Last night I got in to bed early and started to read some poems by Mark Strand. Earlier I had read a bit more of the novel I’m reading – it’s really good. The section I had finished was about a funeral and loss. It made me wish that my ex-fiancee, B, and I had talked more about her losses. As those dates approach, I can’t help but to think about them and her and her family. I wish we had stuck it out through those anniversaries – that I could have been there for her (or not depending on what she needed). I wonder if she’ll ever fully open up to a partner about that time in her life. Her last boyfriend says she told me more than she told him and he thinks she regrets sharing so much with me… The second poem in the Strand volume is called “When the Vacation Is Over for Good” – just reading the word vacation took me to the shore two summers ago when B first met most of my family. I couldn’t finish the poem – I was too distracted thinking about that week. It was the week her niece was born. It was also my birthday week. I thought about how we overdid it walking around Atlantic City (B was nursing a foot injury). I spent a few nights that week holding ice packs on her foot. My family was so different around her – somehow, everyone seemed closer and warmer. There was this odd opening up – she immediately fit in. This was our first vacation together. It felt really balanced. Not being able to read last night, I jotted a few ideas down (the skeleton of this first paragraph) and tried to turn in early – my mind wasn’t where it needed to be.
An odd thing happened this morning. Well, maybe not odd, but odd for me. My friend Lisa was texting and she said I seem different. She and I haven’t really found our groove as friends – in fact, that’s how most of my friendships here have been. I think they get built on filling in gaps, which isn’t the best foundation. I told her “you know, I’m just practicing social distancing” and that I was expecting a rough few weeks given the not fun anniversary coming up. Also, while they were not part of my losses, I find myself trying to sympathize/empathize with B’s losses (I didn’t tell Lisa that part). I explained the anniversary thing and that being socially distanced in a city where I don’t know anyone, not having a job, not knowing what’s next, etc. etc. has made life very uncertain for me. It’s also made me miss B a lot lately and have a deeper appreciation for the simple moments that we shared – stability in the midst of a storm. Not wanting to talk about it, I asked how the kids were handling the current situation. Admittedly, changing the subject or shifting the attention isn’t such an odd thing, but it was one of the few times I actually caught myself doing it. Suddenly, it was easier to care about what Lisa’s dealing with than to talk much about where my head is.
The other day I was suggesting to Lisa that maybe she needs a “replacement” in order to move on (advice I’ve been pondering for myself). The problem there is that when we go looking for someone to care about and receive care from as a way of “changing the subject” we simply avoid dealing with the emotions at hand. I suppose this is why people talk about doing “the work” on yourself – something I still have mixed feelings about. I like to believe that people can be and are self-aware. That when they go out looking to date or whatever, that they actually feel they’re in a good place to do it. I think women are much better at this than men are. The thing is, it’s really hard to tell when you’re filling a void and when your “ready.” And even when you’re ready, you discover things that prove otherwise. Right now, I can’t imagine being with someone else and having to explain feeling sad about my last relationship on the day we met or the day things ended – should those feelings pop up. Of course, the hope is that you’re so caught up in the present that the past doesn’t have that pull on you, or that the past takes its appropriate place. Are we all just looking for distractions from less pleasant things? Trying to find a way to put everything in its place? I turned back to a book I had read (How to Love by Thich Nhat Hanh). On the second page he writes, “Often, we get crushes on others not because we truly love and understand them, but to distract ourselves from our suffering.”
I often wonder if what B sometimes wanted in terms of space was the opportunity to be sad – the space to be alone with those thoughts and not under the glare of anyone else. In one of his emails to me, her ex-boyfriend said she’s been told that she lives too much in the past. I bristle when people tell me that about myself. I understand that they’re trying to be helpful, but it also makes me dig my heels in a bit. Grief – when carried long enough becomes a part of you – a familiar friend, and we (society) have a way of telling people that they shouldn’t be sad. We preach gratitude as the antidote to unhappiness – without seeing that preaching gratitude can be a lot like calling someone an ingrate. This is my biggest issue with cognitive behavioral therapy – move on, don’t look back. Just the other day, I read a good article (Therapy that Sticks) that counters this approach. I remember a few times when B would be sad about her past and I was either less than gracious or just really struggled to understand. I loved her, of course I wanted to see her happy and of course it sucked to see her sad. I wasn’t carrying that type of sadness about my past with me, so it was really hard to understand how or why she was – and I don’t mean that in a judgmental way – of her or of me. It’s where we were, doing the best with what we each had. I seriously couldn’t feel what she was feeling. I didn’t need that type of space to process conflicting feelings of being happy with the now and also losing the sadness that I had become familiar with… I remember she missed (forgot) her late husband’s birthday. She mentioned it a day or two later. She felt a little guilty for not having thought about it. It didn’t upset me, but I also couldn’t really relate.
Becoming deeply involved with someone is a re-wiring of sorts, a retrofitting, a reconfiguration. To some degree, it involves losing some of the self (Buddhism teaches that there is no such thing as the self). This, like all growth and change, is a challenge – at times painful. I expect that any type of moving forward, for me, will always be colored in shades of the past. It’s hard to think of a future so amazing that it obliterates the past, wipes clean the memories of these past two years. And while it may not be an appropriate place to live and dwell, I don’t know that I want to obliterate my past. I suspect I’ll have days when I’ll need space for these things. I hope that I’ll feel comfortable enough to articulate it to someone else (it’s why I work on articulating to myself). I hope that my partner sees it as an opportunity for understanding, and that I see it as an opportunity to connect and not push away. There seems to be a fine balance between finding that person who makes you forget the past and feel alive again… while also wanting to be a part of that past and help you create room for it – maybe it’s as simple as opening all of the windows on a spring day and allowing the breeze to carry in and out whatever spirits need to come and go.