After work, I run on the elliptical, shower, and change into the tiniest pair of shorts I own, my most low-cut, form-fitting tank top, and flip-flops. I would wear nothing if I could, but the temperature is already not quite warm enough for this outfit, and I plan on going out in public, after all. I wait until I figure there's only an hour of sunlight left. Then I head out the door, towards the path that is as much a part of our relationship as our kisses, laughter, and tears.
As I walk towards the river, I think of the many ways I have grieved for you and how fitting it is to be out in nature, in the elements. I glance at the river gently sliding beneath the trees, its path winding, long, and full of history, and am grateful for all the crying I have done.
The wind rushes up my bare arms, skims my shoulders and pushes through my hair, washing me. The wind shivers the reeds along the riverbank; they shimmer a song to remind me there is music everywhere, even without you. I think of the keyboard back in my apartment, the one I bought mostly to hear you play, how the book in the music rest is still open to Reverie, how beautiful you were, your fingers like butterflies on the keys.
I pass a dusty berm where weeks ago the garter snakes peeking out from their holes warned me that change was coming. I feel my heart swell and wonder how anyone could be frightened of such a benign creature, but I think you were scared of me, too, and I never meant you any harm.
The trees flanking my sides feel extra protective tonight, their shadows blanketing my shoulders. The trees guide me to the bridge where we last spoke. I walk to the spot where I felt my heart breaking, gaze out at the same marshy glade where swallows dip for gnats in a world gilded with the sun's sinking. The bridge is empty, the disc golfers and couples laughing with their dogs far away. It is quiet, and I find myself hearing your voice, hearing you tell me all the reasons you didn't want to be with me, hearing you say you were sorry.
As tears fill my eyes, I take a deep breath and your voice fills my lungs. I let my grief ramp up to a 10 and pinpoint the center of this particular pain. "Even though I am sad I could not save our relationship," I whisper, "I deeply and completely accept myself." Only the river below me hears.
The other day, a friend taught me the Tapping method for releasing grief. It's not something I ever would have to come to on my own, but it helped last night when I was crying over you, so I've decided to embrace it.
I tap the outer part of my hand, the ridge rising up to my pinkie. "Even though I am sad I could not save our relationship, I deeply and completely accept myself." I say the words again, louder, so that the birds swooping overhead can hear. My words mix with the wind in the reeds as tears moisten my lashes. I tap the top of my head. "Let it go," I say. I tap the space between my eyebrows, my temple, the bone beneath my eye, the space below my collarbone. Let it go, let it go. It's safe to let it go. Let her go. I press the soft point at the top of my wrist, breath in deeply, the way I used to hold my breath when you looked at me, when you laced your fingers in mine, release. "Peace," I say, nodding at the trees waving overhead.
I do this again and again, taking my grief from a 10 to an 8, to a 6, to a 4. To a 4. To a 4. (I get stuck for a little bit.) "Even though I am sad I could not save our relationship," I breathe, gazing at the sun, now a fractured sparkle behind the trees, "I deeply and completely accept myself." I whisper, tap, and breathe until the first crickets pick up their bows, until my tears are as distant as the sun.
Then I turn and walk across the bridge towards home. But before I can get more than a few steps off the bridge, I think of the fern you gave me, the one I couldn't bear to raise without you so I planted her along this path. It has not rained in over a week, and the ground is hard and dusty. I make a quick detour, wondering if she is still alive. I search amongst the family of ferns where I placed her and finally spot her, the tiniest frill, still green. Suddenly, I am on my knees, plant cupped in my hands like a fledgling fallen from the nest. Having no water with me, I spit in the dry dirt before setting her down and tapping the earth into place.
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
Saturday, July 15, 2017
On Forgiveness After Heartbreak
Because I don't want to feel like this forever--like I am drowning in an apathetic sea and my heart has seashell shards stuck in it--I tell myself to forgive the woman who broke my heart.
(I am bothered by the language: the woman who broke my heart. Did I give her my heart instead of sharing it with her? If I did, that is on me. If I didn't, did I expect her to be as careful with my love as I was with hers? Was that realistic? Is it fair to blame someone else for breaking something that was mine to safeguard?)
* * *
Today, tired of crying, I tried to outrun the fever behind my eyes. Driving to see a friend, I jammed my foot on the gas at every green light, swerving deftly around cars doing the speed limit, screeching to a stop at red lights, drumming my hands on the steering wheel, every atom of me wishing I was in a time machine or spacecraft instead of a stick-shift-less 4-cylinder wagon with over 150k miles on it. I would set the clock to the moment of my death, or set the coordinates to heaven, so I could stand at the foot of God's throne and shake my small fist and tell him exactly what kind of motherfucker I think he is. But every time the light turned green and I hit the gas, I only moved forward in a world where my heart is still broken and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
* * *
An intuitive friend, hoping to fortify me post-breakup, recently told me the angels love and favor me.
Today, sitting in my car, music turned up so loud I wouldn't know if a cop wanted to stop me or an ambulance needed to pass, I wondered how the angels could favor someone harboring so much hatred in her heart.
I hate being human. It is supposed to be a great gift, a grand blessing, a god-given miracle. But to look at the way we are made--without shells, without thorn, poison, fang or claw--is to know the truth. We are cursed. We are made to take the fall, stick, burn, and tear. We are made to be hurt...and to heal...again and again, made to endure countless stings and fractures, to lose skin, blood, and tears--and get on with our day. To be human is to be vulnerable to pain.
Sometimes I think my ex wanted me to be more than human. She wanted me to transcend my body, to slip inside her skin and vibrate at the same speed of her cells, to see the world as she saw it, to think as she thought, to feel as she felt, to displace mere human empathy with an ability I did not possess. She wanted this, perhaps, so she would not have to suffer the fate of being human in a relationship with another human. Which is completely understandable.
Sometimes I wish I had been less human, more rock or wind, something devoid of heart.
* * *
Which story would have to be true for me to forgive her? For me to forgive myself?
- She didn't know she didn't have both feet in, or couldn't get both feet in, until she knew. And then she told me right away, with great sorrow and a sincere wish that things were different.
- It's not even about me. She wants to be the kind of person who can leap in with both feet, but she is not there yet-- not for me, not for anyone.
- I focused too much on her words and not enough on the truth shadowing her words. I was willfully ignorant.
- Divine intervention. For some reason that only that motherfucker God knows, we aren't meant to be together in this life, and there is nothing either one of us can do about it.
- She is sorry. Or she is not sorry. She is merely human.
- She loved me the best she could. I loved her the best I could.
* * *
I wanted her to be more than human too. The day she broke up with me, citing the equivalent of irreconcilable differences, none of which made any sense to me, I wanted her to slip into the channels of my mind, to take a seat in the center of my heart, to think as I thought, to feel as I felt.
