Brouwer revisited/2009

It wasn’t until 2009 that I let myself become emotionally involved with Brouwer again. When I was 44, I called him up again. I was out of my head I had cuts all over my legs. In all honesty I just needed a friend. Emma was bipolar, in Special Education, and I had struggled with her not wanting to go to school, and with her mood swings that tore me off the hinges of myself. I met him in front of the 7-11 near my apartment. He drove up, I held onto him like a life preserver. It was the same face only slightly more worn out with age. I didn’t call Brouwer to start anything, I just needed him to hug me and tell me that it was going to be alright. I should have let my God do that for me. Brouwer was 77.

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We had gravitated back into each other’s arms twice before. After I found out I was pregnant, I drifted back into Brouwer’s familiar arms once again. He lived in his own apartment, he had divorced his wife. Gary had left me. But I always wished Emma was Brouwer’s. But I knew she wasn’t, I found out I was pregnant before we were intimate again. So, I knew she wasn’t his. When I told him I was pregnant, he said, “Would you consider an abortion?”

I said, “No”, so he never suggested that again.

But Brouwer stood by me, when Gary didn’t. Brouwer called me every day. It wasn’t romantic, but he was my friend, I could count on his being there.

And as soon as we popped into each other’s lives, we hibernated from each other. I had my baby.

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Our lives intersected briefly again, when I went back to school to finish my History degree. I even took the African History class I had dropped out of so many years ago. We began talking the same familiar speech we enjoyed each other’s company.

I was older, I wasn’t 24, and I was a mother.

But I had met someone else, another professor, suave and sophisticated I was smitten. Brouwer knew it. Whenever I would tell him about Peter, he sounded jealous. He told me, that Peter was a coward, and dishonest. It didn’t make a difference, why would he have said something nice about him.

It wasn’t working out with Peter either. But Peter was never my friend, if at the very least Brouwer was always my friend.

I used to tease Brouwer, and tell him I wanted to “be” with him my euphemism for sex if only to forget about him. Then he snapped at me, and told me he wouldn’t be used like that.

I got a B in Brouwer’s class. But I always knew he graded hard, and he made no exception with me.

It never seemed to be our time, our lives lost track. But he was the only man I ever dreamed about. In my dreams Brouwer was always there, but we never spoke, he was always in the back ground, as if our lives would intersect once again.

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Now it was 2009 and it seemed like Brouwer and I had a real shot at happiness. At times raising Emma was taking its toll on me emotionally. Brouwer was my friend through this. The affair didn’t last long, it was a longer friendship. He was the one man I had a connection with. We didn’t always talk, years would pass, and I would call him up, or go to the university to see him. He always reciprocated.

I had been in contact with him during my therapy with Scott he had been one of the people who told me to leave therapy.

I let myself fall into that fantasy again, he was the same man, just older, but his thoughts were always wonderfully fascinating to me. The intimacy I felt with James was not common. None of the other men were really ever my friends. There was something different with him, no judgment, no condemnation, his arms were open, and I could not resist that.

It was not easy having a relationship with him. Not because of his age, the needs of Emma were demanding. But he said we’d work around them. I believed him.

We spend time together, momma was still working at the IRS, I mention this because she hovered. I told momma I started seeing Brouwer again, she said it was a mistake. She wanted to meet him, but he never met momma.

Brouwer would come over the apartment, and we’d sit like an old married couple on my couch. We watched the British show “Keeping Up Appearances”, we watched the show he liked, “All Creatures Great and Small.” I leaned into him that great bear of a body that I always loved.

His smile was the same, the gap in his teeth that I sucked on whenever we would kiss, was my special place it made me feel like I really belonged to him. We were together again there are intimate moments, between couples when you want the time to last, even though you know it won’t, that is the tragic thing, because you know it won’t. I knew it wouldn’t. I knew it wouldn’t last.

Sometimes, Emma would call, and we’d go pick her up from school. I guess I really wanted him to be her father. Brouwer knew more about Emma than her real father ever cared to. He told me I was a great mother, how impressed he was with the patience I gave to her. Brouwer told me he begin to see us as a family. The three of us would go out to eat in restaurants around town. He was kind to Emma, like a father.

I don’t know why I was so attached to him, we didn’t’ share the same faith, or values. I am a Christian, and he went to a church that was all inclusive. He said he wanted gay marriage, and believed a woman should have the right to choose.

He told me everyone tried their best, that there was no such thing as sin. Everyone is going to Heaven, even Hitler.

I knew I was living in a fantasy. He knew too. It was familiar, that’s all. I wanted to try and play this out, not because I really loved Brouwer anymore. He called me every day we would end the phone calls with “I love you.”

One day I asked Brouwer if he remembered loving me so many years ago, and if this time it felt differently. It hurt me that Brouwer told me he didn’t remember loving me so many years ago. It was a bruise to my heart, I put up with his going to Europe with his wife, I even thought I was carrying his baby, I was weeks late for my period. I suffered through that “hell” alone, for him to tell me, he didn’t remember our time so many years ago.

It was when he said that, that I knew I couldn’t continue with him, with this. This wasn’t real. It was probably never real for him either. But, I loved him more than any other man. I wasted my feelings on him, creating this beautiful romance, when it was only convenience for him. When you are young you don’t know that people play those games, play at love for mere convenience. Everything is all or nothing, everything is love. Then I realized everything isn’t love, because it wasn’t. Very little of it was love. Yes, I had grown a selfish heart where he was concerned. I had to get away from Brouwer. After that Christmas, I told myself that I wasn’t going to see him anymore, I would slowly back away with those infrequent calls men give.

That was it. Brouwer stopped calling too. That was 6 years ago.

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The Lord would have to purge me of this friend too. But he didn’t believe in God. He believed in a god of his own choosing, his church married homosexuals and lesbians, they called this love, because they were all-inclusive, they knew nothing about The Holiness of God. So, it came to me that I had to drop this person. This was a person who believed Hitler would go to heaven. Can you imagine? It hurt The Holy Spirit to have to be around him. My Lord Jesus was extremely hurt.

There was no one more important than my God. To what avail? What does light have with darkness, or the temple of God with idols? No, God finally severed my ties with Brouwer. Even though I had known Him since I was 24 years old. What made it hard was the familiarity of it. I had loved him, and I found myself loving him again. Even though he hadn’t changed, and I found many of the same problems between us as before. I could have gone on being his friend, but the Lord told me he didn’t want me to even have him as a friend anymore. How could I and still love Jesus when he believed that Jesus Christ was not The Lord of Glory I began to slowly back away from him in 2010. Then, I just stopped calling him.