awakenings

There once was a time when I could forget the small details. The colour of his eyes mattered less, somehow, than the look in them when our skin connected. The shape of his mouth was never as important as the texture of his kiss; it was the direction, not the form, of his hands that I followed. For a little while, I felt far more than I saw.

Now that I see him with clear eyes, I remember everything: his palms are square and callused, and my fingers are longer than his. His lips are a plump blush of surprise in the angular planes of his face. His eyes are the softest kind of green, like spring lime. I remember what he looks like when he wakes up (sulky-eyed and bushy, with hot red cheeks), and how he likes his coffee (one sugar, a generous splash of milk). I remember how long his hair has to grow before it starts to curl, and what his favourite dish is when we order Indian food. So how is it, with all these details, I have never known him less?

I collect the memories like valuable coins, displaying them in frames and on shelves; they are the glittering punctuation in my family stories. Look, I say, holding them aloft in my outstretched palms. Look at how well we fit.

I am trying to convince myself more than them, I think. Besides, they already believe it’s true – and there is a small part of me that grieves over that. Because even as I fight to prove the perfection of our union, I am thrashing for release. I am praying that someone will know me well enough to look past the colourful blanket of my words and see the dropped stitches, the threadbare wool, the gaping holes that I seem to be carrying everywhere with me now. I have pretended so hard for so long that I cannot remember what is real any more. And I wish more than anything that someone would show me. That I would not have to make this decision alone; that in finding answers from a third party, I would be absolved of guilt. That I alone would not be responsible for tearing my family apart at the seams.

That wish will never come true. I am honest enough with myself to know this, even as I hope otherwise. I allowed myself to get to this point and only I can choose where I go from here. Whether or not I will ever have the courage to say the words out loud is still a question mark at this point; even thinking them threatens to snap me in two. I have to wrestle with my conscience in silence, until I figure out whether I can handle the weight of one essential truth: I cannot heal myself without breaking somebody else.

I remember when I first got here. Doe-eyed and swollen-bellied, I shuffled from room to room; my fingers hovered and fluttered, birdlike, from surface to surface. Having been brought up in narrow, poky terraced houses, I could not get used to the sheer amount of space. Not just one bathroom, but two; not just two bedrooms, but four. A garden, with raised vegetable beds and fruit trees, offered up bright splashes of colour: crisp orange peppers, glossy red apples, the speckled yellow-green skin of under-ripe pears. High up, poking out from beneath the leaves, fat purple plums clustered like bruises.

My previous misgivings, and the shapeless terror that had tugged me from sleep at the thought of moving in with D., surrendered in the wake of my awe. Somehow, miraculously, this was ours. With all this at our fingertips, how could our family do anything but thrive?

In my state of wide-eyed ignorance, I failed to grasp one essential truth: that space is created through distance. The two are intrinsically linked; as one grows, so the other swells in its path. Sure, we have space. But sometimes all it does is allow us to get lost.

Not long after we moved in, the baby exploded into our lives like a cannonball. My reaction was not what I expected. Instead of slipping comfortably into my new roles as housewife and mother, I felt as though I was in fancy dress. I shuffled through my days in a mass-produced, ill-fitting costume that tripped me up at every turn. No matter how hard I tried, everything felt far too big for me. The person I had once been disappeared into the cracks of the floorboards. I did not have the energy to search for her alone.

My son was a difficult baby, and his near-constant cries tore into me until there was nothing left but holes. Each day, I put him down for a nap and then walked to the other end of the house, putting enough distance between us that I could not hear his shrieks. I tried desperately to keep on top of the housework – dusting, mopping, ironing, vacuuming – but there was so much of it that I eventually gave up trying. Every room I entered was littered with toys, paperwork, clothes, plates, cups, bottles. Just looking at it made me want to scream. But in the end, I had nowhere else to go.

D., having been raised in a house three times the size of ours, was accustomed to space. He used it as a shield. When he came home from work at the end of the day, I would pepper him endlessly with questions. I hoped that he would share some of his life with me, since I no longer had one of my own. He never did. I could not reach him no matter how hard I tried – and I did try, every chance I got – so eventually, I gave up on that too. I retreated inside myself, seeking solace on the internet and in books, not listening to him even when he did speak. Most of the time, he barely even noticed.