* * *
If I let go of my anger and hurt, if I forgive her for being human, if I forgive myself, what then? Will my love for her disappear? If it does, how will I survive that loss? If it doesn't, how will I survive that burden?
I have survived other heartbreaks. I have forgiven the women I have loved. But I cut them all out of my life to do it. If I do not forgive her, will she be part of my life forever? A pulsing memory, a ghost for me to love in a haze of sadness and anger?
If I do not forgive myself, I will continue being human, but I will never know love again.
* * *
I'm asking that motherfucker God for grace. I'm asking him to help me let her go and to help me to get over the fact that I am human--that everyone is human. I'm asking him to take my pain. To take her pain. And to do this with god-speed, which is much faster than any speed I can go.
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Open Letter #12, to the one who opened me
I hate the way I woke up with one of your songs in my head, your voice lighting up the walls of my sleepy brain; for a split second I basked in that illuminated space, warming in the glow of your lilt and call, before remembering you broke my heart. Then your voice haunted me all day, finding me in quiet moments so that I had no peace alone.
I hate the memory of your skin, so soft. I used to press my face to your bare back when you were sleeping and listen to your heart whispering in the dark. I cry, remembering. The tissues I wipe my face with scratch my cheeks.
I hate the way you undressed so casually with the curtains open, as if the world outside didn't matter. How I could not not watch you.
I hate that you threw me a surprise party for my birthday and that the memory of it has surprised me several times today. You are the only person who has ever thrown me a surprise party. I loved it, even though it was hard for me to get over the initial shock.
I hate the poems you wrote me, the pictures you sent me, the songs you played and sang for me, the hugs you gave. I close my eyes and feel your hair brushing my neck, your fingers on my back.
I hate the way we laughed together on the floor of my bedroom, my cat forcing himself between us, our eyes filling with gleeful tears. We were so funny together.
I hate the way we made love. I have never felt that close to anyone.
I hate the way you loved the families you worked with, the kids you taught piano--how your sincere and unabashed love for them softened your already soft voice whenever you talked about them, how that softness softens me even now when I want to be so hard.
I hate the way you told me I'm beautiful, how your words lodged in my heart and silvered the darkness. My heart glimmers with your sentiments, and you are not here to see the shine.
I hate the way you told me, four days before you ended our relationship, your fingers laced with mine as we moved through the airport, that you always wanted to fall in love on a plane, and that you had, with me, on our way home from visiting my family on the other coast.
Tonight, I could not bear to look at the fern you gave me as I watered her. I packed her into a bag, carried her to the trail I used to walk when we talked on the phone, found a spot dappled with sun and shadow, dug a shallow hole, tilted the green fringe of her into the earth, covered her roots, and wished her a long, healthy life without me.
I hate the memory of your skin, so soft. I used to press my face to your bare back when you were sleeping and listen to your heart whispering in the dark. I cry, remembering. The tissues I wipe my face with scratch my cheeks.
I hate the way you undressed so casually with the curtains open, as if the world outside didn't matter. How I could not not watch you.
I hate that you threw me a surprise party for my birthday and that the memory of it has surprised me several times today. You are the only person who has ever thrown me a surprise party. I loved it, even though it was hard for me to get over the initial shock.
I hate the poems you wrote me, the pictures you sent me, the songs you played and sang for me, the hugs you gave. I close my eyes and feel your hair brushing my neck, your fingers on my back.
I hate the way we laughed together on the floor of my bedroom, my cat forcing himself between us, our eyes filling with gleeful tears. We were so funny together.
I hate the way we made love. I have never felt that close to anyone.
I hate the way you loved the families you worked with, the kids you taught piano--how your sincere and unabashed love for them softened your already soft voice whenever you talked about them, how that softness softens me even now when I want to be so hard.
I hate the way you told me I'm beautiful, how your words lodged in my heart and silvered the darkness. My heart glimmers with your sentiments, and you are not here to see the shine.
I hate the way you told me, four days before you ended our relationship, your fingers laced with mine as we moved through the airport, that you always wanted to fall in love on a plane, and that you had, with me, on our way home from visiting my family on the other coast.
Tonight, I could not bear to look at the fern you gave me as I watered her. I packed her into a bag, carried her to the trail I used to walk when we talked on the phone, found a spot dappled with sun and shadow, dug a shallow hole, tilted the green fringe of her into the earth, covered her roots, and wished her a long, healthy life without me.
Saturday, July 8, 2017
Breaking Up
There are times when the body is too small to hold all the love and grief a human is capable of.
I am spread out on my bedroom floor, shriek-sobbing into the carpet, gasping into the beige fibers, pounding my fist. I am not large enough to contain this sadness. It reaches through me, wide as outer space, pushes past my skin, out into the world beyond, and still, I cannot scream as loud as I need to.
* * *
Today, the woman I love, whom I'd hoped to marry and build a family and a life together with, called me from California, and we took a walk "together." Overhead, the sun shone in a brilliant blue sky. Dragonflies and butterflies fluttered past as I walked along the trail on which I'd talked to my long-distance girlfriend a hundred times before.
On the phone, we caught up and shared some laughs, and then she said she needed to talk to me. In the past when she'd used this phrase, I'd always gotten nervous, wondering if I'd done something wrong or if she had some terrible news. But we'd just enjoyed a 4th of July trip to the east coast to visit my family, and I could see no reason for anxiety.
And then she began talking about a gut feeling she had, an unease. She suggested we weren't "aligned," that we were compatible in a lot of ways but fundamentally incompatible, that we didn't share a vision of the future, that she wasn't sure if she could be with an introvert, that it wasn't anything that I had done. She explained that she'd been having misgivings since our last fight a month or so ago but hadn't said anything because she wasn't sure. I was confused. I told her I wanted to marry her and that I didn't understand where any of this was coming from. I asked her if she was breaking up with me. She said she guessed she was. I told her that I loved her and that it was clear she had made up her mind and that nothing I could say would change that. I told her that I was devastated, that this was the most fucked up thing that had ever happened to me, that this was the worst. I told her I could not to talk to her for a very long time. I told her I loved her, and I said goodbye.
* * *
I am sobbing when I get off the phone, butterflies dancing around my head as I turn my feet towards home. Strangers who don't notice at first say hello. I try to smile through my tears. They quickly look away. I can feel the magnitude of my grief swelling in the bottom of my stomach, rising up to flood my heart. I have to get home. I pick up my pace. It is not enough. I text a friend, and she calls me right away. She walks me home.
* * *
I am on the floor, screaming. I don't care if the neighbors call the police and I am warned or even arrested. I cannot not scream. "Why would you do this?" I am yelling at God. I know it's not his fault, but I don't see the sense in blaming my ex-girlfriend, who is only human and doing the best she can. I yell at God, who didn't stop us from getting together, who did not warn me, who let me fall so deeply in love with someone who was apparently never going to be able to love me into marriage. I yell at God for making the world so hard. I yell at God because my heart is broken.
