction, that I would love to exchange them for the undisputed number one in my life. The more scared I was of being a Mogel hostess, the more effort I made to make everyone happy. Even finer wine, more jokes - more, more of everything, so that you feel comfortable with me. After all, you have to reward people you exploit. Anyone who comes to guests as staffage lonely hours, pays a price. Good conversations that block neediness cost a price. Girlfriends need believable interest, loving attention, sympathetic attention. And get only 50 percent of everything, because one really cares about the here and now, while secretly thinking only of the phantom on the pedestal. The man who plans something different tonight. The man who does his own program.The man who thinks three times a week is enough and who divides life into duty and freestyle. Long enough, I have made only half of my life.
Nevertheless: danger recognized, danger banished. I now knew what was wrong. I did not want it anymore. I stubbornly acted against my impulse inherited from the ancestors to adore. And here comes the discipline: Practicing. To practice. To practice. Have a good time. Again and again. Maintain friendships. Reliable. Be yourself enough. Anyway.
At some point it was obviously infiltrated, otherwise I would not have forgotten the phone in my car that Saturday. Because I was just not waiting for a text message, not even for a phone call because I was preparing for the evening with my girlfriend. Because a deep certainty had seized me. The man had fallen from the pedestal.
The spaces got weight. Finally led a life of their own. Were equivalent. And my life had a real here and a real now every moment.
I was sitting on the fire with Ina on Friday night, planting tanja jasmine and lilac on Sunday. Went shopping Tuesday afternoon with Katrin. Time no longer sputtered between splendor and dreariness, it began to flow evenly. Sometimes he was there, and we had each other and good conversations and passionate kisses, sometimes I was with Ulrike, and we cooked Jamie Oliver's lemon noodles and listened to Cecilia Bartoli's latest album. Then again I lay on the sofa and dived into the new thriller by Frank Schätzing, for example. And every moment was good.
Since then I have had three times as much luck in life as before: all events are which - and they are not in competition with each other. They all belong to the same plan.
Meanwhile my relationship did not become less but more. Fort was the suppressed grudge for tough, long evenings. I enjoyed the self-organized delights. And if he was there, the man, it might still be the most beautiful evening of the week, but not one that I had to fumble through many cloudy days. That made the precious time with him airy. The usual bill was dropped, which meant something like: Now compensation is for yesterday and the day before yesterday. Now it has to be very nice, nothing should cloud the mood, because then anyway the horror is over all my ways. Evenings with him were evenings with him and no reward for special bravery in the cold times of his absence.
I'm just glad that my girlfriends even know these episodes of men's delusion and are not vindictive. They played the extra roles that were free with me, with verve - now they all have room again on the main stage. The man by my side is connected to me via invisible threads, but they are not so tense anymore.