This house – our house – was a curse as much as it was a blessing. When my heart hurts so much that my body wants to jackknife with grief, I can drift out of sight before D. notices I’m gone. I can slip into another room, shutting the door, shutting my eyes. I can pretend that my son and I live somewhere small, a place where my outstretched arms will touch him no matter where we are standing. I can pretend I am in a relationship where I am not always alone. I can pretend I am somewhere I don’t need to pretend. I can pretend I am elsewhere, everywhere…anywhere but here.

I was nineteen when D. found me – I always think of it that way, as if he rescued me (poor, straggled waif) from the side of the road – and I had such faith in us, the blind kind of faith possessed only by the very young. I had my doubts, of course, but my feelings for him were centre stage; anything else was simply a shapeless murmur that I could tuck discreetly behind the curtains. I turned down the nagging soundtrack of my doubt in favour of a softer melody, one which he and I could move to.

And we did move. Oh, did we ever move. We had a peculiar sort of rhythm – lilting, hasty, charmingly uneven – but we made it our own. We were reckless and stupid and utterly beautiful. We spun so fast it was dizzying, straight into parenthood and village life, with three cars and a business and a four-bedroom detached. Often, I would put a foot out of place just to slow us down, but his gentle brand of confidence was infectious and he coaxed me back into the circle of his arms with little effort. Young, clumsy, overeager, I wanted so badly to know, to learn. Again and again, I begged him: Show me. Tell me. Teach me to dance.

Ever the patient instructor, he did as I asked. In return, I threw myself into us heart and soul – and I believed. I believed in him, and in me, and in us. I believed in our family, and in our home. Most of all, I believed I would never again experience a love so unshakably fierce. Even as the music began to skip, and our steps began to falter, I thought for sure that we would dance together forever.

I tell you this for one reason: so that you know what I felt for him was real. I could not lie about that even if I had wanted to; I am just not that good an actress. When the shit hits the fan – and I know now that it will; I can feel it coming – I want everyone to know that. I want him to know that.

I didn’t lie. I didn’t know.

I shared this video and the lyrics to this Missy Higgins song once before. Since the beginning of my awakenings this song has spoken directly to my experience on every possible level, and this new video makes my connection to the song even more poignant – especially considering my post from last night.

There’s an ache that never leaves me, the tears spill over now without warning. Driving down the freeway, lying between cool white sheets in bed at night, standing at the sink staring into space while scrubbing dried oatmeal off of abandoned breakfast dishes… the mindlessness of the activity allows the vortex of my memories to begin that perilous spin. I imagine that if tears could carve a path, there would be well worn furrows down my cheeks by now; rivers and streams and tributaries born of loss and regret. I cannot stop thinking of what was and what can never be again, not because I wish to go backwards, but because I must grieve for what had to be lost along the way.

In the past year I have begun the process of stepping fully into myself, of accepting who I am, of embracing myself and my truth. There was a tendency, in the beginning, to think that this negated all that came before. My recent journey has been all about understanding that my past – the woman that I was and the life that I led – was no less me. My life till that point was no less valid or authentic or right – it was just not the complete story. Who I am now does not eclipse who I used to be – this life no more legitimate than that one. The fact that this is so very right does not need to make all that came before wrong. I do not need to view my life with a harsh divide separating my before and my after. Indeed these are just different parts of the very same journey, MY journey.

It is clear to me that this part of my path is as much about looking back as it is about looking forward. I mourn deeply the loss of my past, my husband and best friend, my intact and happy family. I need to give myself permission to do this, and I need to learn to do it in a way that does not detract from moving forward into a future with my love, with our children, toward a level of independence and personal growth that has little to do with sexuality and everything to do with owning my experience and creating a fully authentic life.

Yes, I am sad right now. It is not a sadness that leads to the sort of dramatic breakdowns that have been all too frequent over the past year. It’s not about guilt or fear or denial or breathless sobbing and raging into the night. It is a quiet, deep, seemingly bottomless sadness. It is a sadness that lives in the memories of happier days, of the loss of the part of my heart that will always belong to him, of the disappearance of a planned future and a life mapped out together. It is realizing that the joy of beginning this life does not have the power to wipe out the grief of losing that life, and of knowing that there is nothing that can be done but let this sadness fall down on me, and cloak me in its shadows.

It is the sadness of acceptance, and I somehow think that it might be the hardest to bear.

What do you do with the pictures? What happens to eleven years of snapshots and cheesy portrait studio enlargements, wedding albums and vacation pictures? Horrid Walmart engagement photos that stand as a forever reminder of a very bad hair day, murky underwater snorkeling shots of unidentified fish in Hawaii, precious photos of the first moments of parenthood?

