my obsession

in december 1992, i was seven months' pregnant and obsessed with a man - the one i believed was the father of my child. he, in his own way, was teaching me a lesson about attachment to other human beings. in other words, he was interested in absolutely everything (and everyone) else but me.

since i was obsessed, i spent all my time thinking of ways to get him to realize that we were meant to be together. we were living in london, a wide, spread-out city, where one's friends are farflung. trains take ages to arrive and it's difficult to do anything on the spur of the moment. it's very easy to feel isolated. add to that that it really wasn't my turf. i was most at home on the grafitti-ed pavements of lower east side and tribeca in new york city. london was a dark, dreary place in winter.

so i wandered those long, winding underground tunnels, in a raggedy old barbour riding jacket and took myself and the baby sasha inside to shrinks, tarot card readers, psychics. i was addicted to astrology pages. i used to stop in the corner shop every time a new issue of patrick walker's columns came out. i even called one of those 5-pounds-a-minute hotlines. what should have made me laugh was that every single one of those people told me i needed to get my life together and move on. but i kept searching for the one who would tell me what i wanted to hear.

on a trip home, i went to the witches' market in mexico city and bought a magic spell, a talisman, that i had to bury in the back garden along with some silly things, to win the man over.

i'd never been so taken by anyone before. i shopped and cooked dinner for him every night, did his laundry, packed and unpacked his suitcases, cleaned his house and single-handedly moved his entire apartment into a new one. without movers. i went alone to my prenatal classes and to buy what little baby gear i could afford. i read a story once in which an accomplished woman said she was so in love with a man that if he'd asked her to lie down and be a doormat, she would have done so.

i was like that.

i liked to believe that he was in love with me as well, just not able to deal with his feelings. now, looking back at his actions over the years, maybe i was right, his obsession just simmered longer and more angrily. i wasn't angry, just broken. i somehow believed that my life hinged on his. that everything would be perfect if we could just fix that parallex error - his mistaken perception.

since he didn't care what i did at christmas, i found myself wandering around new york city with an exboyfriend who had become a close friend. we spent our time eating all the stuff i missed in london. fresh green arugula, rich olive oil, sun dried tomatoes; just-baked bagels and smoked fish, pizza with the mozzarella still bubbling from the oven. in those days, london was not about food or sensuality and my friend, who was half-jewish and half-italian, was ALL about it. i am still grateful to him. i think his girlfriend at the time couldn't figure out what i was doing.

one afternoon, visiting our old haunts, we walked down prince street and ran into a man on the sidewalk. peter introduced him, he was the brother of a common friend. he took one look at me and said, "why aren't you writing?"

i was shocked. i said, "sorry?"

he said, "you're a writer, aren't you?"

i said, "i guess..."

he said, "i look at you and i see books and books full of empty pages. you NEED to write. you've always needed to write."

of course, since my priority was the man, the most useful information i gleaned from this was that he was a psychic and i promptly made an appointment for a session that i couldn't possibly afford.

not surprisingly, he told me the same thing the others had - though rather more roughly as was his style. "you need to get away from him. he's just using you for what he needs and he doesn't care about you."

however, i was still pregnant. i had to go through a few more months of feeling like i was eating broken glass before i emerged, along with a thin pale baby girl, stronger and ready for a new start.

oh and i started writing again.

i was reading my horoscope yesterday, it comes out monthly and it was the first of the month. since i find myself again in an unstable situation, i rushed to read it.

the woman said, "think back to where you were in december 1992, as you are likely to be living though some of that eclipse again."

and all of a sudden, everything made sense.

while i've been obsessed with another man - though not him, actually, the person i imagined he was, maybe the person he once was - he's been obsessed with himself, taking brief breaks to cannabalize and torture me. it's surprising how, when a person who's felt weak comes into a position of power, he takes such pleasure in trying to squelch others.

what's even funnier, he believes he's a writer now. he talks about how "great it is to be in the zone." and how he's writing "without a pen."

i guess it should make me laugh.

yet again, i need to stop obsessing about a person who really doesn't care about me and listen to the psychics and all the messages of the universe. i need to go back to what i've known since i was seven.

my love affair with words and their magic. that's satisfaction of telling rich, sensual stories.

no more empty pages.