Since it’s a rainy day, I decide it is a perfect time to deal with my own ghost that I’ve dragged to Texas from Arizona. I may be learning about myself in solitude, but that does not exclude any lessons I can learn from relationships—especially those with the opposite sex. I never really understood my relationship with Jim, but it does exist even though we both knew there was no future for us. Truthfully, I intended to leave him in Arizona, but here he is, alive and well—in my mind. I’ve already tried to do some housekeeping on the subject—like “what’s going on with me”—but with no noticeable results.

Maybe I should start the story at the beginning…. There I was in Phoenix, living happily and peacefully, minding my own business, writing for hours every day, eating good food, interacting with Steve (my apartment-mate), sitting in the Jacuzzi every evening with friends—and often alone. However, since our apartment overlooked the swimming pool, my comings and goings were quite visible to everyone.

One warm spring day, Steve went down to the pool for a swim. Even though it was a holiday, I continued writing at the computer as usual. When he returned to the apartment, he told me that there was a neighbor who wanted me to come down to the pool, so he could meet me. Now this was a rare occurrence—okay, I’ll be honest—it’s a first. My men friends have told me that men find my aloof demeanor intimidating. Who was this rare exception?

“Someone wants to meet me?” Actually, I’m immediately suspicious.

“Yeah, I think he would be considered good-looking,” Steve replies.

“A good-looking man wants to meet me? Hold on, we are making history here.”

“Yeah, take a look for yourself.”

Since our living room window overlooks the pool, we both kneel on the sofa and peer through a thin crack in the closed blinds.

“See, there he is on the lounge chair.”

“That guy with all the muscles and tattoos?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“A hunk with muscles and tattoos wants to meet me? Never! The chunky monkey-types don’t pay any attention to me. They don’t like intelligent women.”

We climb off the sofa and I return to the computer. Some thirty minutes later, while I am taking a break for a cup of tea, I wander out to the balcony to water the sunflower sprouts I am growing in a Pyrex pan. At that moment, Jim, who is soaking in the Jacuzzi, happens to look up and notice me.

“Nancy, get on down here,” he yells at the top of his lungs across the length of the pool.

Actually, I had forgotten all about him. Nevertheless, now I become curious, so I holler back, “I’ll be down in 15 minutes,” as I needed to finish the chapter I was working on.

So a little later, I trot down and join Jim in the Jacuzzi. I’m cautious, so I wear my most modest bathing suit. He is cute, friendly and totally non-assuming, definitely qualities that appeal to me. We end up talking for over an hour. True he was not a person to discuss Shakespeare with, yet his honesty about himself and his challenges in life indicate that he is a real person. And he loves to dance!

After sizing each other up, we agree to go dancing later that evening. When he picks me up, he is really slicked out in a tight white body shirt. He looks great and his broad smile says that he knows it. I invite him in, so he steps inside for a few minutes. As we are talking, he wanders over to the balcony, expressing interest in my plants and sprouts. After a few minutes, for some unknown reason, he backs up against the wall under the porch lamp, so that the overhead light envelops him in a yellow radiance. Then he puts his hands behind his back and says with a wide grin: “You know, I’m just a hillbilly.” Those words get me; my heart opens right up to him, then and there. Here is a real straightforward natural person—at least that is what I thought.

During the following months, he oscillated between declaring I was the greatest thing since his new boat to ignoring me completely. I was so busy with my manuscript, politics, line-dancing classes and getting ready for an art sale in Sedona that time just flew by without my noticing that sometimes weeks would go by without seeing him. Once he told me he was afraid of giving up his freedom—did he think I was going to give up mine! In addition, he had issues with his family back in Michigan. For weeks, he would wrap himself in a depression so deep that he could not see beyond himself. Of course, seeing his pain over the separation from his family was one reason I cared for him. I admired such sensitivity in a man.

The nicest thing about Jim was that a smile automatically crossed my face when I thought of him. Whenever I was with him, he made me laugh a lot. He was always telling some wild joke or funny story. This laughter came as a welcome relief from my serious writing and political meetings. Along with his crazy remarks and opinions on life, he would perform some outrageous hillbilly routines specifically designed to knock me out. For example, he could really get into a scenario about which meat tastes the best: possum, dog or raccoon. One was too dry, one was too greasy, one tasted just like rattlesnake and so forth. He would just howl when he saw the look on my face. I never knew if he was serious or not (and still don’t). Jim was truly a new experience for me. Certainly, that must have been part of the fascination. For me, he was a rare and wild bird.

We had a lot of fun dancing at the local cowboy joint. Arizona bars were another new reality for me, but I thrive on new experiences. I was loving the fun; however, just when we started getting close, Jim would put up his walls and say he didn’t want a relationship. Relationship? I just wanted to dance—at least that is what I assumed. When I saw him, I would tease him by asking him if his walls were up or down. This non-relationship continued on a very tenuous thread until he found out I was moving to Texas; then a solid wall went up. He totally ignored me that last month. But bless Jim's hillbilly soul—he did show up to load that huge yellow truck with all my belongings for my move to Texas. However, later that evening, he didn’t come to the going-away dinner our neighbors, Cindy and Tom, gave for me. That confused me.