What do you do with the shriveled balloons he bought you on your first valentines day, the souvenirs from your trip to NYC in the spring of 1999, with the birthday cards filled with sappy handwritten notes? How do you split up a decades worth of personalized Christmas tree ornaments, carefully chosen during a holiday shopping trip each year – even the pets’ names carefully added in with permanent marker. Who gets the home videos – hours upon hours beginning with teary eyed ‘I do’s’ and extending through first breaths and birthday parties and wobbly steps and Christmas mornings?

Who keeps the locks of hair lovingly saved from the first hair cut? How can you divide the stick figure drawing of your family of four, proudly rendered at preschool in bright crayola marker? What about wedding rings engraved with words of forever and partially filled in baby books and anniversary gifts and ticket stubs and random shoeboxes full of 11 years worth of collected nostalgia?

When you are faced with separating two lives that have been wholly intertwined for so long you discover that you are surrounded by representations of that relationship, both concrete and symbolic. Your house is filled with a million symbols of the bonds, of the happy times when anything seemed possible, of the family you built and the history you shared and the plans you made.

When all is said and done, and it all comes down to the final weeks of living under the same roof, those mementos are all that remain of both dream and reality. Keepsakes of a life that no longer exists, they are both more priceless and more meaningless than you ever thought possible.

And the final question lingers…what on earth do you do with the memories?

Lets be real…I’ve got no business being in a relationship right now.

Not now, when I feel broken on so many levels, more fragile and uncertain than ever before. I am struggling to rebuild my life, to create myself anew in a world where nothing looks the same. As the debris of my former life settle around me I must salvage some sense of myself from the fragments that remain of what once was, working up the courage to lift my eyes from the wreckage and move forward into the unknown of what will be.

I’ve got numerous holes to patch – love, friendship, and pure kick-ass determination being the mortar and putty of choice. I’m trying to shore up the weak sections of my spirit and heart so they can hold up to the inevitable struggles yet to come. I’m even choosing to leave some of the holes and cracks as they are, because I have learned along the way that sometimes remaining exposed and vulnerable is the only way I will ever encounter the truest and strongest parts of myself, and the only way to be sure I recognize and accept the gifts the universe sends my way.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
~Leonard Cohen

But I’m not doing any of this alone. Of course there are the beautiful spirits who swim in and out of my life; acting as friend, life-jacket, spiritual guide, babysitter, cookie-baker, muse, lighthouse, therapist and butt-kicking drill sergent as they are needed and as they are able. Without them, I don’t know where I’d be. But for the past five months there has also one constant presence in my days, in my thoughts, and deep in my heart. There is her.

The last time I built a love relationship I was 21, a young, optimistic and incredibly naive young woman just out of college. It was hard enough then; it always a challenge to connect yourself to another, to negotiate the complexities of together-life you hope to create. But eleven years ago I knew just a small part of myself and understood even less. Hindsight allows me to see that joining yourself to another is infinitely easier when you have barely begun to plumb the depths of the woman you will one day become.

There has been more than a decade of love and loss, of growth and change since S. decided to build a life together, and one year since we began the process of untangling and dismantling that life. I have faced myself, acknowledged my deepest needs and done my share of shadow-dwelling. And now I am building a new relationship, all this behind me, and so much yet to come. I have spent a year wading through the muck and mire of gain and loss and exhilaration and heartache, facing daily the impact of what I have done, living with the relentless onslaught of my guilt, his anger, their confusion, trying to not just survive but to ultimately thrive on this journey into fully formed woman…this all makes for an entirely different level of challenge.

Building a relationship in this space, where nothing is certain, where everything – the life I left behind and the life I am trying hard to envision and manifest – is raw and vulnerable and so damn shaky, when I struggle to maintain my faith in even the smallest things…it sometimes feels impossibly difficult. Back then I held, as so many of us do in the beginnings, a beautifully naive view of promises and commitment and forever. I had a simple, unwavering faith that love would always be enough. There was no way to predict that things would change to the extent no amount of love could have ever been sufficient.

Now I struggle to reach inside and find enough trust to carry me through the moment and into the future. I have to continually remind myself to release my worries and fears, to be true to myself and my needs, to honor my spirit and path and to do the same for her. I have to learn not just the beauty of compromise but also the necessity of not compromising my true self in the process, nor expecting that of her- so that we can create something real and lasting and true. I have to do all this when sometimes getting through the day without breaking down into tears and panic and gasping for breath while doubled over on the bathroom floor requires more strength than I can muster…hell yeah, it’s hard.

