Simon Mark Smith’s Autobiography
CHAPTER 15
Gripping Dreams
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It’s Over
Elvis is on the radio singing ‘It’s Over’. Something about time not moving, so, this night of love he and his beloved shared could last forever, and that way it would never be over.
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2007 – Ms Lovelight – The Ward
I stood at the doorway to the isolation unit and looked through the high-security two-panel wire mesh glass window in the door. Miss Lovelight’s body lay upon a theatre bed; the ventilator moved up and down making the sound of waves.
A nurse sat near her bed reading while an orderly cleaned the floor. There was also another preparing something in the background. All of them wore masks. I pushed the intercom button. The nurse who’d been reading put her book down, walked to the door, picked up the receiver, and without looking at me said, “Hello,” in a slightly pissed off, ‘Not you again’ tone.
“You ok?” I said.
“Yes,” she said as if I was asking a stupid question.
“Any change?”
“No.”
Miss Lovelight’s finger twitched. As I glanced the nurse said, “It’s nothing, just an involuntary action, we will have to shut the window now, sorry.”
She put the intercom handset on its cradle, stood up and closed the hatch-like door across the window. As she did, I looked into her eyes and they were Miss Lovelight’s, and the cleaner looked up at me, as did the other nurse. They all had the same eyes but then as the window clicked into position, I was left staring into my own eyes in the reflection. I picked up the receiver and pressed the Intercom buzzer.
Again, in the same tone, “Hello.”
I said, “She loved me once.”
Almost laughing she replied, “She loved being with you, that’s not the same thing.”
“I have a message here, on my phone. It’s from her and it says: ‘I’m trying to tell you I love you,’ and when I told her I was hers and asked if she was mine, she said she was.”
Shaking her head very slowly she said, “Well, there are different kinds of love.”
I moved my head from side to side, almost in sync with hers, “I think she must love me still, somewhere inside.”
She sighed, “She may have loved you, but she’s gone away, and she doesn’t love you anymore. She doesn’t, and by the way, desperation isn’t a good look on anyone, including you.”
I go quiet. I hear a single tone emanating from the receiver and put it down.
* * *
2007 – The Story of the Relationship
Memories of a lost love affair get captured in slices of time; some are stationary while others flicker in the light of a bedside lamp. If I edited the months we spent together, it’d probably be entertaining for 5-minutes as a YouTube video, but, for me, I want to stretch every moment through eternity.
* * *
Question 1
Okay, you’ve got a choice, you’ve found someone you love, you’re wrapped around each other, and the feeling you have inside is just right. You can “emotionally” stay in this moment forever, or you can live life normally with the risk the relationship may flounder. Either way, I can almost guarantee the good feelings won’t last, but which will you choose?
* * *
Ms Lovelight – First Meeting
When I picked Miss Lovelight up for the first time, we found each other by using our mobile phones. I pulled up in my convertible car and she laughed and called it a “babe magnet”. I took her to the beach and there we sat chatting till the tide came in. At one point I lay down and asked her to cuddle up to me. She looked over her shoulder, stared into my eyes and said no.
The next time we met was different. I didn’t ask her to come to me, instead, she sat right next to me, snuggled up to me, our faces rubbed against each other, and we kissed.
For weeks we’d meet up and kiss and cuddle, then one day I asked her to stay the night and she did. But when we started to make love, it felt wrong. The next day I drove her to the station and both of us thought that would be the last time we’d ever see each other. But it wasn’t. When we met again a few weeks later, she walked through the door, and we immediately kissed deeply; it was then we realised this was just the beginning.
We spent many hours sitting on the sofa looking out of the window, completely at peace. When we were together, I couldn’t help but want to kiss her, and she’d tell me how much I loved her body, which I did. When friends would visit, she’d snuggle up to me, she’d want to look after me, as we’d pass each other we’d touch, reach out and gently caress each other and when we were apart, I’d always feel secure she’d be faithful.
One day she sent me a text saying, “I’m trying to tell you I love you,” and the next time we made love I looked into her eyes and said, “I’m yours, are you mine?” She looked into mine and said “Yes”. As she slept, I’d look at the tattoo on her back and kiss it. I could see the merman looked like me and felt happy that one day we might marry.