I text my therapist and tell her what happened. I have therapy in the morning. Divine timing? I can't tell whether God is an asshole or a saint. I tell my therapist that if it's appropriate, I need a really long hug.
I cry until there is puke tickling the back of my throat and I am hoarse from yelling. I cry so hard, my arms tingle and my hands go numb. I cry for three hours straight, decimating a whole box of tissues.
I text my family and a few close confidantes. They remind me that they love me, that everyone is wounded and doing the best they can. They tell me their hearts are breaking for me. They remind me that I am resilient. But I know I am resilient. I don't need God to keep proving that to me. I don't care that I am resilient. I don't see it as a positive. I don't want to be resilient. I want to lose my mind. I want to crumble to dust or become the sound of my screams. For some reason, though, I do not, as I have in the past, feel suicidal. I thank God even as I curse him.
My long-time best friend calls and pours comforting words through the phone. She makes me laugh and reminds me that I am so, so loved, that I will never be left alone with my pain.
* * *
I change my relationship status on Facebook and unfriend my ex. My best friend. I have not only lost the love of my life, I have lost a beloved friend. Because I'm not the type who can sweep all my feelings, attraction, and hopes under the rug of the past. Though I want my ex to be happy, I do not want to hear about her new life, her happiness that has nothing to do with me. I am not that big a person. My tears spill onto my cheeks and wet the carpet.
I am spread out on my bedroom floor, shriek-sobbing into the carpet, gasping into the beige fibers, pounding my fist. I am not large enough to contain this sadness. It reaches through me, wide as outer space, pushes past my skin, out into the world beyond, and still, I cannot scream as loud as I need to.
* * *
Today, the woman I love, whom I'd hoped to marry and build a family and a life together with, called me from California, and we took a walk "together." Overhead, the sun shone in a brilliant blue sky. Dragonflies and butterflies fluttered past as I walked along the trail on which I'd talked to my long-distance girlfriend a hundred times before.
On the phone, we caught up and shared some laughs, and then she said she needed to talk to me. In the past when she'd used this phrase, I'd always gotten nervous, wondering if I'd done something wrong or if she had some terrible news. But we'd just enjoyed a 4th of July trip to the east coast to visit my family, and I could see no reason for anxiety.
And then she began talking about a gut feeling she had, an unease. She suggested we weren't "aligned," that we were compatible in a lot of ways but fundamentally incompatible, that we didn't share a vision of the future, that she wasn't sure if she could be with an introvert, that it wasn't anything that I had done. She explained that she'd been having misgivings since our last fight a month or so ago but hadn't said anything because she wasn't sure. I was confused. I told her I wanted to marry her and that I didn't understand where any of this was coming from. I asked her if she was breaking up with me. She said she guessed she was. I told her that I loved her and that it was clear she had made up her mind and that nothing I could say would change that. I told her that I was devastated, that this was the most fucked up thing that had ever happened to me, that this was the worst. I told her I could not to talk to her for a very long time. I told her I loved her, and I said goodbye.
* * *
I am sobbing when I get off the phone, butterflies dancing around my head as I turn my feet towards home. Strangers who don't notice at first say hello. I try to smile through my tears. They quickly look away. I can feel the magnitude of my grief swelling in the bottom of my stomach, rising up to flood my heart. I have to get home. I pick up my pace. It is not enough. I text a friend, and she calls me right away. She walks me home.
* * *
I am on the floor, screaming. I don't care if the neighbors call the police and I am warned or even arrested. I cannot not scream. "Why would you do this?" I am yelling at God. I know it's not his fault, but I don't see the sense in blaming my ex-girlfriend, who is only human and doing the best she can. I yell at God, who didn't stop us from getting together, who did not warn me, who let me fall so deeply in love with someone who was apparently never going to be able to love me into marriage. I yell at God for making the world so hard. I yell at God because my heart is broken.
I text my therapist and tell her what happened. I have therapy in the morning. Divine timing? I can't tell whether God is an asshole or a saint. I tell my therapist that if it's appropriate, I need a really long hug.
I cry until there is puke tickling the back of my throat and I am hoarse from yelling. I cry so hard, my arms tingle and my hands go numb. I cry for three hours straight, decimating a whole box of tissues.
I text my family and a few close confidantes. They remind me that they love me, that everyone is wounded and doing the best they can. They tell me their hearts are breaking for me. They remind me that I am resilient. But I know I am resilient. I don't need God to keep proving that to me. I don't care that I am resilient. I don't see it as a positive. I don't want to be resilient. I want to lose my mind. I want to crumble to dust or become the sound of my screams. For some reason, though, I do not, as I have in the past, feel suicidal. I thank God even as I curse him.
My long-time best friend calls and pours comforting words through the phone. She makes me laugh and reminds me that I am so, so loved, that I will never be left alone with my pain.
* * *
I change my relationship status on Facebook and unfriend my ex. My best friend. I have not only lost the love of my life, I have lost a beloved friend. Because I'm not the type who can sweep all my feelings, attraction, and hopes under the rug of the past. Though I want my ex to be happy, I do not want to hear about her new life, her happiness that has nothing to do with me. I am not that big a person. My tears spill onto my cheeks and wet the carpet.
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Open Letter #11, to the one who opens me
We met about four years ago, and for a long while we were little more than acquaintances, mainly seeing each other in the context of a weekly spiritual group, though we did meet up a few times outside of the circle. Had I known who you were then, I would have done everything in my power to get closer to you. But of course, it wasn't time. Gradually, as we each became more involved in our jobs and romantic relationships, we saw less and less of each other, and then a couple years into our tenuous acquaintanceship, you moved out of state, and what little we knew of each other sat on a shelf, gathering dust, waiting to be picked up again.
Recently, after two years in which we were merely memories to each other, you brushed off the dust and messaged me to tell me you appreciated my writing and to ask if I would coach you. We picked up as if not a day had passed, and we began sharing our writing with each other. At first, we checked in a couple of times a week, but soon we were emailing and chatting every day. Little by little, we got to know each other, and against all odds, and also inevitably, we fell in love. (Of course we did.)
Then, after weeks of our falling through the ether of online conversations and phone calls, you flew up to Portland, and we fell into each other's arms for the first time. You pressed the whole of yourself against the whole of me, and I knew, just like that, I would never stop falling for you, that I would have to grow comfortable with the unmooring of my heart rising in my chest like Venus floating up towards the moon. I instantly lost all illusions that I didn't know how to love, that I didn't need love, that I didn't want to love. I also knew I could not hide from you: I would tell you everything; I would give you anything; I would do things for you that were beyond my comprehension. Loving you would change me.
You need to know how much I love you. But all I have is terrible poetry and possibly worse prose.