I know, with absolute conviction, that this whirlwind that has caught me and spun me into beautiful oblivion for the past five months has kept me from doing the vital self work that should have been my sole domain. This arching, spiraling, expansive force has distracted me from the focus that should have been placed on my children, from finding some sort of peaceful and respectful closure for my relationship with S., from doing the work, equally monotonous and terrifying to me, that is necessary to push forward. All these things would have, in so many ways, been easier, clearer, faster, smoother had she not entered my life.

But she came, and she’s here and there’s no way around that. She eased her way into my life, and my heart, so quickly that I know – on a level that transcends all logic – that we’ve known and loved one another before. It was immediate and unquestionable, so fast, so deep, so profound that from the first moment she touched me I was forever changed, and what you do with a love like that that but let it take you where it will?

Early on we both voiced nearly identical feelings that there was no choice, but instead a shared sense of a force beyond ourselves, of the inevitability of our togetherness, of an ability to feel one another regardless of time, space or distance. Our connection is soul-deep, infinite and fiercely real, I’d no more chance losing her than I would risk losing myself into half-existence again.

We are different, she and I, incredibly so. I wonder how we can make those differences mesh into the life we want to create together. And, with the cynicism of a girl who has watched her choices lead to the disintegration of a family, I wonder IF we can. I wonder why on earth she would want to stick with me right now, when I spend so much of the time an utter and complete emotional wreck*. I want to be independent and strong and accomplished for her, and right now I feel anything but. I question how to find necessary balance so that I can juggle all that needs to be juggled, without short-changing her and our future together.

But there are times when lose my grasp on the basic faith in what is and instead allow myself fall into the trap of doubt and worry about what might be. I forget to focus on that intangible and inexplicable connection that flows between us, and want to attach myself to some sort of non-existent guarantee. I give myself mental permission to sink into questioning and worrying and stressing about logistics and ‘what-if-might-not-how-can-i-possibly-trust-this? – pure crazy-making thoughts. I magnify our differences and distort them – fun house mirror style – until I create imaginary expanses between us. And then my self-protective mechanisms kick in (those developed over a lifetime of keeping myself safe by keeping others at a distance) and I begin to pull away, to shut her out. Self protective yes, but also self-defeating, because distance between us is the last thing I ever want.

Our love has been easy from the start, but our relationship has had challenges and roadblocks and stresses that ago far beyond what most people deal with in their first year as a couple. There have been fights, and tears, and hurt feelings, intense discussions into the wee hours of the morning as we attempt to navigate through this incredible complex situation. We have had to work, and work hard at times, to remain on solid ground, and it has required a level of commitment and faith that I don’t imagine normally exist at this phase of most relationships. In this way, our challenges also become our strength.

Yes, some things would have been easier had I not randomly connected with her that night back in February; if I had been sensible and stuck with my plan of staying away from relationships, if it has been possible to talk myself out of the feelings, deny the connection and kept myself separate from her. Yes indeed, some things would have been easier, but some things would have been infinitely harder and some of would have been damn near impossible.

Bottom line, we don’t get to choose when love finds us, our only responsibility to the universe is to open our hearts to receive it and to do our utmost to honor it for the gift that it is. Even when the timing is all off, even if the challenges of life would seem to suggest that the wisest choice would be to go it alone, even when the work of the relationship pulls focus from other things that need attention.

Without promises or guarantees or commitments, I know that what is between us is precious and needs to be nurtured and cherished and received with gratitude. Yes, from the outside it’s probably pretty clear that I don’t belong in a relationship, but from the inside it’s perfectly clear that, right now, in this moment, I do belong with her. I wouldn’t change a thing.

________________________________________________________

*(true story, dear readers, not a word of exaggeration, I’m a wee bit of a mess)

Clearly, I’ve been a little neglectful in posting lately. As I look back at my archives from the past several months there is something even more obvious than an overall shortage of posts – since late December I have only written about one side of my life.

I wrote this, directly from my aching heart onto the computer screen, the night S. and I moved into separate rooms. In the months since I have not written a word about the remnants of the life I once lead. I haven’t been able to bring myself to talk to you about the reality of existing in this familiar yet foreign space. I have found it near impossible to find words for the balancing act required to straddle the distance between the places I came from and the places I am headed, especially knowing that some parts of me will always live in this crazy, mixed-up in-between.

