I can be a nag. Or maybe nudge is the better word, or maybe whiner. I’ve been very lightly chastising myself for not doing the things I want to do or should do or need to do…. I’ve been putting off groceries and laundry (both are done now); I haven’t written a poem in forever; I didn’t write at all yesterday and I’ve been trying to force myself to write today. Part of the problem is that I’ve had no deep revelations and the internal conversations have been the same and gotten a little boring, I’ve taken almost no notes on my walks nor have I really spent my second cup of coffee time engrossed in a book, thought, moment, or writing. The last few days have blended together and none of it feels like reasonably decent fodder for a blog post. It is what it is. Nobody’s perfect. Good things come to those who wait. Go with the flow. So it goes.
The Book
I haven’t made much progress in the book I’m reading, Eat, Pray, Love. I just read a chapter in which Richard from Texas tells the author “find someone new to love someday. Take the time you need to heal, but don’t forget to eventually share your heart with someone. Don’t make your life a monument to David or your ex-husband.” At my last therapy session before leaving the Philadelphia area, my therapist said a similar thing to me. She was the counselor for my ex-fiancee and me. She saw us at our worst as we tried to be our best, and she always seemed to have hope for us. In those turbulent weeks after my ex left, my therapist was very encouraging in reminding me that what the two of us had was real, and that maybe my ex wasn’t ready for it. She would urge me to learn to live without hope – to accept what is. She said she could see how much I cared for and loved my ex, which would make the healing process long and difficult, but she, like Richard in the book, encouraged me not to put myself on a shelf. She said the way I cared for and loved my ex was a gift – something she doesn’t see in a lot of couples (they often come to her when the damage was done) – she said she’d hate to see that gift go to waste.
A Friend
In romantic terms, I’ve only said I love you to four women in my life. I almost said it to a fifth but something kept me back. The third woman I said it to was the first person I had a real relationship with after I got divorced. She’s funny and warm and affectionate. She had also just come out of her marriage and was dealing with the emotional bomb it had set off inside her. Ours was a roller coaster of a relationship. We were off and on again quite a few times. I don’t know what, if anything I was able to do for her, but being with her did two very important things for me. For one, she sort of woke me up. She made me a student of paying attention and being present and she brought a lot of laughter, fun, and affection back into my life. The other thing she did was put me on a path of trying to understand how two people work together. Our ups and downs made me want to understand what ups and downs should/could look like – they made me want to build an understanding of what relationships are capable of. She helped me begin the process of introspection as it relates to being in a relationship. Ours had a lot of the hallmarks of a first love kind of relationship. It was intense and probably immature. That relationship has also allowed me to consider that what she and were for each other might be very similar to what I was for my ex-fiancee… a type of catalyst, someone who would shake her up a bit, wake her up a bit. Unfortunately (or fortunately), my ex-fiancee was so much more than that for me. Having dated for three years, I had already woken up to the possibilities of love and had spent my time making my mistakes and learning about what I wanted. My ex-fiancee and I were on different parts of the journey and while I had hoped we would help each other grow for the rest of our lives, I’m learning to accept that that may not have been my role.
She (the ex-girlfriend, not the ex-fiancee) and I had seen each other once or twice in the last few years. Her kids went to school around the corner from where my ex-fiancee lived. Recently we’ve been in touch – she’s having some challenges in her relationship. We spoke for a while the other night – she’s still funny and warm and laughs a lot – which I think was a welcomed distraction for her. I don’t know if any of the advice I gave her was any good – mostly I shared some of my own heartbreak. I avoid telling people it’s going to be ok. I avoid the normal platitudes of “it will all work out for the best” or “what’s meant to be will be” or any of that stuff. The reality is, sometimes people never recover from loss, and sometimes people recover quickly, and a whole lot of people do what they can to get by – which often means avoiding the pain or finding a replacement or distraction, or any other number of coping mechanisms. I’m not sure there’s a right way to do any of this. She’s the only one who will be able to dig deep and figure out what this person means to her and if it’s worth fighting for or how to move on if it isn’t.
She and I talked a lot about being the type of people who wait or the ones willing to try again. We’re not usually the ones to leave, and when we do, we feel a sense of regret over it. I think she and I have a similar sense of what a loving relationship should be – one in which the other person’s craziness (because we’re all a bit crazy) is just accepted (maybe even a little adored) as a part of who they are. We also talked about being needy. I shared that I haven’t dated in over a year because I felt like I needed to develop more of my own interests. She reminded me that I’ve always had plenty of my own interests – which was nice to hear. I wanted to share, but couldn’t find it, the quote from Stephen Dunn about the dangers of people who don’t need anything – the type of leverage they hold. We both seem to find those types of people and both end up hoping that they’ll need and/or want us.
I spent a good part of my walks, yesterday and today, reflecting on the conversation she and I had. Talking with her reminded me that this is how most relationships end – with one person more ready or more invested than the other. I told her some of the things that I’ve been telling myself – mainly that the other person’s criticism or their version of the story doesn’t take away from how you viewed the relationship or the depths you felt.
It Should Be Easier
As we talked she said she’s never known a guy who seems to think or try to understand this stuff as much as I do. In my typical fashion, I blew off the compliment and said I don’t know how else to be. I talked a little about my dabblings in Buddhism, and how for all of the work I do in trying to understand (other and myself) and trying to be thoughtful and compassionate I often think that none of it needs to be this difficult. The other night my friend Stacy invited one of her friends to join us at a show (I met the woman once at a poetry event here in Memphis). As we talked, she shared that she was taking the Yale course on happiness. This seems to be our modern dilemma – an epidemic of unhappiness. When I pull way back, and set the Buddhism aside, and set the psychology aside, I look at these things (relationships) in their simplest form and think why do we let so many things get in our way? One of the hardest things for me to get over is that I feel like I’ve seen a type of light and simplicity that I wish I could have brought to my engagement. And while I don’t think I did anything overtly “wrong” I do feel like I could do it so much better. For now I’ll have to be happy with the fact that I’ve gotten a sense of this “awareness,” this ease, and be a little bummed that I can’t show it off to the person who inspired it. I didn’t want her to prepare me to be better for someone else, that’s just the way things seem like they will turn out.