Old Flames. Best Burnt Out?

Are our old flames best burnt out ? Or to be perhaps more accurate and grammatically correct, burned out of our emotional memories?

My brightest raging inferno like old flames are all from 20 to 30 years ago now, so they no longer are the scorching emotional ties they once were, more like they are charred earth patches where the rest of life has grown a green and moved on to new, wider pastures.

Being middle aged you do think about the what ifs? All from ex's you maybe could or should have stayed with, through one nighters you maybe could have made pregnant to all those possibilities or taking up that coffee, movie or drink with......or lustful kiss when the flirty friendship maybe should have gone forward.

I live  life now with few regrets about that sort of thing. If I ask why it didnt work before with some ex's then it is because either I or they, or both were non committal. It wasnt for a lack of soul mating, you can just make that up when you are newly in love and like to do stuff together and agree a lot. It is falling into this love deeper in a committal way which involves financial investments, moving for jobs, talking about kids and k0jmost of all, planning a wedding as a display to your social sets that this is serious. You mean all this love and together forever shite.

I was  non committal for the same reason I think that I am non committal with jobs, THey are never quite good enough for me, When I do get a job which is good enough, too good to be true, then I have found invariably that fate and conspiracy take them away from me! I have no faith in jobs, whiile once my portfolio career was a plus for me, now I am the aged slut at the bar wondering why I shagged and bragged and did not once really see myself anything else than trapped in a work relationship. THe same for women for me.

Old flames, yeah and avoidance at the time back then. I managed to finally track down one , Janice, after the odd perusal of the electric  internet and book of digital faces over the years. Her name is quite common especcially in the USA., which I thought were  bum steers., But once I connected her job and her love of running marathons, I came up trumps. She dies here hair red, lives in Dallas, and has a lovely daughter. It filled me with joy that she finally found love, and had a family and kept on being a successful long distance runner. Do I friend her?

Now we come to Fargo, where our anchor character, Margie the police officer, gets looked up by an old class mate, and they play out a little embarressing reunion which is inevitably a bad idea for Francis McDermott or her on screen character to get into. One side holds more than just a candle, they have a wax and string supply chain of unrequited love come their middle aged failure to stay in a relationship or even establish one in the first place.

So Janice and Irish Anita, I am very happy for the two of you. One a flirt which would have gone places had I been at all committal, the other a flash in the pan for a year which looked and felt often like it should have gone on forever, but now that I remember it, I too was often in two minds about her,. Both live far from the British Isles and both have kids and seem happily married so I am delighted., Phew also it was not me.

Janice was lovely, and still is. A pretty Scots Irish lass with freckles and a beautiful jaw line with twinkling dark eyes under a gushing mop of tightly curled dark hair. Slim and elegant. And a very, very nice and sincere person. There in lay the issue. I was 26 odd when I met her, and still in my phase of avoiding 'nice girls'. Nice meant settling down and not hurting their feelings with your own ego's desires for jobs, travel, and most of all variety in the pussy department. It would only be the mature and reflective 35 year old me that could have gone there, and it looks like she struck in lucky when she was in her mid thirties too. We had kind of sort of dated a bit, and she was making overtures but I did a stupid ignorant thing one night as a kind of avoidance and just shitting on my own doorstep, by visiting a female pal and turning up not only late for our wood be date, but also with girl in tow. My bad., But also it kind of put a full stop I thought which was beastly, but convenient. I got a post card from Janice on her tour of NZ so I should have maybe kept in touch, but I am also sure she is happier in Dallas.

It was another old flame who taught me I am more socially awkward than I had ever beleived. She just was wrong for me, I was kind of a catch for her, she was frumpy, and I got caught when in fact I maybe could have done with a nice girl to settle down with,. It was 1996 and I was having an inbetween year working part time and doing loads of sailing and stuff. I was going through a kind of isolation thing, where I had not quite fitted into a group of gen'Xers due to my being crap at sports, and I felt a kind of hang over of being an individualist, but feeling very lonely out of my now long behind me university days or constant social stimulation, and instant company on hand. The real world of suits and mortgages had bitten. I was working with older folk who resented my youth and eagerness, and I ended up dumped out at the end of it in 1996. She became a flame  I could not avoid, but the experience taught me two things. One I dont like groups and I am very intimidated. Two I am a little more socially inept or had become so by that time.

I blame a kind of passing dullness, a lingering depression and also perhaps cannabis which I was using a lot in 94 I think. It seemed there was a stress and anger which was in me, and a lack of being able to determine my own destiny. However 1997 sorted that all out, and i found myself a happy individual with the most beautriful girlfriend I have ever had. I got a very yuppie job and had a lot of fun not having to be anywhere near a 'crowd' or a 'scene' but rahter with some small circles of friends.

Still today I have a massive stress response to there being a crowd of cackling people who know or seem to know each other. just last week on the dockside, a pile of new people and me feeling left out and neurotic at the side lines. I should leanr from my flames there, back away from the crowd, keep it simple and small. Fuck the crowd.

My flames taught me then that you can make up and in fact there are in ways to going out again, somethign I should have known with my first love Sandra, who dumped me in mysterious circumstances possibly related to her social climbing into med student circles. We met up a month or two after we split up to exchange records *before CDs: and we ended up in a fond embrace kissing each other good bye with smiles and a laugh. She ended up going out with her ex who I met her through the next year. Not marrying material maybe, but I did love her to bits for a year,

Flames are perhaps just those patches of scorched earth today. They have flickered and smouldred and then there is now all that sex stiuff with women with two kids and so on, where all passions are spent.

I have one old flame, a flirt, who holds  a defiant FB candle for me and I suppose I for her. She dropped the lines on the plate a few times for me to have an affaire with her, which turned her on a lot while she had a steady man., Jo is a bit of an enigma, we think a like and recognise this in our conscious streams of chatter. She never produced kids and now never will I guess, being into her mid forties. So she is maybe an old flame worth a fling?

Some old flames do get back together and live happily ever after. Your youth remains hard burned into your memory and emotional record book more so than all those years of the humdrum or even of having kids, which is just a bit of a blur often. Your memory is overloaded and harks back to the deeper recollections and simpler emotional connections of youth, So high school sweethearts do often meet up, both divorced, or one the successful business bachelor*ette, and they have those rose tinted memories of youthful  unrequited love and liasions, and all the bubble they lived in then, to reflect back on and find some kind of new emotional rock to anchor up to.

Some folk say they have few memories again of childhood and youth, and they are mostly lieing, they have had negativity or were goody two shoes with a boring time back then. For me I remember and relish the recollections of days of school and especially university, more so than some of the awkwardness of young adulthood I went thorugh from which I still have a major hang over today. Folk who dont remember those formative years or even moments, are perhaps covering up for a Flame whicih burnt their fingers back then in the summer days of yore,

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