Throwing It All Away

Again with the dreams! This time I dreamt that I was meeting with someone, I don't remember who or if I even knew them, but I was telling the person about the good qualities of my last love. "He's got some work to do," I admitted, "but he's an amazing person."

When I woke up, I revisited a conversation that happened this weekend when my kids and I went to our neighbors for dinner. She was asking me about the big departure in my life this summer, and, with my son sitting between us, asked me if I still missed my exboyfriend. I didn't know what to say. I hate being in this position - needing to be ok with something I'm not ok with -- and I guess I'm not sure where that need comes from -- because she wasn't really asking me to be ok with anything, just how I felt. But I didn't want to admit my feelings. I don't like them. They're uncomfortable and complicated.

I called up my friend tonight to tell her about the dream, and she said she thought I was trying to make sure that although I was letting him go, he wasn't being discarded, that he had good qualities too. She also said that she's been taught that one way to interpret dreams is that everyone is you, so maybe it also meant that although he let me go, I needed to be reminded that I have good qualities, and I don't deserve to be discarded, either.

This interpretation brought on the tears that started to show themselves during my yoga practice this evening, and that are keeping me company as I write this post, along with Phil Collins and company in this moldy oldie selection from my internal ipod:

Need I say I love you
Need I say I care
Need I say that emotion's
Something we don't share
I don't want to be sitting here
Trying to deceive you
Cos you know I know baby
That I don't wanna go.

We cannot live together
We cannot live apart
That's the situation
I've known it from the start
Every time that I look at you
I can see the future
Cos you know I know babe
That I don't wanna go.

Throwing it all away
Throwing it all away
Is there nothing that I can say
To make you change your mind
I watch the world go round and round
And see mine turning upside down
You're throwing it all away.

Now who will light up the darkness
Who will hold your hand
Who will find you the answers
When you don't understand
Why should I have to be the one
Who has to convince you
Cos you know I know baby
That I don't wanna go.

Someday you'll be sorry
Someday when you're free
Memories will remind you
That our love was meant to be
Late at night when you call my name
The only sound you'll hear
Is the sound of your voice calling
Calling after me.

Just throwing it all away
Throwing it all away
There's nothing I can say
We're throwing it all away
Yes we're throwing it all away...

That's All

I woke up today with this song playing inside my head, and indeed these lyrics are singing my pain this morning:

Just as I thought it was going alright
I find out I'm wrong, when I thought I was right
it's always the same, it's just a shame, that's all...

I ran into a friend at my daughter's school yesterday when I dropped her off, and he said, as only close friends can get away with: "You look exhausted. Are things not going your way?"

I told him that my boyfriend and I had broken up. "Really? Oh, that's too bad. That seemed like such a good thing for a while there." I nodded in tearful agreement. Yeah, it sure did.

Last night was the first night we tried to hang out with the kids as friends rather than lovers. We told the kids what was happening, and answered their questions to the best of our ability. Overall I think it went well, and I think we all appreciate working through this to get to a place where we can remain in each other's lives.

It ain't easy, though:

I could leave but I won't go
well it'd be easier I know
I can't feel a thing from my head down to my toes
why does it always seem to be
me looking at you, you looking at me
it's always the same, it's just a shame, that's all

I went to therapy yesterday, and she was very supportive of this decision and of my many tears, reminding me that this is a loss and I am grieving. I'll say.

 I think I'm grieving two different things: one is that he didn't, couldn't, wouldn't, as Phil and the boys sing in the last line of the next verse, say we'll be together to the end:

Truth is I love you
more than I wanted to
there's no point in trying to pretend
there's been no one who
makes me feel like you do
say we'll be together till the end

 Giving up the dream of the life I'd pictured together -- that's one piece. The other...

But I love you
more than I wanted to
there's no point in trying to pretend
there's been no one who
makes me feel like you do...

...is the incredible physical connection we shared. I mean it's still there, and we get to access part of it by continuing to enjoy those amazing hugs. But the sex we had together was really amazing, in a way that hugs just can't be, and I'm hard pressed to tell myself (or my body) that it somehow wasn't right. It was. And that's just really hard to understand in light of, as the friend I mentioned earlier said, "the Venn diagram of the two of you shows your circles sharing less and less space." This is true, and yet, so is the rightness of the love and the sex. It just doesn't add up.

I guess I don't have to understand it right now. That's not my job. My job is to feel it, and I've got enough on my plate just focusing on that task. Feel it.

That's all.