I turn my love on you
like a fire hose, and hope
it doesn't hurt.
I turn my love on
and hope
it doesn't hurt.
A fire hose. I'm talking about the force of it, not the wetness. Wetness. That is a terrible word. Actually, a fire hose is a terrible metaphor when I think about the way you set my world ablaze. (I am besot with awkward, ill-fitting metaphors and tired cliches.) Let me try again.
Our first day together, you re-organized the food in my kitchen cabinet. As I watched you sort boxes of pasta and cans of beans, you re-arranged the pantry of my heart.
The pantry of my heart.
Another terrible metaphor.
You grinned up at me from your spot on the kitchen floor, an unlabeled can of what might have been vintage tuna fish in your beautiful hand, and I knew, though I appeared to be standing, I would always be kneeling before you, my heart open and ready.
If my heart is a can, you are a can opener.
(It doesn't get better than this.)
(I am terribly romantic.)
You need to know:
For you, I would fight
the ocean, just me
and my pointy fists. I would
bare it all, I would
risk it all.
Does this scare you? (The ferocity of my feeling, not the terrible poetry.)
Sometimes I have even less than my own tragic lines.
In my life there’s been heartache and pain
I don’t know if I can face it again
Can’t stop now, I’ve traveled so far, to change this lonely life
I want to know what love is, I want you to show me
I want to feel what love is, I know you can show me
I’m gonna take a little time, a little time to look around me
I’ve got nowhere left to hide, it looks like love has finally found me
Yes, I’m quoting Foreigner. Because that's how much language eludes me when I try to tell you how much I love you. You amaze me, and I am incredibly grateful to know you.
I want to make fire with you. And put out fires. And swim in the ocean. And fight it for your honor, if I must. And roll around on the kitchen floor opening the cans of our hearts together. I want to know what love is with you, terrifying as it is. Please don't ever stop telling me where to put my beans. I love you, my beautiful matchstick, my glittering can opener. I love how you open me.
Recently, after two years in which we were merely memories to each other, you brushed off the dust and messaged me to tell me you appreciated my writing and to ask if I would coach you. We picked up as if not a day had passed, and we began sharing our writing with each other. At first, we checked in a couple of times a week, but soon we were emailing and chatting every day. Little by little, we got to know each other, and against all odds, and also inevitably, we fell in love. (Of course we did.)
Then, after weeks of our falling through the ether of online conversations and phone calls, you flew up to Portland, and we fell into each other's arms for the first time. You pressed the whole of yourself against the whole of me, and I knew, just like that, I would never stop falling for you, that I would have to grow comfortable with the unmooring of my heart rising in my chest like Venus floating up towards the moon. I instantly lost all illusions that I didn't know how to love, that I didn't need love, that I didn't want to love. I also knew I could not hide from you: I would tell you everything; I would give you anything; I would do things for you that were beyond my comprehension. Loving you would change me.
You need to know how much I love you. But all I have is terrible poetry and possibly worse prose.
I turn my love on you
like a fire hose, and hope
it doesn't hurt.
I turn my love on
and hope
it doesn't hurt.
A fire hose. I'm talking about the force of it, not the wetness. Wetness. That is a terrible word. Actually, a fire hose is a terrible metaphor when I think about the way you set my world ablaze. (I am besot with awkward, ill-fitting metaphors and tired cliches.) Let me try again.
Our first day together, you re-organized the food in my kitchen cabinet. As I watched you sort boxes of pasta and cans of beans, you re-arranged the pantry of my heart.
The pantry of my heart.
Another terrible metaphor.
You grinned up at me from your spot on the kitchen floor, an unlabeled can of what might have been vintage tuna fish in your beautiful hand, and I knew, though I appeared to be standing, I would always be kneeling before you, my heart open and ready.
If my heart is a can, you are a can opener.
(It doesn't get better than this.)
(I am terribly romantic.)
You need to know:
For you, I would fight
the ocean, just me
and my pointy fists. I would
bare it all, I would
risk it all.
Does this scare you? (The ferocity of my feeling, not the terrible poetry.)
Sometimes I have even less than my own tragic lines.
In my life there’s been heartache and pain
I don’t know if I can face it again
Can’t stop now, I’ve traveled so far, to change this lonely life
I want to know what love is, I want you to show me
I want to feel what love is, I know you can show me
I’m gonna take a little time, a little time to look around me
I’ve got nowhere left to hide, it looks like love has finally found me
Yes, I’m quoting Foreigner. Because that's how much language eludes me when I try to tell you how much I love you. You amaze me, and I am incredibly grateful to know you.
I want to make fire with you. And put out fires. And swim in the ocean. And fight it for your honor, if I must. And roll around on the kitchen floor opening the cans of our hearts together. I want to know what love is with you, terrifying as it is. Please don't ever stop telling me where to put my beans. I love you, my beautiful matchstick, my glittering can opener. I love how you open me.
Sunday, January 15, 2017
On Relating
When you are 31 years old and in the midst of an identity crisis that
has left you unemployed, directionless, and depressed, your younger
brother joins the leagues of people you know getting hitched. You take a
break from your job hunt to attend his wedding with your girlfriend of a
year and a half. While your girlfriend helps you and the rest of your
family decorate the church and prepare the food, you think about the
fact that your brother and his partner were together for seven years
before he proposed. In that time, you've been in three serious
relationships and a smattering of shorter ones.
You care about your girlfriend, but you don't know if you'll marry her. Watching your brother and his fiancé stride confidently up the aisle, hand in hand, you wish you had even a step's worth of their certainty--about love, your career, or anything.
A month after your brother's wedding, you begin taking shamanic classes in the hopes of finding your way. You light candles and beat a drum in the dark. You look for signs, talk to friends, send out your resume over and over again. You shuffle through old pictures from college and graduate school, study your smile, wonder what you knew then that you seem to have forgotten. How were you so happy when you had no idea where you were going? How do you get back there?
Finally, a few months into your shamanic training, thanks to a friend's recommendation, your frustrating search for full time work culminates in a job. You take on the title of Intensive Community-based Treatment Services skills trainer. You will go out into the community to homes and schools to help kids struggling with severe, often life-threatening mental/emotional crises develop coping mechanisms. You like the idea of helping people, especially children, and are genuinely glad to have something to do and a steady income.
During orientation, you learn the company's policies and the fundamentals of the charting software. The first week, you meet your coworkers and shadow a few of them, ask questions, study therapeutic techniques, and schedule appointments with the kids on your case load. You are nervous, but you are always nervous at the start of any new job. You think it's going to be okay.
