The Weekend

For the past few months, I've led a more or less complex life. When I was younger, in my teens, I used to dream of the writer's life where I would live from book to book, filling my spare time with sensuality pursuits, dinners, a different woman each week.

After the failure of my marriage, the avenue for that fantasy life opened up itself again and I lived it for a while and while there have been genuine moments of beauty, there is a hollowness that overcomes you, independent of the elements of a less tender reality - bills, responsibility, health, vestigial pain.

This weekend started out with a certain decadence in which anything was possible but ended almost effortlessly at a place of peace that I had been virtually struggling to find for the past few months. I try not to worry about whether this peace is too ephemeral and whether that mechanism that dictates a conflict between her and I will kick into action again.

And if it lasts, there will no doubt be casualties, and no matter how many ground rules were established, how many pre-existing conditions were explained, the heart does not work like that and disclaimers, no matter how explicit, do not make the hurt you cause any less legitimate.

I spent the entire weekend without seeing or talking to my son, not my fault, but when I pick him up from school this afternoon, there will be an accusatory element in his questions which will shame me; coming back from an out of town trip, nestled against her, a voice behind us in the bus shouted "Daddy" and my heart leapt and although I knew it wasn't I turned around to see if it was indeed him.

This weekend has been a sort of quiet watershed of things which have impacted upon me greatly as both a person and a writer, not the least of which was the tragic passing of Akilah Jacobs. I am reading Zadie Smith's On Beauty and have found a writer whose work I genuinely admire, which shows me that yes I am still very much in my apprenticeship.

What is the sum of all this? Am I happy? Have I been made a better person? The one change I can come up with is that I feel less hollow, even if sadder for the damage I have done, one woman blameless, both undeserving.