GLIMPSES IN THE RUBBLE

2021 has been a year of losing people. People my age lose their parents, those that are lucky enough to have kept them this far; that is the natural order of things. Knowing that doesn’t necessarily make it easier to lose both parents in a twelve-month period, but it is a relatable experience, something that can be shared with others. It’s a story that will be met with nods of understanding and hugs of sympathy from the many who have been through similar turbulence in their lives.

But to lose my younger brother was hard, the manner of his death denying me that sense of a shared experience. You see, he didn’t just die; there was no illness, no car accident, no unfortunate, regrettable confluence of circumstances. He was killed. He was killed in a foreign place, far from home; killed quite deliberately by someone who wrongly believed him to be his enemy, or at least an enemy to the cause he claimed to represent. What I still don’t understand is how my little brother could have been anyone’s enemy, him with his outrageous sense of fun and boundless generosity; how could he have been anyone’s enemy when every person who had ever met him loved him so fiercely? His death still angers me greatly and I grieve for him.

2021 has also been another year of looking though the rubble of a 20 year marriage trying to find myself. For a couple of years before this one, I could see myself clearly, or imagined I did, and was working purposefully through the concrete and girders to pull myself free. In 2021 it seemed that the remaining slabs of an already shaky roof collapsed and I had to start again.

But, as I contemplate the turning of the year, I feel I can see myself once more, and I have faith that in 2022 I shall finally pull myself clear. I’ll have a new place to call my own and, with a new kitchen, I’ll get back to cooking for myself and others; I’ll still be working, but now more on my own terms; I’ll organise things so I can play poker when I want to, and I’ll make time to write. Importantly, I’ll allow myself to enjoy my competence in these things.

But there’s a part of myself I can’t yet see clearly, a part that seems to lie deeper in the impenetrable pile of twisted steel and concrete: the sensual, sexual, kinky me; the dominant, the submissive, the lover I once was. Will that part of me be left behind or can I find it again and bring it into the open with the rest so that, in 2022, it too can breathe the clear air of a new life?

I’d like to achieve that.

I’d like very much to achieve that.