The Waiting Room

24.03.07

We are all in a waiting room - trying to work out when we will be released from the feeling of nervousness and anxiety that we carry. Waiting for the nurse to call us and put us out of our misery.

Of course, we are all, in some way or another, waiting for you to return to us; just walk in through the door, keys in hand with a smile on your face, as ever. Except, in this new and updated reality, we know that cannot happen. So still we wait.

My attendance on you has been punctuated by more phone calls from a dead man's phone. I guess the guns of poison have turned on me - and they can continue, because one thing I am sure of is that I in some way am stronger than you - proof of that is my continued existence despite my fervent requests to join you shortly after your departure.
It ain't happening! The powers-that-be have decided that those you left behind are here to stay for the foreseeable future, and so we await our fate and ponder our own destiny - without you.


In the meantime, the one that you escaped continues to call and harass. I am guessing that the six o'clock threshold is one of particular inaction within the realms of her own general levels of inertia, as the calls always come around that hour; just after tea and before there is anything worth watching on TV. She must be at a loose end at that time.

The most I can do is document each call and report them to the inept police officers that released the phone back in to her possession despite my continued attempts to retrieve it!! No surprises there then. Ineptitude and the forces of moral authority going hand in hand!

All of this makes me understand that even though you and I had endless discussions about your marital breakdown, subsequent separation and imminent divorce, you were under a lot more pressure than you ever admitted to. I think you led a dichotomous existence, playing down the relentless harassment, barrage of calls and unceasing stream of text messages and led us all to believe that things were being worked out, if with a little difficulty.

Although it is of little comfort, I do have a clearer picture than most of the darker side of what was happening, as I and some of my friends were witness to the circular conversations, the obstructive manipulation and of the impasse you found yourself in.

Don't fret dear John, the positive of sitting in this metaphorical Waiting Room is that it gives us time to think and cogitate, to formulate a plan and run it by others. My own reasoning so far tells me that you were too good, too weak and too vulnerable to really make a balanced assessment of the situation. 20 years of sociopathic conditioning are hard to undo, as we witnessed with the choice you made to end the pain.

However, special man, understand that we hover now outside of that and our judgement, with each day we spend in this room, becomes more lucid, rational and less emotional and we will do right by you.

That is a promise.