I’ve not mentioned the pain, the loss, the anger and bitterness, the omnipresent weight of the guilt that will be my forever baggage. I’ve ignored the heart break, the loneliness, the tears (both shed and possibly more painful, unshed). I haven’t shared with you the breakdowns and the shutdowns and the ache of living with a vast chasm of pain and hurt between myself and the one I have loved for over a decade.

I’ve not talked about my husband, my girls, my home – the wanting to dive in and hold them tight and the desire to shut down, push them away and run, run, run – fast and fierce and far. I’ve neglected to mention my paralyzing fear, all the decisions that must be made, how my financial and logistical future seems tentative at best and perilous at worst. I haven’t once written about how I’ve spent the last several months sticking (nay, ramming) my head deep into the dry packed earth of my adopted desert home – hoping that if I ignore it all for long enough perhaps when I stand up again the storm will have passed me by and life will have returned to normal.

I have kept quiet about the fact that the knowledge of what I have done never, ever fully leaves me, that sometimes I can’t breathe with the weight of it squeezing my chest like a vice. I haven’t mentioned that in retrospect, the first part of this journey seems easy in comparison to the place I find myself now. I haven’t written that instead of feeling strong and confident and bold, I’ve been feeling fragile and brittle and confused beyond all belief. I certainly haven’t told you that I’m scared out of my fucking mind.

It’s been easier to write about the new, the euphoria, the rush of discovery and experience. Crushing, feeling, exploring, falling, blissing out on love. That’s the simple stuff. Even easier than that is not writing at all – staying in the surface of the moments and not daring to go any deeper the way writing demands. But I can’t keep doing that. As I mentioned before, the living of this and the writing of this are so hopelessly intertwined that I cannot possibly separate one from the other for long. If I don’t write, I don’t process and I certainly don’t move forward. I sit, I stagnate, I shrink into myself until I feel like a shell of the woman I know I have the power to become.

The time has come (past come, actually) to start moving again. My life demands movement, direction, forward motion – more than it ever has before. But I cannot move fully into the future until I deal fully with the past. I need to be honest, to own up to the harsh and the ugly and the terribly, terribly sad – and this is where I need to do it.

This blog is my therapy. My writing is my voice, my story, the truth of my journey. My fingers, my keyboard, my computer screen are my tools. And you, my lovely readers, are my wise council. For me, someone who has chronicled her life online for eight years now, all of these things are vital parts of the process.

But beyond all that, what it really comes down to is my heart. I can’t do what I need to do if my heart is on lockdown. I’ve got to bring it out of hiding, unwrap it and put it out there again. Not just for the good and wonderful and beautiful (because these past few months has been filled to overflowing with those things as well), but also for all the less than pretty things that I’d really rather not face. I need to step out of my safe little corner and into the light, sometimes soft and inviting, but often harsh and blinding. I need to tell you my stories, and need to know that you will hear me.

I need to write again. I’m starting now.

***This blog post really has nothing to do with the sex scenes in this video, but still – you should enjoy them. I know I did.***

The latest episode of The L word ended with a series of particularly….um…shall we say inspiring scenes. Playing in the background was a song I’d never heard before, and the words ‘everything is perfect now’ were repeated over and over again. As often happens, the song somehow got under my skin, and so I downloaded it when I got home that night.

Everything is perfect now. Yes I thought, wouldn’t this be a perfect song to have playing in the background when everything comes together? If I were creating a movie soundtrack for life, this would play at that magical moment when the universe aligns and everything falls into place; when the sun is shining, the birds are singing and (of course) I’m getting a toe-tingling-earth-stopping kiss from the girl of my dreams. I played the song a few times and daydreamed about all those so-perfect-they-sparkle-around-the-edges potential future moments. But of course, as happy as thoughts like that are – they also create this vicious little melancholic cycle – ‘cause I’m not there yet.

When I connect with a song I often set itunes to ‘repeat one’ and let the tune play over and over and over again while I eat, write, sleep. As I do this, the music permeates my soul on a different level. It becomes part of the backdrop of my day and knits itself into the fabric of my conscious and unconscious mind.

And as I was lying in bed the next night, listening to the song for probably the hundredth time, it suddenly came to me…I had it all wrong. ‘Everything is perfect’ wasn’t about some maybe-moment in a far off future. It’s about right now. This moment. This breath. This now.

Not because my life is exactly as I want it, not because there isn’t loss or pain or confusion or fatigue or stress. Not because I’m not wishing or dreaming or yearning for things I don’t yet have. No, everything is perfect now because in this moment, everything is exactly as it should be, as it NEEDS to be, as it MUST be.

