Does the body rule the mind, or does the mind rule the body, I don't know.

Oscar Wilde once said: "There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it"

I have woken this morning to an email from an ex-teacher of mine, informing me that our meeting up at the end of the week is now, due to unforseeable events (his wife), most probably off. I must let him know my social and work calendar for the rest of the week so that he can try to squeeze me into a page of his diary, if possible. I will reply that i have no social calendar; nothing that cannot be pushed to one side for him, that is.

You may wonder why I suddenly feel the need to broadcast this to the rest of the dreary world via the medium of the internet. And I reply that I am not really sure. All I know is that I am very tired of scribbling furiously away in diaries, laboriously scribing every last vivid detail of every last conversation we have had for the past 2 years over the time that he was my teacher. Now that that dubious role has been relinquished, thereby follows the daily ritual of agonizing and debating the rights and moral wrongs of the situation; writing has been my catharsis, yet smouldering beneath my bed in no less than 16 paperback diaries, the words hang heavy in their silence. For I have nobody to talk to, to give an unbiased judgement; I feel I have been to some extent driven mad. I have then chosen the anonymous internet to pitch my feelings to the world.

If the two tragedies in the world consist of not getting what one wants and then getting it, I must live out my life in a permanent state of tragedy.

He is all that I have wanted for as long as I can remember. Now in the summer of my 18th year, I am sure that I have wanted him since the tender age of 13, when he first became my English teacher. Brand me as you will. I was certain, in a subconcious manner, even at this age, that i had met my soulmate. He was 24 years my senior. I was terrified by him; terrified and fascinated. He recognized in me an early love for poetry and literature. Yet we never really spoke for around 2 years. I didn't really think about him. I was raised in a violent area, and my early teens were concerned more with gangs, and knifings next door and drug busts across the road etcetera. The school I attended was an ugly, squat building in a juxtaposing peaceful countryside, which masked the crime within. There was often blood on the stairs outside the drama hall, but is this not usually the case?

I'm not sure how we came to fall in love.

I was 16. He never told me that he had fallen for me. I never told him. We talked about music and poetry. We became close friends, and, ergo, aroused some suspicion from other members of staff and classmates. This friendship continued for two years up until my 18th birthday, my completion of Alevels and the sudden freedom of life thrust upon me.

I could talk for pages and pages about those wonderful two years between my 16th and my 18th. I wonder, has such an innocent and all-consuming love ever befallen two people before? Shackled by his responsibilities and position we never spoke about our feelings for one another, and sexual tension built up into a friendship that was so intense that I could tell what he was thinking often from the other side of the school buildings.

Yet these things cannot last forever.

It has not yet happened but I can sense it, hanging melancholy in the air between us. Those shackles are gone. We claw for every moment we can spend together. Surreptitiosly in iron pubs beneath bridges, we have discussed the nature of our relationship. My every waking moment is for him.

And so the heartache intensifies. If I do not see him soon I will die. Cruelly the phantom of his dead marriage haunts him. And who am I to break up the family?

I am caught in moral battles and longings of the heart and mind. I do not know what is best.

But if he is not too long, I will wait here for the rest of my life.