Your first day on the job alone, you cry so hard on the drive home, your tears soak the collar of your shirt. You thought the horrors of your childhood would protect you from the horrors of the job--that your immunity to the emotional, sexual, and physical violence perpetrated against you would make you immune to that violence in your young clients' lives. It doesn't take more than a few weeks for you to know better. You cannot protect the children from their parents' dysfunction or from their own trauma, from the injustice of poverty, from a culture of disconnection, from the indignities of adolescence, or even (and especially) from the thought that death is preferable to life. The job you'd hoped would help you climb out of your depression only leads you deeper into the darkness.
You don't quit right away. The learning curve is steep. You are hard on yourself. Overwhelmed by anxiety, you lose your appetite; you don't eat more than a handful of calories the first two weeks. You wake up on the wrong side of the bed every day, your heart full of dread. You have frequent nightmares about work. You feel like you can't do anything right. For the first time in your life, you doubt your belief in the power of your mind to pull you through any problem. You worry you're a phony.
You grow increasingly distant in your relationship and, disconcertingly, aren't certain the job or even your depression is to blame. You want to apologize to your partner but don't because you suspect if you admit there's something wrong, you'll have to do something about it. You don't know how to fix it. You don't know what "it" is. You try to ignore it. It does not go away.
Shortly before your 32nd birthday, three months into the job that is draining the light from your life, a friend encourages you to apply for an administrative position at her company. You hesitate, still burned out on the last round of cover letters and interviews, worried about being weak and disloyal, concerned you may leave one job only to fail at the next, too. But your friend is persistent, sending you encouraging text messages, and her coworker friend, whom you had recently met at a social gathering, writes you a compelling email of sixteen reasons you should consider working there. "We laugh a lot" is on the list three times, so you submit your resume.
You are immediately offered an interview, which you schedule for the following Monday morning. You feel guilty for even thinking of leaving the skills training position, but in the days leading up to your interview, you receive clear messages that you are on the right path. First, you have a dream.
In the dream, you can't get your car started to go to work. When it does start, it carries you in fits and starts. You look up local mechanics on Yelp and find one nearby that has five stars and reviews by folks who say the mechanic is honest and will "cut you a deal if you can't afford the expense." When you pull into his shop, you fully expect you'll have to wait, but he comes right towards you, and he looks like a young, white, Iowan version of Jesus. Blue eyes, corn-blond hair, brilliant smile. He pops the hood and immediately diagnoses a dying battery as the problem. You believe him, but you say, "That's impossible. I just had the battery changed a few months ago." He tells you someone has been stealing your power. "What, like at night?" You imagine kids in the neighborhood popping your hood in the dark and draining the battery with a device. The mechanic looks right at you and says, "No, during the day." When you wake up, you know the battery is a metaphor for your energy, and that your job is draining you in such a way that you will not be able to keep going. Still, you aren't entirely convinced until you have a second divine intervention in the form of a shamanic journey.
You journey to your higher self to inquire about your job situation. Your higher self, dressed in a robe of sparkly blue, teal, silver, and gold, tells you to "go where you'll laugh a lot and where your heart is light." She tells you the work you currently do has you daily journeying into the dark to share your light, but that very little light is reflected back, and this is hard on your system. "You are not built for it," she says, but she also conveys the understanding that this is nothing to be ashamed of, that you cannot help how you are designed. She presses a ball of light into your forehead, and you feel it migrate down to your heart, filling you with a reminder of how you feel when your battery is full.
When Monday comes around, you know what's at stake. The interview goes well, and you are told you'll know whether the job is yours by the end of the week. As the week progresses, you begin to emotionally move on from your current job so that by Thursday morning, you realize with a sense of awe, excitement, and dread, that if you don't get it, you will still have to quit your soul-sucking job. You pray earnestly, and then, that Friday, around 6 p.m. on the literal eve of your 32nd birthday, your phone rings with the offer.
You give your current workplace three weeks' notice to allow them time to find a replacement, to give your clients time to adjust to your leaving, and to try to make yourself feel better about quitting. In the remaining weeks, despite the continued difficulty of the job, you begin to feel better. You laugh more, you feel lighter. So it is a surprise to you and probably your partner too when things at home don't lighten up.
You continue staying up long after your girlfriend has gone to bed, savoring the time alone. In the morning, when she heads toward the shower and asks if you want to join, you tell her to go on without you. You eat breakfast while she's in there. During the day, you hardly text like you used to. No more heart emojis. No more funny stories. After work, you come home and instead of making dinner for two or waiting for her so you can cook together, you eat alone. When she gets home and wants to exchange stories about the day, you feel inexplicably put upon.
One night, after another day of nearly no talking, your partner asks if you need more space. You suspect she wants to ask a different question and are relieved she doesn't. You won't have to tell her that lately you've been questioning everything, including the belief that you want to be in a long-term, committed relationship with her--or anyone at all. You are a mess. You don't want to be reckless with her heart, or your own. You need time alone to cope with the shock of the possibility that you don't want to get married, a thought so antithetical to your lifelong beliefs about relationships and about yourself as to be taboo. Before you say anything, you tell yourself you have to know what you are running from and why. You wonder: Are you running from her? From relationships in general? From yourself?
You ask a friend to do a tarot reading for you. "Am I happy in my relationship?" you ask, because at this point you don't know your ass from your elbow. She says you're running away. You immediately fear you'll sabotage a good relationship because of an unconscious belief that you don't deserve nice things. But to your surprise, your friend says running could be an asset. You think about that while driving home from your depressing job one night. Why do you think running is a bad thing? When have you run in the past?
You tried to leave home when you were six years old. You don't remember specifically what set you off. You remember feeling as if you didn't matter. You remember how your mom laughed as you marched sullenly through the front door, how she watched from the doorway, how easily she let you go. Her laughter followed you down the driveway, onto the sidewalk, and behind the tree in your neighbor's front yard, where you sat and cried and thought about how you had nowhere to go, how you would have to go back, back to a house where your father touched you too much and your mother rarely touched you at all, back to your inexplicable feelings, alone.
You cut ties with your stepfather after he proved he could not be honest with you. You've ended friendships and partnerships that felt incongruent or were destructive. You've muted relationships with extended family members who told you they loved you, "the sinner," but hated your "sin." (You wonder how they would have felt if you'd used that phrase, only ever used on LGBTQ people, to show them your love.) You can't remember running from anything that wasn't wrong for you, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen.
Hoping to find answers to the question of relationships, you ask the couples you know why they like being together. They talk about built-in community, security, friendship. You argue that these benefits can be gained from friends and family, without the hassles of coupledom--of domesticity, of serious compromise and negotiation. They talk vaguely about the rewards of relationship. Something about growth. They talk about the future, about growing old together. You remind them there are less irritating ways to grow, that you can get rewards when you sign up for a new credit card, and that old age doesn't actually last nearly as long as the present moment. The couples winkingly remind you that couples have sex, and you remind them that most couples fail to continue having sex--even boring sex--after a little while. Everyone laughs uncomfortably. The problem is, despite mounting evidence against relationships, you sense there is something to them, that there is something that your interview subjects know in their hearts to be true but cannot convey.