The following morning, before Larry and I pulled out, I went by his apartment to tell Jim good-bye and thanks. I honestly did not understand why I had so much emotion about the situation, but my stomach was churning, my hands were clammy and butterflies were flapping in my throat. The truth is I had to prod myself with lots of admonishments—“after all, he is a friend,” “he did load up the truck for you,” “you’ve told him again and again that you have no expectations”—to get myself to push that doorbell. As I walked away from telling him good-bye, I felt a loss. The loss of a friend? The loss of an opportunity for intimacy? Should I have tried harder to break through his barriers?

Since I saw him so seldom, I had not expected to miss him at all. I cannot explain why a completely ordinary person with whom I have nothing in common makes me happy. It’s one of those illogical things that we logical people have to live with. Or maybe these experiences are given to tell us: It’s all not logical.

In other words, he was truly a part of my life that I could not explain. I think maybe I liked that aspect: my doing something that was not the ordinary me. Definitely, it was a relief to set aside my intellectual endeavors to simply be with someone, for Jim looked me straight in the eyes. Have you noticed how few men will look you in the eyes?

So now on a gray rainy day in Texas, I determine to figure out why I remain plugged into him. First, I know that I really wanted to make him happy, and I had not succeeded, except for brief moments. Now I realize that it was a lost cause; he did not want to be happy. I do not seem to have any energy on that failure. So why am I hanging on to him emotionally? I just cannot catch the hook that has my mind running. Is it because the relationship seems incomplete? We had never really loved, nor did we decide not to love.

Today as I lie across my bed breathing in the gray stormy day, I continue to try on every scene and drama possible to find a fit—what is the key that is keeping me stuck? Am I afraid of being alone? Am I just running my “nobody loves me” number? Nothing seems to ring true for me. I just have to keep digging until I find a red-hot coal. Finally I hit on it.

I recall a scene early in our non-relationship when Cindy and Tom had taken a trip to Mexico. They had invited Jim and another friend of theirs, a woman. I had watched everyone leave with a great sense of loss and anxiety. Even at that time I acknowledged to myself: I have no future with this man... Why am I feeling like this?

Now I realize that is the key. . . The reason I do not want to let go of Jim emotionally is that I do not want to feel that devastated feeling again. Since I have such an incredible charge on the situation, it must be a repetition of a past encounter, perhaps when my father abandoned me when I was one year old to go off to fight a war for three years. (Thank goodness, he returned.) But no matter the seed from which the feelings originated, they are mine here and now. One pearl in a string is the same as another; examine one, you’ve examined them all.

With my new realization, I relax on the bed and mentally guide myself, Go back into that memory of seeing Jim leave for a weekend with another woman. All you have to do is experience all that internal chaos that you have not wanted to feel.It’s part of your life too. With this thought, I go into the most excruciating turmoil, accompanied by sensations of heat, then cold. My teeth chatter and my body trembles, as I ride through clashing thrashing swirling waves of emotion. Tears fill my eyes and start to roll down my cheeks. Like a sailor adrift on the dark midnight sea, I feel as if I may be annihilated by the next emotional surge. As I observe my reality with open alertness, my body even shivers and shakes as it releases the pain I’ve been carrying around. Momentarily, I wonder where these feelings originated, but I try to stay out of my head and just experience the energies gyrating through my body.

Finally, the storm abates. The process of releasing the deep resistance and accepting the emotions around abandonment as allows other buried emotions to surface. I know another part of myself; another color in my rainbow of experience. I feel at peace. The turbulent sea is still. A luminous glow radiates from a rising moon as a smile crosses my face. Wow, what complex creatures we humans are!

Of course, the real test of my completion will be to see if I have left Jim in Arizona now. If I haven’t totally experienced all the emotions hanging on this situation, I’m sure I’ll get another opportunity to feel the turmoil and alienation—or to resist it again. In the following days, I notice that I no longer think about “what if’s...” with Jim. As a matter of fact, I can’t even remember what I was thinking about when I used to think of him.

When I purposely call him to mind, I experience a gentle and warm love for him. My open heart was always present, even though it’s hard to love walls and projections and protections. And it’s hard not to love. The poet was right: “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” I’m glad I chose to love Jim. His gift to me will always be the smile that brightens my face when I think of him.

I have never been successful at the man/woman thing. I told a man once who ended up driving me crazy because he never listened [why didn't I notice that in the beginning??], “I don’t really love you, I love the expanded heart and loving space I have when I am in love.” Once I told a young man who questioned me, “How do you know if it is love or lust?” After considering the question for weeks, I came up with the answer: “If it’s love you love everyone and everything more. How can I keep this feeling without keeping the man? I know that’s the goal, but I don’t know how to do it.