Don't You Forget

How could someone who loves my heart so much choose to break it?

That's the question that today is posing for me, and it's a lot tougher than the ones I faced yesterday.

I should clarify: it's tougher to swallow, tougher to sit with, but not really tougher to answer. I think I know the answer: because he didn't feel he had any other choice. And like a lot of things in life, knowing the answer doesn't make it hurt any less.

The question hit me like a ton of bricks when I finished watching Take This Waltz, a heartbreaker of a movie with some seriously heartbreaking music from a super cool dude previously unknown to me:

There are things
That I say
That don't mean a thing anyway

And don't you
And don't you forget about me
forget about me
And don't you
And don't you forget about me
forget about me
forget about me

And there are things
That I do
That don't mean a thing anyway

And don't you
And don't you forget about me
forget about me

I'm not really worried that he'll forget about me. I'm worried he's already forgotten the most important thing any of us can ever do, something he taught me how to do, promised in writing that he would do, and then drove away from, and that is love someone with your whole heart, and then hang onto it, nurture it, and go to the mats to to try to resuscitate it if it’s injured.

Let's just say Micah P. Hinson isn't the only one for whom these lyrics ring true:

There are things
That I say
That don't mean a thing anyway
They don't mean a thing anyway

There are things
That I do
That don't mean a thing anyway
They don't mean a thing anyway

That's how it feels to me right now, but I also know in my heart of hearts that if he'd felt capable of staying true to the things he spoke from his heart, he would have done them instead of doing something that feels to me like a contradiction. Again, knowing this does not make it hurt any less.

One of my best friends called me in the middle of my crying jag last night and I told her what I was grappling with (and writing about here). She said she didn't know if that was true for her because she wasn't sure that she'd ever said or done something that didn't mean a thing anyway. "I have," I admitted. "In my marriage." And then she said "Oh yeah, I guess I did too, in my marriage. I guess I said and did things in response to the way I wanted things to be instead of in response to how they really were."

Is that what he was doing? I really hope not, and I truly don't think so, but I guess in a way, does it really matter, given that the outcome is the same? Either way, it hurts like hell.

When I woke up this morning, I could feel it in my solar plexus. That's where the core of our being lies, the oldest part of us, the part of us that, when it gets activated, is usually communicating some old wounds, some of the original vulnerability we had at our core when someone we loved let us down the first time, likely our parents.

Before this last love, I was never able to fully share what was parked in my solar plexus for years. And in sharing it, I got to let go of some of those old wounds that weren't serving my grown woman self. I guess I should be grateful for that. And I am. It's just that now he's gone, and I'm back here, in this super raw awful scary ouchy yucky place, only this time without someone so beautiful to hold me. Now those arms belong to memories of the one who has held me in that sacred place and fantasies of arms that belong to some other beautiful man I've yet to meet, neither of which can actually physically hold me or bring me comfort.

Holy f$#@ this hurts. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend who told me that by the time he was my age he'd said goodbye to three great loves. I walked away thinking: "Wow. This happens all the time."

But it doesn't feel like something that happens all the time. It feels like it's never happened to anyone quite like this, but maybe it's like birth in that way. The Onion once had a headline "Miracle of birth celebrated for 83 billionth time." When you have a baby, it feel like the biggest deal that's ever happened in the history of the world, and yet it happens all the time. I guess heartbreak is like that too.

That makes me feel a little teensy bit better -- the oneness and all -- but unlike birth, heartbreak offers no beautiful baby that you get to take home with you...