You search for answers in the past. You think about the two years you've spent with your partner. You review key moments--the first time you had a real conversation, the night you talked on the couch until the sun was nearly up, the first time you kissed, the day you got hit by a car while you were on foot in a crosswalk not even a month into your relationship and she left work to go to urgent care with you, the first time you exchanged I love you's. You think about falling asleep in her arms, the comfort of her closeness.
You spend a lot of time reflecting on the day she fell off her bike while the two of you were biking to a coffee shop, seven months into your relationship. You'd just moved in together the week before, and the stress of the move combined with the fact of your five part-time jobs was already a lot for you to bear. When your partner fell off her bike, breaking her left wrist and right kneecap, and she, understandably, wanted you to be more available to support her at home, you told her that you could not take care of her--that you, in fact, would not take time off from your five jobs--that it would be more work to take time off than it would be to go to work and that you would not be paid for the lost time. You reminded her you didn't even have enough time for yourself; how could she expect you to take care of her?
Though she was upset, she seemed to understand. She suggested that in the future you lighten your load, presumably so you could take better care of yourself and be a better partner. You could see the sense in her idea. It wasn't like you hadn't pondered the ludicrousness of having so many jobs. But you wondered when you would muster the energy and courage to make those changes. You reminded her that you couldn't do anything about your situation at the moment. So instead of leaning on you for support, she called her parents, and her mom moved into the spare bedroom to assist in the early stages of her recovery.
You think about those post-accident weeks, during which you continued doggedly running from job to job as your partner underwent wrist surgery that would prevent her from doing her job as an acupuncturist for weeks and essentially guarantee early-onset arthritis, as she shuffled around on modified crutches in a knee brace, as she slept fitfully (with the aid of pain medication), as she endured the disappointment of the sponge baths she took in lieu of showers, and as she massaged her aching body after dutifully attending physical therapy.
You remember how awful you were, your frustration upon coming home to counters cluttered with the day's dishes, boxes still unpacked from the move and littering the living room--how claustrophobic you felt in an apartment filled with your partner's family and their belongings after you had worked with hundreds of people all day. Though you sincerely appreciated your partner's parents' help, you deeply wished to have the apartment to yourself.
You remember feeling like a bad person for viewing your partner's injury from a self-centered place, seeing it as a horrible inconvenience in your life rather than a devastating disruption in hers. Yet, you also remember angrily thinking that if you had been in her place, you never would have expected her to drop her life for you. But then you also remember that when your girlfriend in college had a knee surgery that left her trapped in a brace and hobbling around on crutches for months, you leaped at the chance to help her. You remember how much love you felt for her as you carried her tray for her at lunch, helped her balance to sit on a shower stool, massaged her aching body. You had felt honored that she had trusted you to care for her. You had sincerely enjoyed experiencing, and showing her, your devotion. Helping her had not been a sacrifice, but a gift.
You know you have failed your partner. It takes a while for you to realize and to admit to yourself the deeper truth: if you'd only had one job when your partner had her accident, and if you'd had the means to take time off to care for her, you still would have turned your back on her.
The thought is terrible. You do not tell her. You know it has little to do with her. You do not want to hurt her. But, worse, even more than that, you do not want her to know how awful you are. You want her to think you are a good person, that you are compassionate. Of course, you know she knows you aren't perfect, but you're pretty sure she doesn't think you're awful either, and you want to keep it that way.
You want to want a relationship. Deep down, you think you do want one, even though the desire doesn't make any sense to you. Deeper still, you worry you are only telling yourself you don't want a relationship as a way to protect yourself from a darker, more worrisome possibility: you aren't capable of having a relationship; you aren't capable of loving someone else that much. You fear you've permanently tripped a fuse, burned out wiring that can't be repaired.
But you remember the fireworks in your chest the first time you fell in love with someone. You remember how you felt when she said your name--in fact, every time she said your name. When she looked at you. When she held your hand or wrapped you in a hug. The feeling is so visceral, your chest heats up; tears fill your eyes. You are shocked by this first memory of love. When was the last time you felt that way? You flip through your mental rolodex of relationships, pausing at each to test the fire in your heart. You realize that with every subsequent relationship, you have felt less and less.
It dawns on you that your current relationship might be entirely viable if you were able to feel more. Worried you'll run from a love you can't recognize or wind up in a relationship you can't commit to, and concerned you've lost something vital, you continue hiding your confusion and fears from your partner. You cry silently on your side of the bed at night. You remember the day your dog got hit by a car, how she tried to hide her ruined leg from you. You didn't understand her then, but you understand now.
You turn to a shaman for help. The shaman closes her eyes to see you better. She tells you there is a feeling in your heart, a feeling of self-deprecation, self-hatred. She tells you that fear arises when you're in a relationship and start feeling loved because you've had difficulty expressing love for yourself. She says that as you learn to cultivate a love for yourself, much of your fear will subside, and you will be able to be present in a relationship and deal with things as they come up. She says you need to dive down deep into your emotions and face some things you haven't wanted to look at. You think she's talking about your shadow. You have denied the whole of yourself for so long. You have told yourself that you must accept--and even like--that which does not make your heart sing--on so many levels, for as long as you can remember. Your quest is to invite the hidden parts of yourself out of the shadows, to get to know them, to accept and honor them. All the answers you seek are inside, in the shadows.
After months of chaste interactions and superficial conversations, your partner suggests you talk. You don't want to talk. You literally don't know what to say. You still don't have the answers you want; you can't reconcile your thoughts and feelings. Your partner is a good person. She feels safe, and you know she would never intentionally hurt you. But when you think of marriage, a house, and children with her, you feel yourself sliding down into the darkness, into a strange, melancholic, sedated panic.
You pray for guidance. You are not given answers to your questions, but you are given honest words. You tell your partner you aren't willing to make the sacrifices and compromises the relationship requires. You know this might be the biggest mistake of your life. You tell her you're sorry. You are sorry.
You run away and hope that someday, you won't need to run anymore.
You care about your girlfriend, but you don't know if you'll marry her. Watching your brother and his fiancé stride confidently up the aisle, hand in hand, you wish you had even a step's worth of their certainty--about love, your career, or anything.
A month after your brother's wedding, you begin taking shamanic classes in the hopes of finding your way. You light candles and beat a drum in the dark. You look for signs, talk to friends, send out your resume over and over again. You shuffle through old pictures from college and graduate school, study your smile, wonder what you knew then that you seem to have forgotten. How were you so happy when you had no idea where you were going? How do you get back there?