* * *
2007 – Transience
If you could choose to spend the rest of eternity held in a moment from your life, which one would you choose?
What if you could either choose to be held in a moment of your choice or experience life as a process of beginnings and endings, of acquisition and loss, of discovery and immobility, of love and heartbreak and finally, the death of those we love and ourselves? Again, which would you choose?
When Keats wrote his famous poem, “Ode to a Grecian Urn” he broached the same issue. The couple pictured on the Urn had been there for over 2000 years, held in a moment of tender yearning. They hadn’t had to suffer the ravages of time or a real-life relationship but instead were caught in a moment of Eros-driven romantic togetherness, a glorious illusion.
Some people believe that as we die, we experience being drawn into a feeling of complete love. Many of those who experience this not only no longer fear death but feel hard done by in terms of having to continue to live.
Inside most of us is this quandary. Do we accept loss and live our lives full of joy and pain or do we try to escape it either through experiencing nothing or by avoiding pain at all costs? At the heart of this is coming to terms with transience, and in turn, losing our dreams and accepting loss.
* * *
The Tattoo – The Everlasting Embrace
The tattoo hung in my mind; it was like a sign from God. The couple would sit in an everlasting embrace until one day Miss Lovelight’s funeral pyre would fade it to black.
* * *
Ms Lovelight – The Ending
It had been two weeks since we’d last seen each other. I was beginning to feel she wasn’t interested anymore and when I told her how I felt, she went quiet, and we didn’t speak for a few days. I could sense she wanted to split up and when she called me, she said she did. I told her I thought it was the wrong thing to do. A couple of days later she came to visit me, and I asked her to deny that she still felt deeply connected to me, and what we had was very special and she said she couldn’t deny it. Once again, we sat on the sofa in each other’s arms and after the daylight faded, she walked off.
Each night we’d talk on the phone for hours, and in time we both felt the damage was healing, and in a matter of weeks she’d come to live with me. However, on the second of January, she said all her feelings for everything, including us, had disappeared.
During the previous two years, she’d lost her home and her last boyfriend. She’d had to care for her mother for six months and recently found she had a tumour. All of it finally caught up on her and now she’d closed down. When I spoke to her it was as if I was speaking to an android and I knew then the connection and person who’d loved me had gone.
* * *
The Anatomy of My Heartbreaks
In the first moments of heartbreak, a cold fear rushes through my body but within seconds I am numb. I can see what is going to happen and though there’s an element of panic still bubbling along with the numbness, I go into logical over-drive. I try to argue my corner but if there’s no hope, a sad resignation sets in, and I say goodbye.
There is calmness at first, but this soon becomes a restlessness where I can no longer focus on anything and in time all that’s important is the sense of loss. Consequently, I try to either regain what I’ve lost or distract myself from the pain of grieving. If there’s a chance of re-capturing the person’s heart, then I become obsessed in that pursuit and may spend months doing so, and unable to let go I become a slave to my quest. During this time, I may also wish to dampen my pain or try to find someone else to love me which normally involves seeking out intimate encounters to distract myself with. But even then, I end up thinking more about the person I don’t have any more instead of the one I’m with and by this point, I am trapped in the grave of the relationship.
This denial is sometimes known as ‘the condemned’s reprieve’, a prisoner who’s just about to be executed will hope right up to the last moment that somehow, they’ll be pardoned and get to live longer. For them though, the stages of grief probably don’t get to play out to a satisfactory conclusion.
* * *
Elvis is coming to the end of the song and resigns himself to accepting he may have to force himself to say it’s over. For me, that was always one of the saddest songs I ever heard him sing.
* * *
The symptoms of heartbreak are extremely painful for me. Firstly, my sense of meaning seems lost, and pleasure in previously enjoyable endeavours disappears. The day becomes a void that’s better filled with sleep and dreams than living. Meanwhile, the physical sensations of heartbreak are overwhelming. A lack of appetite, a painful feeling in my chest and throat, aching legs and arms and an overall weakness set in. All of which may last for days, or weeks even.
