Warrior & Me

My husband has known Warrior since they were at school together. I've always considered him a man born in the wrong time, a man with no outlet for that contradictory energy of protection through destruction, so it was turned in on himself. I always feared he'd either drink himself to death to blot out the pain or have a spectacular bike crash, without having given himself the opportunity to tame his demons...thankfully I was wrong.

Our first meeting was at a music festival. It was Viking-themed that year & a lot of sheepskin rugs had been sacrificed to make costumes. Youngest bairn, my daughter was a year old & had just woken up, so I wrapped her in a tartan rug & went to find Husband. Warrior was with him, long-haired & bare-chested, his rangy but powerful body covered in blue woad designs, a native Celt, untamed & unapologetically masculine...he scared the bejesus out of me! He was also intoxicating for me, seemingly his opposite. His voice was beautiful, his sense of humour infectious, he pulled me in like a lassoed filly...I struggled at first, but eventually calmed down & learned to adore him.

It's difficult for me to describe him in all his splendour on that first day...he blinded me with mythical glamour...someone else might have seen just a man with a dark streak, who drank hard, hardly ever ate & was desperately lonely. I encountered a force of nature, a hurricane trapped inside a man. His eyes were piercing, but there was a vulnerability in them. I spent that weekend falling in love with him, realising that I loved him unconditionally, like my own son. He seemed to have developed a soft spot for me as we spent the night singing together. He tuned his guitar according to his own ear, slightly flat, which was disastrous when someone else tried to play with him, but perfection as my heart drank him in & I sang harmony to the Scots ballads & fighting songs he played. We'd find each other in a connection that was beyond reason looking into each others eyes. It was almost too much for me sometimes, he reached inside me on a level too feral to allude to. No one else existed. I never felt it was sexual; it was pre-sexual, whatever the fuck that is...maybe an absolute alchemical blending of essence, flowing together in a torrent of eyes, communication, feelings. I knew what he was, his innermost being & he knew me, without words, pre-verbal direct perception. He was me & I was him. We existed.

We'd always be the last man standing at each festival & party, singing & talking till light. I felt like I had to look out for him as sometimes something dark would overtake him, a melancholy or a violence turned in on himself, something from his heritage. I'd be there to gently turn it aside so he didn't bear the brunt of it alone. He is a nationalist, intensely loyal & faithful once you have his trust; a Jacobite, a fighting man ready to defend what he loves by pushing a blade into another man's side to watch the crimson gush as the knife is withdrawn. We talked one night (before he found the love of a good woman & had a child of his own) of what we were both capable of if ever my daughter were molested. I realised the depth of violence & vengefulness in myself, the depth of his loyalty to us. It terrified me, that first real connection with the possibility of my using power over another in a destructive way. That night it was he who had to rescue me from drowning in a feeling, by grasping my wrist, dragging me up for air & resuscitating me...just like he reached for my hand & pulled me from the fire that other time.

My first inkling that he wasn't invincible was Hogmanay 2000. His then girlfriend was a fragile woman, big-breasted as he likes them, but emotionally frail & he was suffering under the burden. I have a memory of him in his kilt & leather jacket, Glengarry bonnet on his head, trying to light a fuck-load of fireworks with a dodgy lighter...lit fag hanging out of his mouth, an accident waiting to happen. He broke down later that morning under the weight of his family inheritance. But before that, we sang & sang our hearts out till we were hoarse, like we always do. We burned that night into our souls & brought in a new millennium. We were untouchable in that moment, eyes locked, feeding off our enthusiasm...greater than the sum of our parts, two disjointed people coming together creating something timeless.

I rarely phone him, except for birthday season, because we talk for hours. We're joined at the hip Husband says, without jealousy. We're joined at the heart, joined in absolute loyalty to each other, absolute trust. He has my unconditional love. I've often wondered why. Why this man. He's my alter ego, absolute destruction, annihilation & absolute nurturing, protective love & tenderness, enfolded round each other, tempering extremes...we each nurture aspects of each other. He allowed me to recognise a part of myself that was subterranean, me as warrior. Being with him is coming home to myself. I love his partner nearly as much as I love him...it's unaccountable. She's the most loving & lovable woman I've ever met...she's everything I could never give him, but wanted him to have. It's like being wrapped in a blanket from childhood, familiar & comforting. She has given him a son & made him happy, which is my deepest wish for him.

Well, that's my version of the Warrior & me...maybe one day I'll find out how he feels.