Finally, a few months into your shamanic training, thanks to a friend's recommendation, your frustrating search for full time work culminates in a job. You take on the title of Intensive Community-based Treatment Services skills trainer. You will go out into the community to homes and schools to help kids struggling with severe, often life-threatening mental/emotional crises develop coping mechanisms. You like the idea of helping people, especially children, and are genuinely glad to have something to do and a steady income.
During orientation, you learn the company's policies and the fundamentals of the charting software. The first week, you meet your coworkers and shadow a few of them, ask questions, study therapeutic techniques, and schedule appointments with the kids on your case load. You are nervous, but you are always nervous at the start of any new job. You think it's going to be okay.
Your first day on the job alone, you cry so hard on the drive home, your tears soak the collar of your shirt. You thought the horrors of your childhood would protect you from the horrors of the job--that your immunity to the emotional, sexual, and physical violence perpetrated against you would make you immune to that violence in your young clients' lives. It doesn't take more than a few weeks for you to know better. You cannot protect the children from their parents' dysfunction or from their own trauma, from the injustice of poverty, from a culture of disconnection, from the indignities of adolescence, or even (and especially) from the thought that death is preferable to life. The job you'd hoped would help you climb out of your depression only leads you deeper into the darkness.
You don't quit right away. The learning curve is steep. You are hard on yourself. Overwhelmed by anxiety, you lose your appetite; you don't eat more than a handful of calories the first two weeks. You wake up on the wrong side of the bed every day, your heart full of dread. You have frequent nightmares about work. You feel like you can't do anything right. For the first time in your life, you doubt your belief in the power of your mind to pull you through any problem. You worry you're a phony.
You grow increasingly distant in your relationship and, disconcertingly, aren't certain the job or even your depression is to blame. You want to apologize to your partner but don't because you suspect if you admit there's something wrong, you'll have to do something about it. You don't know how to fix it. You don't know what "it" is. You try to ignore it. It does not go away.
Shortly before your 32nd birthday, three months into the job that is draining the light from your life, a friend encourages you to apply for an administrative position at her company. You hesitate, still burned out on the last round of cover letters and interviews, worried about being weak and disloyal, concerned you may leave one job only to fail at the next, too. But your friend is persistent, sending you encouraging text messages, and her coworker friend, whom you had recently met at a social gathering, writes you a compelling email of sixteen reasons you should consider working there. "We laugh a lot" is on the list three times, so you submit your resume.
You are immediately offered an interview, which you schedule for the following Monday morning. You feel guilty for even thinking of leaving the skills training position, but in the days leading up to your interview, you receive clear messages that you are on the right path. First, you have a dream.
In the dream, you can't get your car started to go to work. When it does start, it carries you in fits and starts. You look up local mechanics on Yelp and find one nearby that has five stars and reviews by folks who say the mechanic is honest and will "cut you a deal if you can't afford the expense." When you pull into his shop, you fully expect you'll have to wait, but he comes right towards you, and he looks like a young, white, Iowan version of Jesus. Blue eyes, corn-blond hair, brilliant smile. He pops the hood and immediately diagnoses a dying battery as the problem. You believe him, but you say, "That's impossible. I just had the battery changed a few months ago." He tells you someone has been stealing your power. "What, like at night?" You imagine kids in the neighborhood popping your hood in the dark and draining the battery with a device. The mechanic looks right at you and says, "No, during the day." When you wake up, you know the battery is a metaphor for your energy, and that your job is draining you in such a way that you will not be able to keep going. Still, you aren't entirely convinced until you have a second divine intervention in the form of a shamanic journey.
You journey to your higher self to inquire about your job situation. Your higher self, dressed in a robe of sparkly blue, teal, silver, and gold, tells you to "go where you'll laugh a lot and where your heart is light." She tells you the work you currently do has you daily journeying into the dark to share your light, but that very little light is reflected back, and this is hard on your system. "You are not built for it," she says, but she also conveys the understanding that this is nothing to be ashamed of, that you cannot help how you are designed. She presses a ball of light into your forehead, and you feel it migrate down to your heart, filling you with a reminder of how you feel when your battery is full.
When Monday comes around, you know what's at stake. The interview goes well, and you are told you'll know whether the job is yours by the end of the week. As the week progresses, you begin to emotionally move on from your current job so that by Thursday morning, you realize with a sense of awe, excitement, and dread, that if you don't get it, you will still have to quit your soul-sucking job. You pray earnestly, and then, that Friday, around 6 p.m. on the literal eve of your 32nd birthday, your phone rings with the offer.
You give your current workplace three weeks' notice to allow them time to find a replacement, to give your clients time to adjust to your leaving, and to try to make yourself feel better about quitting. In the remaining weeks, despite the continued difficulty of the job, you begin to feel better. You laugh more, you feel lighter. So it is a surprise to you and probably your partner too when things at home don't lighten up.
You continue staying up long after your girlfriend has gone to bed, savoring the time alone. In the morning, when she heads toward the shower and asks if you want to join, you tell her to go on without you. You eat breakfast while she's in there. During the day, you hardly text like you used to. No more heart emojis. No more funny stories. After work, you come home and instead of making dinner for two or waiting for her so you can cook together, you eat alone. When she gets home and wants to exchange stories about the day, you feel inexplicably put upon.
One night, after another day of nearly no talking, your partner asks if you need more space. You suspect she wants to ask a different question and are relieved she doesn't. You won't have to tell her that lately you've been questioning everything, including the belief that you want to be in a long-term, committed relationship with her--or anyone at all. You are a mess. You don't want to be reckless with her heart, or your own. You need time alone to cope with the shock of the possibility that you don't want to get married, a thought so antithetical to your lifelong beliefs about relationships and about yourself as to be taboo. Before you say anything, you tell yourself you have to know what you are running from and why. You wonder: Are you running from her? From relationships in general? From yourself?
You ask a friend to do a tarot reading for you. "Am I happy in my relationship?" you ask, because at this point you don't know your ass from your elbow. She says you're running away. You immediately fear you'll sabotage a good relationship because of an unconscious belief that you don't deserve nice things. But to your surprise, your friend says running could be an asset. You think about that while driving home from your depressing job one night. Why do you think running is a bad thing? When have you run in the past?
You tried to leave home when you were six years old. You don't remember specifically what set you off. You remember feeling as if you didn't matter. You remember how your mom laughed as you marched sullenly through the front door, how she watched from the doorway, how easily she let you go. Her laughter followed you down the driveway, onto the sidewalk, and behind the tree in your neighbor's front yard, where you sat and cried and thought about how you had nowhere to go, how you would have to go back, back to a house where your father touched you too much and your mother rarely touched you at all, back to your inexplicable feelings, alone.
You cut ties with your stepfather after he proved he could not be honest with you. You've ended friendships and partnerships that felt incongruent or were destructive. You've muted relationships with extended family members who told you they loved you, "the sinner," but hated your "sin." (You wonder how they would have felt if you'd used that phrase, only ever used on LGBTQ people, to show them your love.) You can't remember running from anything that wasn't wrong for you, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen.
