To all the men I’ve loved before
Who travelled in and out my door
I’m glad they came along
I dedicate this song
To all the men I’ve loved before

To all the men I once caressed
And may I say, I’ve held the best
For helping me to grow,
I owe a lot, I know
To all the men I’ve loved before

The winds of change are always blowing
And every time I tried to stay
The winds of change continued blowing
And they just carried me away

– from the song by Shirley Bassey –

Men. The strong physicality of them, how they look at you in tender moments, the way their hands grip a steering wheel, the deference with which they accept your absolute femininity in any argument.

Men who talk passionately about what they enjoy.

Men who gravitate toward you across a busy room.

Men who try to please you, men who hold out for you to please them.

Men who shyly open the door to their soul a sliver at a time only to discover they’d given it to you even before you knocked.

Men who look at your mouth while pretending to listen to what’s coming out of it, men who avoid looking at you altogether, afraid of the loss of their fragile fortitude.

Men who teach you how to clean your computer’s cache or who rescue your cat from under five chairs piled on top of each other in the basement.

Men who sit near you as you cry, their presence a balm, their arm a steady hook around your back. Men who fly countries to figure out what to do with their love for you. Men who confess they’ve fallen out of love with you, while insisting they still love you, just not like that. Anymore.

Men who break your heart.

Every man I ever loved to whom I’ve said goodbye has survived my love (and I survived theirs. Barely.) Some took longer than others. Some remain friends, some have been lost to the passage of our separate paths. What makes each one special is that they’ve helped me be a better person, for the gift of love and the gift of pain that comes with the separation of that love. Because the virtue of grief is its gift of personal growth. Grief, when examined in light, displays multiple facets. It reflects our own dark matter, held up to show a rainbow if we choose to submit to it. The men in my life have helped me understand my own darkness, take it and turn it into crystals of wisdom. And what a trip it’s been.

I recently called the first big love of my life, twenty-two years after we lost touch. It was like those years fell away as soon as he knew who was calling. We spoke as in our teens, as the close friends we once were, catching up in a gush of emotion, repartee with erotic undertones which are unlikely to ever go away. I know if I go to the city in which he lives, meeting him will entail an irresistible mix of nostalgia and the banter of two people once thrown together by Life’s kind act of learning.

The comfort and solace that men offer is an odd orange – peel away at the thick rough exterior and one of those compartments inside will contain a squishy desire to hold you, to be needed. If you get a taste of that segment because the man is ready to offer it up of his own will, well, lucky you. A vulnerable and trusting man is a thing of rare wonder – don’t be scared, they do exist in the wild. If not, there’s no telling when the orange will ripen to fall into the cup of your palms. I wouldn’t hold my breath. I know women (and have been one) patiently waiting for the green to go so the orange’s full sweetness can be caught in bloom. Newsflash: it hardly ever happens, the timing’s off – you’re fruit picking, go for the sun-kissed ones, they’re ready.

If you seduce him or he seduces you, or it flies both ways, somewhere down the line of your relationship, the crack of cunning will widen a chasm which neither noticed before, since one or both were too busy trying to catch a butterfly in a net. The point of a butterfly is that it hovers, it tantalizes with its beauty, but it does not want to be caught, it needs its freedom. Tricksters who entice with the potential of love often feel the chafe of honest personality a few years in – beauty when trapped fritters away, dying a deceit-filled death.

The hardest loss in love with which I’ve had to cope was the end of my marriage. Six years in, ten years out, we are still in each other’s lives because our love produced a thing of powerful joy – a child. Though we said goodbye a decade ago, this beauty between us continues to make our interactions into meaningful lessons. The hurt of a divorce bleeds itself dry after a while, the scab crumbles midway to reveal a bumpy scar underneath. Staying in touch with each other is like picking that scar anew every time – the wounds of the past are revealed, recurrently, when all you want to do is just move on. But Life can’t let you, it throws desert dust in your face, burning it with the blank pain of love lost. Wear a mask and claw your way through the squall, the silence post the storm is enormous and deafening. In learning to accept my ex-husband for who he is, for who I became when I was with him, for all the spaces where right and wrong dropped away to show only two people desperately trying to understand the other through all their own foibles, I have arrived at the aformentioned silence. A place of peace, where I look at our child and I thank his father for the gift of making my life manifest in the role of a mother. I thank him for having nascent faith we could make it work despite our stark differences. I thank him for believing in an optimistic love, which proved too tenuous to sustain us in the long run. And I forgive myself for hurting him. I forgive him for hurting me. I accept a love gone awry in the vagaries of a white-out.

Losing a man to vaporised love is a sobering experience. It closed me up, plunged me down a hole in the ground where I buried myself, alone, raw. Courage and denial sat at either shoulder confusing the hell out of me – ‘go on go on!’ said one, ‘come back come back!’ said the other. Between them I lay, flinching in despair.

We forget though that when love is lost it isn’t forever. It’s the hibernation of a hurting heart, a bear in the winter of its agony. Asleep, dormant to the howling hale or the shifting snow, the healed heart will wake up when spring arrives. When melting icicles drip onto earth wet with the promise of something mossy, something unformed. The heart will then roll over, rising from the deep, yawn in infantile desire. A huntsman is around the corner and he’s aiming right at it. Wait, the arrow will find its way. Seasons change.

They live within my heart
I’ll always be a part
Of all the men I’ve loved before

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hello! I’m Peri Desai

I’m Peri, welcome to my space. In it you will find stuff that moves me, maddens me, captures my attention, makes me question its truth. You will read what makes me curious, annoyed, energized, joyful, vulnerable.