The point is not that everything is PERFECT now. It’s that everything is perfect NOW. As it is. Every blissful, joyful, transcendent, orgasmic bit of it. Every screwed up, fucked up, stressful, bewildering, heart wrenching second. Every profound and meaningful or random and pointless interaction. Every moment of bitter loneliness, and every moment of soul-connection. Every first kiss and every last goodbye. Every single emotion we are experiencing. It’s all perfect because it is what IS. Because what IS is exactly what needs to be. What has happened is exactly what needed to happen to get us here, and where we are is exactly where we need to be right now in order to move forward.

And what could be more perfect than that?

My spirituality has evolved considerably in recent years, and the core of my belief system is grounded in a soul-deep understanding of universal energy. That every person, thought, word, deed, object, circumstance, event and place is created from, composed of and guided by this energy. Some of you call this energy God/dess, or fate or karma or destiny or the source, but I believe with my whole heart that we’re ultimately all talking about the same thing. It’s that force that is beyond us and outside of us, but that is also deep within us and, indeed, is us.

I believe this energy to be infinitely wise and undeniably powerful. The times we get ourselves into the worst messes are the ones where we are fighting this energy with everything we have. Unwilling or unable to surrender, to let go, to relinquish control, we fail to accept and embrace. We are unable to exist from a center of gratitude and abundance. We struggle and doubt and wallow in self-pity because we are focusing outside the moment, beyond our reality. We forget that everything is perfect now.

The inimitable Jen Lemen recently interviewed “Momma Zen” author Karen Maezen Miller, and asked her the following question: “When do you feel most happy?”

Miller’s response was a perfect example of profound simplicity…”Now. What other time could there possibly be?”

Now is the only moment that truly exists. It might sound naively simplistic or annoyingly zen – but it is true. What is done is done, and what will be will, ultimately, be – but when it comes right down to it, now is where it’s at. Now is where we are. Now is all we have. Now is all there is.

Of course there are days when I want to pull up the covers and hide in bed, and days when I want run from demons relentlessly chasing me. There will be moments where I’m pissed and stressed and angry at the universe because things are not going according to my plan. I will still struggle, and I will still fall and I will exist in a place that is the very antithesis of enlightenment. When I’m in that space NOW feels as far from perfect as I can possibly imagine. But in those moments I just have to remind myself to come back to the moment, back to my breath, back to my own, personal, undeniable NOW and re-center myself around what is, and not what I would like to be. And as I give myself permission to relax into this, to believe this, to know this as truth, I am filled with peace, serenity, gratitude and joy.

Yes, it’s true. Everything is perfect now. How could it not be?

Is it a uniquely lesbian phenomenon, I wonder, to fall into comfortable friendship so quickly with someone you used to date/kiss/love/fuck? Of course, I’d heard all the jokes, laughed at the clichés, and have seen the evidence among my own friends – but it still surprises me.

Not even a month out from ending things with e. and I can honestly say we’ve moved into a pretty good place. I can’t help but smile at the irony that we’re far better with one another now than we often were during the period that we were dating. Yes, it’s bittersweet. I still wish things could have gone differently, I’m only human. But, I understand now that we’ve been given a chance to develop a solid, healthy relationship in a way we never could as a couple.

We got together to talk things out once (which made a huge difference), we’ve hung out briefly a few times, we’ve exchanged emails and had casual phone conversations. It’s been fairly smooth and comfortable and good. I think I’m probably more surprised than anyone, I really didn’t expect to feel this way, at least not this quickly. I know that much of this healing and perspective came from the fact that I allowed myself to dive into the darkness of my emotions and not deny myself the right to sit with my sadness and disappointment for a while.

Fact of the matter is, in the three months we were together, I came to care about her on a level that went beyond the dating and romance and sex. The intensity of our life events made both of us vulnerable and we each opened ourselves to the other in a very real way. In the process of navigating all the drama and uncertainty, I became invested in her as a person.

I’m glad that I was strong enough to recognize that it was time to move on from our relationship the way it was, but I’m far more glad that both of us care enough to let it become something else. I don’t want her to disappear from my life. I want to be her friend, to see her succeed, to see her really happy. I feel a deep sense of gratitude right now that it appears I will get to do just that.

It’s sometimes hard to discern, when life takes you down a road you didn’t want to travel, if it’s your heart that is more damaged, or if it’s your ego that has taken the brunt of the hit. Sometimes, I suppose, it varies from second to second. My heart hurt like hell when things ended – no doubt. I ached in a profoundly real way. As much as I knew they had to be, I did not want things to be over between us.

