STEPS

CHAPTER THIRTY Seeking closure...

All I do is think. Write, learn, think. No purpose in sight yet no substitute in sight either. Sometimes the brilliance I recount on pages has me perplexed. Did these expressions come from me? Sometimes I sense a force external to myself guiding the process. I don't believe I have the ability. No. Some other thing making these unfamiliar words appear. Honestly, I can't account for their presence in my mind; I can't fathom how I know these words.

William, the other men... sometimes I make them responsible for the perfection in front of me, accepting it as gifts they bestowed, the wordy excellence compensating for the soul-thievery of the other men-devils among them. Because it pains to suppose it is me, points to my using others for personal benefit? I am not a terrible person. I do not mean to hurt. I don't consider it inflicting hurt most of the time. Men are tough. They'll get over me - besides - I ensure they are the ones leaving me, blaming me, regretting me.

William? I spotted the apprehension this last time, like I felt the welcome, the ever-present connectedness. Oh I thought about resurrecting, maybe recreating an improved history. All it would take - words - the pages sitting unprinted. Once placed in his hands, no choice for him but to follow my journey. Fill in the empty spaces in his memory; make final sense of the mess I had presented once. I hold off though. This sharing, this bringing up to speed, it too is another selfish gesture.

Where I pause now, these steps, each one with him alongside unknowing, do I crave the result of this revelation? Within it is an end, he and I ending. What use to resurrect only to simultaneously destroy? It's difficult to understand, this bringing my own death in another person.

Never one for heroic gestures William. Not the sweep one off one's feet type. This was reserved for my Prince. He swept, his gallantry admirable. Off my feet for two and a half years... till I killed the life within me and the life between us. Perhaps the one man I've hurt, the single unforgivable pain I've inflicted. The Prince well-meaning in his rescuing, believing he was helping me escape. Never suspecting I used him to create yet another prison, another window to gaze out from.

The Prince as a husband and a joyous ending? I annihilated the possibility. Nobody understood. Not he, not even my brother who I told at the time, needing his opinion perhaps, wanting some reason other than the obvious I harboured undisclosed: my killing a life to escape.

How the fuck did I do it? And tell him afterwards, at ease with my efficiency! Presenting it like I did him a favour! He'd returned from overseas full of joy for me. I cut him, and then dared feel indignant when he sought to escape me finally. I cried when it ended, long before it ended. I cried after I told him, understanding his departure was imminent. He kept it going for a while. I kept it going. There was nothing else for us. Better some semblance of a connection than the barren and far deeper nothingness I faced without him.

God, he was a worthy man, a decent man. He never hurt me, always the gentleman until I took his goodness and turned it to loathing. Despite this though, polite, even in his escaping me - rightfully the Prince. Only I was never entitled to the role of Princess. I assumed. Always the assumption men owe me; men are there to serve me. Little else to value in any of them.

Of course there's the 'where would I be today'. Yet another alternate direction, unknown steps I'd have taken, arriving some place where perhaps my sons remained unborn? This idea distresses me too much, I push it aside, reasoning everything had to happen the way it did, for me to receive them. My sacrificing one life bringing me the two I now cherish?

Eighteen years since I felt life for the second time inside me. Half his. So fucking unbefitting it defies reason. Of all the men... glorious examples of prospective fatherhood. William; The Prince; even after the enlightenment I gained in their passing, I settled on him? What kind of stupor numbed my logic back then? Was he the consequence of my loneliness? This desolation drawing a version of myself as company? Who knows? It happened.