Spending time with a girlfriend whose relationship is somewhat similar to the one I just had was definitely helpful in terms of recognizing the aspects of it that I don't want for myself. Perhaps it also brought up some hard feelings about why I found myself in the position I did, why I ignored both internal and external guidance alerting me to the fact that I'd lost my own equilibrium. But it was and is tough to sort it all out, because while a part of me had lost my center, another part was more fully occupying it than ever before.
One way for me to make peace with myself about events in my life that are difficult is to recognize what it is teaching me about the world I live in and the people with whom I share it, and this experience is no exception. Before my last relationship, I didn't understand why people were in relationships where from the outside you could see that one person was more accommodating than the other (which is a simplification of all kinds of dynamics), but now I get it. In the context of that relationship, everything I did was 100% worth it. I believed so strongly that it was "right" -- that if I just gave a little more we'd get to the point where the scales tipped and he'd slide right into the space I'd wanted him to occupy: the space of knowing the truth about love and being guided by that truth to what seemed to me an inevitable conclusion.
Instead, the opposite happened. He saw and recognized the truth of our love but couldn't or wouldn't allow that to continue to guide him the way he did earlier in our relationship. And I was absolutely powerless over that dynamic.
Part of my healing process has been to recognize that it's ok for me to have wanted, and in some ways, to continue to want, the full manifestation of the great love that I experienced with him. I don't have to pretend to be ok with less than that when I'm not ok with less than that; nor do I have to try to get myself to be ok with having a relationship with him where I am getting less than that. I want it all, and I want it all with him, and if I can't have it all with him, then I'm going to have to have nothing with him so that space can be created for another possibility.
This song has been playing on my internal ipod -- and it cuts to the heart of what I'm talking about here:
I'm so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
'Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won't leave me alone
These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase
When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have
All of me
I'm learning that to continue to share my spiritual self with him -- the self that saw his wholeness, and saw mine reflected in him -- that doesn't cost me anything. But to continue to share the human, earthly part of me, well, that just prolongs the agony of losing this person with whom I first experienced the manifestation of this at-once mortal and immortal love:
These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase
I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me
I've been alone all along
I'm also learning that this is my job right now -- to learn how to see my own wholeness -- to be able to be alone and be complete at the same time. At least right now, it's nowhere near as comfortable as where I was, but I think this is, in part, because I'm doing things differently. And even if I'm not comfortable, I do have a strong sense that this is what I need to be doing...
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