Hoping to find answers to the question of relationships, you ask the couples you know why they like being together. They talk about built-in community, security, friendship. You argue that these benefits can be gained from friends and family, without the hassles of coupledom--of domesticity, of serious compromise and negotiation. They talk vaguely about the rewards of relationship. Something about growth. They talk about the future, about growing old together. You remind them there are less irritating ways to grow, that you can get rewards when you sign up for a new credit card, and that old age doesn't actually last nearly as long as the present moment. The couples winkingly remind you that couples have sex, and you remind them that most couples fail to continue having sex--even boring sex--after a little while. Everyone laughs uncomfortably. The problem is, despite mounting evidence against relationships, you sense there is something to them, that there is something that your interview subjects know in their hearts to be true but cannot convey.
You search for answers in the past. You think about the two years you've spent with your partner. You review key moments--the first time you had a real conversation, the night you talked on the couch until the sun was nearly up, the first time you kissed, the day you got hit by a car while you were on foot in a crosswalk not even a month into your relationship and she left work to go to urgent care with you, the first time you exchanged I love you's. You think about falling asleep in her arms, the comfort of her closeness.
You spend a lot of time reflecting on the day she fell off her bike while the two of you were biking to a coffee shop, seven months into your relationship. You'd just moved in together the week before, and the stress of the move combined with the fact of your five part-time jobs was already a lot for you to bear. When your partner fell off her bike, breaking her left wrist and right kneecap, and she, understandably, wanted you to be more available to support her at home, you told her that you could not take care of her--that you, in fact, would not take time off from your five jobs--that it would be more work to take time off than it would be to go to work and that you would not be paid for the lost time. You reminded her you didn't even have enough time for yourself; how could she expect you to take care of her?
Though she was upset, she seemed to understand. She suggested that in the future you lighten your load, presumably so you could take better care of yourself and be a better partner. You could see the sense in her idea. It wasn't like you hadn't pondered the ludicrousness of having so many jobs. But you wondered when you would muster the energy and courage to make those changes. You reminded her that you couldn't do anything about your situation at the moment. So instead of leaning on you for support, she called her parents, and her mom moved into the spare bedroom to assist in the early stages of her recovery.
You think about those post-accident weeks, during which you continued doggedly running from job to job as your partner underwent wrist surgery that would prevent her from doing her job as an acupuncturist for weeks and essentially guarantee early-onset arthritis, as she shuffled around on modified crutches in a knee brace, as she slept fitfully (with the aid of pain medication), as she endured the disappointment of the sponge baths she took in lieu of showers, and as she massaged her aching body after dutifully attending physical therapy.
You remember how awful you were, your frustration upon coming home to counters cluttered with the day's dishes, boxes still unpacked from the move and littering the living room--how claustrophobic you felt in an apartment filled with your partner's family and their belongings after you had worked with hundreds of people all day. Though you sincerely appreciated your partner's parents' help, you deeply wished to have the apartment to yourself.
You remember feeling like a bad person for viewing your partner's injury from a self-centered place, seeing it as a horrible inconvenience in your life rather than a devastating disruption in hers. Yet, you also remember angrily thinking that if you had been in her place, you never would have expected her to drop her life for you. But then you also remember that when your girlfriend in college had a knee surgery that left her trapped in a brace and hobbling around on crutches for months, you leaped at the chance to help her. You remember how much love you felt for her as you carried her tray for her at lunch, helped her balance to sit on a shower stool, massaged her aching body. You had felt honored that she had trusted you to care for her. You had sincerely enjoyed experiencing, and showing her, your devotion. Helping her had not been a sacrifice, but a gift.
You know you have failed your partner. It takes a while for you to realize and to admit to yourself the deeper truth: if you'd only had one job when your partner had her accident, and if you'd had the means to take time off to care for her, you still would have turned your back on her.
The thought is terrible. You do not tell her. You know it has little to do with her. You do not want to hurt her. But, worse, even more than that, you do not want her to know how awful you are. You want her to think you are a good person, that you are compassionate. Of course, you know she knows you aren't perfect, but you're pretty sure she doesn't think you're awful either, and you want to keep it that way.
You want to want a relationship. Deep down, you think you do want one, even though the desire doesn't make any sense to you. Deeper still, you worry you are only telling yourself you don't want a relationship as a way to protect yourself from a darker, more worrisome possibility: you aren't capable of having a relationship; you aren't capable of loving someone else that much. You fear you've permanently tripped a fuse, burned out wiring that can't be repaired.
But you remember the fireworks in your chest the first time you fell in love with someone. You remember how you felt when she said your name--in fact, every time she said your name. When she looked at you. When she held your hand or wrapped you in a hug. The feeling is so visceral, your chest heats up; tears fill your eyes. You are shocked by this first memory of love. When was the last time you felt that way? You flip through your mental rolodex of relationships, pausing at each to test the fire in your heart. You realize that with every subsequent relationship, you have felt less and less.
It dawns on you that your current relationship might be entirely viable if you were able to feel more. Worried you'll run from a love you can't recognize or wind up in a relationship you can't commit to, and concerned you've lost something vital, you continue hiding your confusion and fears from your partner. You cry silently on your side of the bed at night. You remember the day your dog got hit by a car, how she tried to hide her ruined leg from you. You didn't understand her then, but you understand now.
You turn to a shaman for help. The shaman closes her eyes to see you better. She tells you there is a feeling in your heart, a feeling of self-deprecation, self-hatred. She tells you that fear arises when you're in a relationship and start feeling loved because you've had difficulty expressing love for yourself. She says that as you learn to cultivate a love for yourself, much of your fear will subside, and you will be able to be present in a relationship and deal with things as they come up. She says you need to dive down deep into your emotions and face some things you haven't wanted to look at. You think she's talking about your shadow. You have denied the whole of yourself for so long. You have told yourself that you must accept--and even like--that which does not make your heart sing--on so many levels, for as long as you can remember. Your quest is to invite the hidden parts of yourself out of the shadows, to get to know them, to accept and honor them. All the answers you seek are inside, in the shadows.
After months of chaste interactions and superficial conversations, your partner suggests you talk. You don't want to talk. You literally don't know what to say. You still don't have the answers you want; you can't reconcile your thoughts and feelings. Your partner is a good person. She feels safe, and you know she would never intentionally hurt you. But when you think of marriage, a house, and children with her, you feel yourself sliding down into the darkness, into a strange, melancholic, sedated panic.
You pray for guidance. You are not given answers to your questions, but you are given honest words. You tell your partner you aren't willing to make the sacrifices and compromises the relationship requires. You know this might be the biggest mistake of your life. You tell her you're sorry. You are sorry.
You run away and hope that someday, you won't need to run anymore.
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