The obsession doesn’t just remain an internal issue, my poor friends have to constantly put up with listening to the same story of woe, how I feel and other reflections on the issue. To me though, it’s as if I’m in a hall of mirrors and it’s hard to find my way out.
In one way I feel quite lucky; I rarely harbour a great amount of anger and normally, in time, see the separation as one of those things, rather than an act of malice towards me. For many people, though, they may end up spiralling into a cycle of vengeance. If anything, the quickest way out of that is through understanding and forgiveness by accepting people’s feelings change and their fickleness has little to do with us. But still, for those with other more malicious internal dynamics, such a peaceful resolution might seem an anathema.
* * *
1970 – Shattered Dreams
During my time in care, I dreamt of coming to live with my mother. The times I’d spent with her then had been full of her paying me attention and behaving well. However, when I came to live with her full-time, my dreams were shattered.
We’d moved to a rough estate, her boyfriend was violent, and her foul moods hammered me into silent submission. If I’d had a dream as a baby to be looked after in a certain way, then that dream seemed like an illusion now. So much so it’s no wonder as I grew older, I came to believe if I dared to dream of anything it would end in disaster.
* * *
2007- Not To Be
I’d looked at Miss Lovelight’s tattoo and thought we would marry, but it wasn’t to be.
* * *
2007 – The Loss of Love and Shattered Dreams
The result of broken dreams is sadness and anger, and the result of that is the smashing of dreams and the creation of nightmares. Somewhere along our journey, we hold others responsible for our losses, and for many of us, we end up taking ourselves hostage to get back at our oppressors. We make ourselves suffer so we can look at them and say, “See, look what you did to me, you ruined my life.” Consequently, whenever we feel we’re on the verge of happiness we may be tempted to throw a spanner in the works and either directly, or not, bring our world crashing down around us, while deep down we’re still saying, “See, look what you made me do, it’s your fault, you caused this.”
Whether we consciously know it, or not, there’s only one way we’re going to allow ourselves to be happy and that’s if we find a way to forgive those who trespassed against us and for many of us we feel it’s God who did so. How we do that though, is not an easy journey and for many the effort won’t be worth it.
So, if I have waffled on about love, the loss of love, and the shattering of dreams, it’s because much of my life and what will unfold in the following chapters revolves around these two interrelated losses. Not just for me, but for nearly all of us.
* * *
2007 – Karaoke Culture
I’m standing on a stage in a pub, it’s karaoke night, and I mournfully sing the song I heard Elvis performing on the radio.
I look at the audience, some of whom are touched, some just carry on chatting, and I wonder why music no longer plays a big social part in our culture. A man once told me, it’s because we’ve become too comfortable, that cultures where there’s great social disharmony still get together and sing. We’ve sorted out some of our general woes and now our main suffering is a feeling of disconnection, a sense of loss, a lack of love and a general demeanour of dissolution. And for that, it’s easier to stick some headphones on and suffer alone in a lack of silence.
* * *
2019 – The Ring
I spoke to Ms Lovelight on the phone.
Ms Lovelight: I heard you’d been ill, so just wanted to see if you’re ok.
Me: I’m ok, thanks, much better, although I didn’t like almost dying.
Ms Lovelight: I still wear the ring you gave me.
Me: What, I gave you a ring?
Ms Lovelight: Yes, don’t you remember?
After the call, I did recall, in detail, buying the ring. What it looked like and what its markings meant, but the medication I was on had taken a toll on my memory. I realised my forgetting had probably broken a dream for her and maybe after the call she’d taken the ring off and thrown it in a drawer, but I hoped she hadn’t.
I called her a year or so later, but she didn’t answer. I checked she was alive and well, via one of her sons, and she was. So, I took it that my moment of forgetting meant something to her, but that wasn’t true in light of all the facts; but love-light, as with most human endeavours, tends not to be so concerned with illuminating the truth.
* * *
2023 – The Ring of Truth
I got in contact with Ms. Lovelight because I didn’t want to leave her thinking I’d forgotten about the ring. She told me she hadn’t thought that, but eventually had to have the ring cut off when her hand became swollen. As we neared the end of the call, I realised this would probably be the last time we’d ever speak to one another, so, feeling thankful for our connection, I said, “Goodbye”.
* * *
End of chapter 15
