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.