However, with a little distance, it’s also easier for me to see that a huge part of my emotional response was related to the bruising my ego took because of how things went down. Fact is, she moved on quickly. Really quickly. Like before things had officially ended kind of quickly. And when you’re the one on the other end of things, it really fucking sucks.

“Ouch”, whined my ego, with a massive pout and a bit of petulant foot stomping, “I wasn’t all that special after all”. When there is moving on to be done, nobody wants to be the one left behind in the dust. It’s a big slap in the face of the ultimate suck-it-up-sistah variety. Yeah baby, sometimes reality really does bite.

But it became clear, very quickly, that C (the new girl) was something different for e. I can’t exactly tell you how I knew, but within a few conversations I had a sense that C. already had e. in a way that I never did (and likely never would have). You might think that would make it hurt more, but instead, everything seemed to make more sense. If things had ended between us for the sake of casual dating or a quick fuck – it would have seemed so senseless, it would have burned in a whole different way. But if things ended because e. found someone that she has the opportunity to create a real, lasting connection with…well, all of a sudden the whole picture looks different.

I’ve seen them together twice now. The first time was crazy awkward, it was very soon after everything had happened and although I thought I could handle it, I just wasn’t ready. E. hugged me and J., J hugged C, and then C and I just stood there purposely not looking at one another, both of us likely wanting to sink into the floor wondering what the heck we were supposed to do now.

But Sunday night at the L word showing they were there again, and this time I felt totally different. This time I went up, gave e. a hug and then turned to C and hugged her as well – hoping I was transmitting the message that I was cool with this, that we could be cool with each other. Truth be told, I met C once before this all happened, and I honestly think she is a really cool lady. Someone who, under different circumstances, I would have totally wanted to get to know better.

Personally, I’m so much better, so much happier, so much more solid having moved beyond that relationship. Those three months were important to me on so many levels, they taught me so many things – but energy between e. and I didn’t put me in a good place mentally or emotionally much of the time. I was always unsure, off kilter, just a little out of wack. It never felt stable or predictable or like something I could put my faith and trust in – and a relationship like that just cannot sustain itself long term. Regardless of how much you care, or how much chemistry you have (or how damn good the sex is) it’s just not enough.

But if you take out all the drama, and all the uncertainty and all the missteps – it just comes down to two individuals caring about each other…and that is more than enough to form the basis of a friendship. So here we go, learning about each other in a whole new way, hopefully building a lasting relationship of an entirely different kind. For once, I’m happy to be a cliché.

Last night I thought maybe I was broken, but then…

…the mindlessness of a long aimless car ride at 1am and desperate texts of ‘I’m not doing so good help me please’… the therapy of loving voices telling me that driving and talking on the phone and sobbing were maybe not such a safe combination and I should pull off the freeway now and telling me ‘no-no-no-you-were-not-stupid-to-believe’…and the clarity that comes with purging pain by messily scrawling frantic thoughts in a journal without caring if the words make sense… and the spent numbness that is found at the end of the tears… and the peace that comes with falling into a deep comatose sleep… and the space of a new day to provide perspective…

All that and I think now that I’m bruised and battered and deeply sad certainly, but not broken. I remembered all of a sudden (with a jolt that made me sit up straight and laugh out loud) that I’m strong, and confident, and whole. I went into this with my eyes wide open and my head up and that I can choose to leave it the same way. “Oh yea” I said to myself. “I forgot for a moment that I was always in control of my choices”.

It always hurts to find out that someone or something is not what you thought it-wished it-wanted it to be. Actually, when I dwell too long on the knowledge it starts an ache in my chest that I don’t yet fully know how to process. But all the wishing in the world cannot make something into something different than it is, and so my job now is to just sit with that ache and accept it and feel it and experience it in it’s entirety until it starts to fade.

I spent some time last night and today being angry at myself. Angry at myself for caring, for trusting, for believing, for not listening to multiple warnings from good people who care about me. I started to move into a place of bitterness and regret. And then, luckily, I decided to read back through my journal and found this, written back near the beginning.

“What am I doing here while she lies sleeping? I wonder if I can keep my heart wrapped and protected, or if the miniscule cracks I can already sense will continue to open, creating a chasm so deep that the only options are bliss or profound hurt.

I will trust this heart of mine. I will because I have to. It is all that I have.”

