I need a new start, not have the vestiges of my failed love life recycled for me! (Article)

By Stanley Collymore

You audaciously approached me and confidently introduced yourself to me, after which you gamely and interestingly spoke to me, a conversation in which quite engagingly you told me, while in the process dexterously persuading me with all the prowess that you could muster to listen to every word of what you were appealingly saying to me, and noticeably doing so with all the composure, absolute conviction and the unfettered sophistication of an unquestionably cultured and humorous gentleman who strikingly in elucidation but even so agreeably, calmly and assuredly knew with a perceptibly undiminished clarity and unbridled certainty what he was distinctly after. Then proceeded to totally and uninhibitedly readily convince me that from the very start – in effect the precise moment that you first saw me, you’d become completely and irresistibly besotted with me.

And consequently if how you felt about me was the undoubted stirrings of love for me, then quite unreservedly, as well as unapologetically, your unmitigated plea relative to how exactly you both emotionally and romantically cared for me was, you further candidly stated, most categorically simply a combined situation, in logical terms, of your being positively but at the same unashamedly guilty of having deeply and passionately fallen in love with me.

However, secretly on the rebound from a rather nasty, malevolently controlling, one-sidedly giving – you’ve guessed it absolutely correctly that it was exclusively me doing all the giving in that marital relationship – a particularly psychologically unrewarding, most damaging emotionally and an unfalteringly subjected to serially adulterous and a pernicious nightmare of a marriage that I eventually summoned up the courage to finally free myself from though divorcing my domineering brute of a husband.

And on having achieved that, my undoubted lack of self-confidence fastened to my perceived, deeply embedded and an intrinsically, socially fearful embarrassment of my being a failure as a wife that I firmly construed as being all my fault, and which previously and collectively had cowardly precluded me from lawfully embarking on what quite naturally and understandably should unequivocally have been an absolutely feasible, understandable and a common-sense course of action in logically filing for a divorce from this monster of a man I’d married, simply hadn’t happened.

But with that at last now done, and even though the unaccustomed practice of being a woman and completely on my own was still something of a disquieting novelty for me, I was even so very determined, as I optimistically did everything in my power to thoroughly reassure myself of this, that I was now individually at liberty to do what I genuinely thought was best for me and my future. And although I was fully cognizant what a problematic mission it would obviously be to permanently bury the past, totally forget what I’d terrifyingly and rather inappropriately constantly allowed myself to happen to me, while absolutely and forever discarding my undeniably feckless but prescribed role, in name only I shamefully confess, as a wife although fortunately and thank God not as a mother, and consequently in those gratefully escaped from and utterly dismally aforementioned circumstances intelligently, pragmatically and hopefully move on constructively with my life.

This is my earnest ambition and, in essence, what I would genuinely like for things in their fullest fruition but most specifically in respect of myself to be, although realistically the eventual outcome, I’m well aware, could very well be a wholly different scenario, in lots complicated and even quite puzzling ways, from what optimistically in my steadfast hopes and honest aspirations I would most certainly and undoubtedly prefer for the eventual end result to be.

Yet here you are, in effect and clearly something that I mustn’t conveniently overlook nor casually forget, a complete stranger in reality to me and what’s more saying the kind of intriguing things that my motivated heart truthfully wants to hear but on the contrary my distinctly wary head, however, is much more cautious about. And in this apparently confusing process powerfully throwing, I could very well honestly say, my entire emotional balance into a state of total disarray.

So how then am I supposed to honestly know let alone clear-headedly, accurately and unquestionably deduce with an absolute certainty that’s obviously and understandably triggered and effectively spurred on by the provocateurs of my previous and unhappy circumstances, that what you purposefully claim you’re sincerely saying to me isn’t fundamentally nothing more than the selfishly manufactured fantasy of a very vivid imagination that is itself coupled with the egotistical and deliberately unequivocal self-aggrandizing machinations of an entirely conniving as well as a thoroughly seasoned Lothario whose deftly executed but nevertheless unsupported flattering declarations of undying love for me designedly have no affinity whatsoever with the latter nor, for that matter, convincingly makes any allowance for the existence of reality.

