www.womanthismonth.com 79 February 2014 There I was driving my car. Life was great. Romance was blooming and the day was as good as any. I had, just hours earlier, heard the words I had longed for, out loud, by the one who has my heart. The words ‘I love you’ had been reciprocated, verbalised and put out there into the universe for the heavens to hear. On leaving home, I had sent a text merely stating how nice it was to hear her voice. And then the day went grey. It was in the form of a text received from her: There’s a thin line between being nice and being truthful. Honesty I adore, but this truth hurt! The message surely pushed Humpty Dumpty off the ledge and shattered the already cracked outer shell. But as painful as those words were to read, I appreciated them and understood them too. My instant reaction was one of disbelief and in the seconds following, I may have attempted road rage on unsuspecting public. The more I thought about her text, I truly just felt like Schrödinger’s cat. The relationship was my lead-lined box; truthfulness and being nice were the radioactive vial and the poison within this relationship. Until I could see myself from the outside, I was trapped — caught between possible never-ending marital bliss and terminal disintegration. What did I want — the truth or niceness? And was reality either of them? Are we not all trapped inside relationships? Do we not all sometimes err on the side of being nice to avoid a fight, hurt feelings or a broken heart? When did ‘I love you’ become so ambiguous? Life lessons are truly daunting. When I was a child, they taught us to cut out red cardboard hearts, fill in the words ‘be mine’ and hand them out to the girl you liked for Valentine’s Day. I wish life had remained so ‘cut and paste’ simple. Sadly the premise of such innocence seems naive and fatally flawed now that I am older. Life truly is a continuing learning curve. Happy Valentine’s Day! he says by JAMES CLAIRE When did romance start feel like entrapment inside a lead-lined box? Schrödinger’s Valentine
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