And then a little while later I came across this quote I had jotted down from “Eat, Pray, Love”

“It’s still two human beings trying to get along, so it’s going to become complicated. But still humans must try to love each other. We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”

I tried for something. I tried with all that I had, and the knowledge of that is what makes me know that this will ultimately be what it needs to be. And it did get complicated, and it was sometimes as messy as all human interaction has the potential to be. Feelings were shared in the safety of 3am darkness, and promises of a sort were exchanged, and hearts got involved (ahh…the capacity for messiness increases exponentially here).

It was intense and volatile, rarely easy and simple. Life circumstances – mine and hers – didn’t allow things to unfold slowly and gently. Instead of a normal beginning (as if there is such a thing, really) we’ve been on a rollercoaster and there are days when I think I’ve been so caught up in it – so entangled – that I’ve forgotten how to breathe.

And when it was good it was so very good, and when it was bad it was pretty damn bad. But to speak of regret? To let self-blame and personal recrimination creep into this and turn it into something that makes me feel bad about the choices I made? I realize today just how pointless that would be in a way I just wasn’t able to see last night. It would take over three months of a relationship that was valuable and worthwhile to me and turn it into something to feel bad about.

Not gonna do it.

I don’t ever want to go into any relationship from a place of distrust. I don’t ever want to stop trusting in my heart and in what the universe provides and in the simple beauty of what might be. It’s not who I am and it’s not who I want to be. I believed, I trusted, I hoped, I tried. Sometimes I was let down, disappointed, hurt beyond hurt. Sometimes, but not always. Sometimes I laughed till I was gasping for breath, and sometimes I had conversations that touched me at my core and sometimes I was held in a beautiful embrace and kissed till my toes tingled.

It’s so easy, when something ends on a negative note, to let that negativity form the foundation of the memories you take with you. But what end-of-relationship rule book says that this is what I have to do? Just like all the choices I made in this relationship, that choice is mine to make as well. This was a space and time of profound learning and growth for me, and she was a huge part of that. I refuse to minimize that by letting bitterness and blame overtake me because of circumstances far beyond my control.

I was in control of my choices all the way along, just as she was in control of hers. Even when it was hard and I thought that the smartest choice was maybe to cut out and run away, I made a conscious choice to stay in it. I made those choices because my instincts told me it was worthwhile, that she was worth the effort, that it wasn’t done yet. And then last night, when it was no longer worthwhile or healthy or good for me to stay in it, I made a choice to leave it behind.

It’s not a choice I wanted to make. I wish, with all my heart, that it could be different. But I could no more control the outcome of this than I could have controlled growing to care for her so deeply in the first place. I made all those choices from a position of strength and optimism and hope-against-hope, and so to descend into bitterness and blame gives the negativity far more power than I want it to have.

A little farther along in my journal I found this:

“Bottom line: I am learning more – about myself, my boundaries, needs, weaknesses, failings, strengths, blessings, expectations, limitations, gifts from my relationship with e. than I have from anyone in a long, long time. That alone makes it worthwhile.”

And at one point I wrote her a poem that included the following:

and I know
from experience that
i often find my
teachers
in the
strangest places
but I bet
you never
imagined yourself
a guru
to anyone.

i told you
that you should
give yourself
more credit.

And so I am going to choose what to take from this. I will take the lessons she taught me. I will take new knowledge of my relationship needs and new resolve not to compromise. I will take an even stronger understanding that the potential for something real is always worth the risk. I will take a deep understanding of what an offer of unconditional love and support is truly grounded in. I will take memories of something that will always be special to me. I will even take a long a sliver of hope that the story is not yet completely over, because despite the hurt that girl is still way under my skin.

Yes, she hurt me. She made choices that made me feel utterly insignificant and that negated everything I had offered to her and all we had been through together. I lost faith that the words she said, the feelings she expressed, the commitments she made meant anything at all. Her actions made me realize that expect to have any sort of healthy relationship with her right now is pure crazy-making. I can’t forget any of that. That hurt and disappointment and wish-it-could-have-been-different is still pretty fresh and raw. But this is my story now, my life. I get to make the choice about where to go from here. I’m sure I won’t always be this Zen about things and that the hurt and regret will still pounce on me when I least expect it, and there will be more tears and more sadness – but right now I feel centered and solid and I’m going to run with that.

I’ve taken a step off that rollercoaster, begun to extract myself from something that I really wanted to work, but that just couldn’t be right now for a million and one different reasons. And with that step away – with this new emotional space – I feel myself breathing again. I can sense a new perspective on my current reality that was lacking when I was so caught in the current of all that existed between us and around us.

Bruised but not broken. Yeah. I’m gonna be okay.