A state of affairs that if not carefully examined by me and seriously challenged if necessary could in all probability, and at the very least, be ruthlessly, deceitfully, intentionally malevolently, totally self-servingly and, in all of this, most I injuriously to me be unscrupulously employed to cast me back to the wholly untenable situation which with considerable difficulty, but even so, I did finally manage to escape from. A deplorable situation that had previously and wholly inescapably for me while I was helplessly ensnared by it rendered me, most categorically, as a nobody who was likewise perceived as someone who was only worthy of the utmost contempt, and hence the ungracious appellation that then in reality and now in hurtful remembrance I still unavoidably bear the awful scars of and naturally very much resent.

So what’s it to be my unfamiliar but unrelenting suitor? And before you sally forth with one or several of your glib answers I’d like for you this time to think very carefully about what you might wish to say to me, as you also seriously bear in mind this genuine request of mine. For I’d personally like for you to candidly provide me with an honest and original answer whatever that in itself might be. For only then can I realistically satisfy myself by what you’ve said or crucially omitted in your explanation to me whether, as you’d like for me to believe, this supposed adoration by you for me is truly the dawning of a bright and meaningful future together for the two of us. Or more possibly the compelling but meretricious inception of an illusionary romantic mirage that could very well prove to be immensely inimical to the emotional welfare of a still unsure of herself and therefore a highly vulnerable woman like me.

Inevitably, at some time or other, most people regardless of who they are, what their racial or ethnic origins might be, irrespective of their religious, agnostic or atheistic views, what they do or don’t do for a living, their personally identifiable class, social or educational background; their ingrained political loyalties or none, the power and or influence that they wield or more like than not the manipulated sycophancy that they readily subvert themselves to, how grotesquely and graspingly rich or generally pathetically and miserably poor they happen to be; how immaturely young or seasoned old they are, what their birth or subsequently acquired nationality is, the robust state or otherwise of their health and daily life, or where in the world they either choose or are forced to live, whether they’re incarcerated in prison or at liberty to live and lead their own life as they see fit, will unhappily and even emotionally destructive for them find themselves romantically spurned by at least one and possibly even several prospective lovers and thus be very much on the dismissive end of a love that they’ve both willingly and freely offered to another person but which in return is roundly rejected as it is likewise unreciprocated.

Well, there’s a general saying that there’s no accounting for personal taste and amidst the vicissitudes of everyday life when it actually comes to factoring into the love stakes this truism couldn’t be any more applicable than it already is. And not unsurprising in this love equation is how each affected individual specifically reacts to his or her romantic rejection that in turn depends on a number of tangible as well as imperceptible factors.

For instance, there are those who’ll use the fallout from their rejection, painful as it might be, to judiciously and sensibly re-examine their personal approach to all future romàntic affairs that directly involve themselves and then use the information they’ve collated and the analysis they’re arrived at as a fitting platform to more solidly construct for themselves what exactly it is that they actually want from life in terms of romance, and having ascertained that accordingly get on with it.

Others though tend to dwell inordinately on their rejection and as a consequence of that become bitter and twisted persons for the rest of their life. However, there are those who on reflexion see their rejection as a providential escape for them and gratefully thank their lucky stars for the enforced situation that at the time they were placed in. But unfortunately there will be those who finding themselves utterly despondent at what has happened to them will seek release from their perceived shame and embarrassment by killing themselves.

Then there’s another category of persons who obsessively imbued with a manifestly pronounced and delusional sense of their own egotistical importance and the perverse notion of how dare anyone do something like this to me, will malevolently set out for the remainder of their pathetic life to exact revenge. And prompts the obvious question, for me anyway, which of these categories, or none of them, do you consider yourself as belonging to? Or perhaps you’re one of those android-type creatures totally and uncaringly devoid of all emotional feelings. And the characteristically sentient and sane among us Homo sapiens will intuitively know the sorts of individuals I’m specifically referring to.

For we routinely observe them on a daily basis unwarrantedly, incompetently, corruptly and criminally occupying our supposedly democratic, but we know otherwise, parliaments, other institutionalized fora of power and influence and effectively postulating themselves not only as parliamentarians but even more seriously and worryingly so as prime ministers, cabinet ministers and even presidents of our respective countries.

Disproportionately so, it must be cogently stated, to their actual numbers in the much wider population that significantly comprises us Homo sapiens and that these alien oiks have both manipulatively and controlling foisted themselves upon, while ludicrously and risibly, if it wasn’t such a bloody serious matter, ascribing to themselves the bogus epithet of the “privileged elites”. Among whom I often wonder? And so far I’ve been unable to discern either a clear-cut or convincing answer to this idiotic conundrum of theirs!