Tapping Through My Tears, Wind in My Hair, Earth Beneath My Feet

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.

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.

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.

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.