The Scientist

Settle in, gentle readers, this is gonna take a while, and it may require kleenex.

I've got a lot of processing to do, and the chorus of this song is on repeat in the background:

Nobody said it was easy

It's such a shame for us to part

Nobody said it was easy

No one ever said it would be this hard

Oh, take me back to the start...

Ah yes, the start. A friend said to me the other day that she still remembered how I glowed when I came back from the first weekend with the young-at-heart New Englander (that's what I called him in an essay I wrote about our love). 

I often think about the comment one of my friends made about that essay: "Hold on tight and there's no telling where it will take you." I love that notion, and having rediscovered that place inside myself that feels free to trust my heart and my body to provide what I need, I feel ready for that ride. 

But I can't do it, I won't do it, with someone who is afraid that holding on tight will cost too much. I lived in that space for many years, and I still visit sometimes when fear takes over temporarily, but mostly I am ready to take an open-hearted plunge into union. And in this post-marital world, that union, with whoever that lucky man is, comes with my two incredible kids, and the desire to build a home together and be a family. It'll still involve adventure -- I'm not going to let that go again -- but, it turns out, it'll be less adventure than the young-at-heart New Englander needs:

Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry
You don't know how lovely you are
I had to find you, tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets, and ask me your questions
Oh let's go back to the start...

Nobody said it was easy
Oh it's such a shame for us to part...

I'll say. But I have so much gratitude for the time we spent as lovers. I know, in no small part thanks to him, just how lovely I am. And I've found him and told him over and over again how I need him and how I've set him apart, but it isn't enough. Sigh.

And so, I am letting go, not out of fear, as I did the last time we broke up, but out of love and respect for the people we are and the choices we both have made and will make about our respective futures:

I was just guessing at numbers and figures

Pulling the puzzles apart

Questions of science, science and progress

Do not speak as loud as my heart

Keep speaking, heart. I'm still listening. I'm hurting, yeah. But I still trust you, and you're bigger and bolder and more beautiful than you were before you fell in love this last time...