[7 June 2010]
It's been a week that I've been living with Ruth but somehow it feels like years, as if time has stood still and we're stuck in a kind of time bubble together. Ruth's different in many ways and yet the same, and I'm ashamed to say that I'm finding it easier now to forget about all that I've done to get here and the convoluted moral ambiguity of my actions. I know I should come clean and yet I also know that Ruth is happy, we are happy here, together, like this.
Is that wishful thinking on my part? Perhaps, but I think not. There is a joy in her eyes and in her face and an openness between us that has never existed before. She told me that after a difficult first week or so, when her amnesia and other injuries were causing her much anxiety and frustration, she'd decided that she's going to just focus on how grateful she is that she survived such a horrific accident and endeavour to live in the moment. And I must admit, she's doing rather well with that and is pulling me into this new philosophy of hers too to the point where I no longer think about work and I haven't even turned on the news for three days now. She's given up asking me questions about her life before the accident unless it's something personal, about her preferences or mine, about how we met or our first date, questions about my childhood, my family growing up, my marriage to Jane, and my children. And I find myself opening up to her like never before.
And yet, despite all this, there are times when I know that I'm in the wrong and I can hear Ruth asking me, her blue eyes flashing, earnest, insistent, "That's all very high-minded, but in practice what does it mean? Does it mean that results aren't everything? Where do you draw the line on this stuff, Harry?" And I know that that Ruth, my Ruth, would never condone what I've done, would never accept it, would never excuse it, would never forgive it or me. But I'm in so deep now that I cannot see a way out. Whatever I do it seems, I'll lose her in the end, so I hold on for a little longer to the here and now, where we are happy and close, and push aside my worries about tomorrow. And the Ruth that's here with me is happy to help me do that as with a gesture, a word, a laugh, or a caress she draws me back into the present, back into the moment with her.