Storybook Love

The New Englander and me in our early years together

There's no getting around it. I've been feeling sad these past few weeks.

I know that there is a period of adjustment after a breakup. I get that.

Something that is harder for me than normal life is returning home from a trip to an empty house. I've traveled twice this month, and the first time felt super hard, this time just hard.

It's not the loss of the physical body that I'm used to being next to that feels hard this time. It's the loss of the dream. The loss of the partner I thought I had. The loss of the life I thought we were going to share. The loss of the plan for our future. All of it gone.

This song was on a TV show I was watching tonight, and it made me sob like a baby:

Come my love, I'll tell you a tale
of a boy and girl and their love story
and how he loved her oh, so much,
and all the charms she did possess.

Now this did happen once upon a time
When things were not so complex.
And how he worshipped the ground she walked on.
When he looked in her eyes, he became obsessed.

My love is like a storybook story.
But it's as real as the feelings I feel.
My love is like a storybook story.
But it's as real as the feelings I feel;
it's as real as the feelings I feel

This love was stronger than the powers so dark,
A prince could have within his keeping;
His spells to weave and steal a heart
Within her breast, but only sleeping.

My love is like a storybook story.
But it's as real as the feelings I feel.
My love is like a storybook story.
But it's as real as the feelings I feel;
it's as real as the feelings I feel

He said, "Don't you know I love you oh, so much,
And lay my heart at the foot of your dress?"
She said, "Don't you know that storybook loves
Always have a happy ending?"

Then he swooped her up, just like in the books,
And on his stallion they rode away.

My love is like a storybook story.
But it's as real as the feelings I feel.
My love is like a storybook story.
But it's as real as the feelings I feel;
it's as real as the feelings I feel

Correction. My love was like a storybook story. It was as real as the feelings I felt.

Now, along with the gorgeously hued leaves on the trees, all of that is falling away, and dying...

Today I Started Loving You Again

Country music isn't my favorite musical genre, not by a long shot, but there's something about the old classics that I can't help but dig:

Today I started lovin' you again
I'm right back to where I've really always been
I got over you just long enough to let my heartache mend
Then today I started loving you again

What a fool I was to think I could get by
With only these few million tears I cried
I should have known the worst was yet to come
And the crying time for me had just begun

'Cause today I started loving you again
I'm right back to where I've really always been
I got over you just long enough to let my heartache mend
Then today I started loving you again

I feel you Merle. I've been there. But sadly, you are no longer with us.

Thanks for sharing so much of yourself through your music. You will be missed!

Last Christmas

The godmother of spilling

Tonight I had the good fortune of gathering with some amazing women at an amazing house to spill -- or write what was on our minds and hearts as prompted by our fearless leader (pictured at left in her evergreen boa).

The first time I joined the group was two months ago, and I was struck by how much more freedom and poetry they all had in their writing. I took a month off, and when I returned, I was determined to find a little more freedom myself.

In some ways I managed -- I didn't use my computer this time, I used good old fashioned pen and paper -- but I was pretty bummed when the lovely writing prompts (from the poetry of Nayyirah Waheed) led me to the well-worn topic of my heartbreak at the departure of the New Englander.

This is what I wrote:

"it isn't so much that i look for you,
but that i find you.
i find you in the expected places --
the trails we rode together, the parks where we camped, the bed where we slept...
and i'm ok with that
i'm prepared for those memories
i've practiced those tears
i know where they'll fall

it's when i find you where we haven't been
where we didn't get to go

that's when the idea of a second heart
a heart that doesn't have to forget you
a heart that's never met you
starts to seem like
my only path to freedom."

I cried while I was writing it, I cried while I was reading it. I thought by now I'd be past this point, but it seems, I'm not. So I'm just going to try to be gentle with myself.

And while I work on that, I'm gonna listen to Wham:

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart
But the very next day, you gave it away
This year, to save me from tears
I'll give it to someone special

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart
But the very next day, you gave it away
This year, to save me from tears
I'll give it to someone special (special)

Once bitten and twice shy
I keep my distance but you still catch my eye
Tell me baby do you recognize me?
Well it's been a year, it doesn't surprise me

I wrapped it up and sent it
With a note saying "I Love You" I meant it
Now I know what a fool I've been
But if you kissed me now I know you'd fool me again

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart
But the very next day, you gave it away
This year, to save me from tears
I'll give it to someone special (special)

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart
But the very next day, you gave it away
This year, to save me from tears
I'll give it to someone special (special)

A face on a lover with a fire in his heart
A man undercover but you tore him apart
Maybe next year,
I'll give it to someone, I'll give it to someone special
Special, someone, someone
I'll give it to someone, I'll give it to someone special

Who'll give me something in return
I'll give it to someone, hold my heart and watch it burn

I'll give it to someone, I'll give it to someone special
I thought you were here to stay
How can love be for a day?
I thought you were someone special, gave you my heart

I'll give it to someone, I'll give it to someone
Last Christmas I gave you my heart
You gave it away
I'll give it to someone, I'll give it to someone

...special.

Yes.

I.

Will.

Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise

This week I learned that my first boyfriend recently had a grand mal seizure, and when he went to the hospital they found and successfully removed a brain tumor, which was cancerous.

I was 18 when we broke up, and haven't heard much from him since, but the news still hit me pretty hard. It was one of those people are mortal, even my people, and they won't all always be okay kind of realizations that aren't that fun to have.

Speaking of not fun, this morning I ran into a friend's ex-boyfriend at my favorite coffee shop. He's super sad about their breakup, and always wants to talk about it when I see him because I'm the only person that knows them both. And I feel for him - oh man, do I feel for him. He's in the why does something so senseless have to happen to me phase, and I remember that phase very well.

Luckily, as I told him, I'm on the other side of it now, and I was able to share the lessons I learned by going through that crazy painful process of grieving my lover once removed:

1) Don't try to figure out why, or ask yourself what you could or should have done differently. You did the best you could and you can't expect more from yourself than that. Plus, even if you could figure out why, it wouldn't make it hurt any less.

2) If it seems senseless, it may just be senseless. Senseless things happen in this life every day. People sometimes have to bury their children. Accidents disfigure people forever. Loves that we felt were oh-so-right sometimes don't work out. We don't get to make sense of these things. We just have to learn to live in the new reality.

3) Trust that this loss is happening to you for a reason, that there is something to be gained for YOU here. I gained SO much from my own grieving process. I know that I'm way more capable than I was before that loss of being the kind of partner that I want to be to the man I love.

4) Believe in a world where if you lose a great love, they either eventually come back when you're both in different, better places or you fall in love with someone else and it's just as great a love as the one you lost. Those are the only two outcomes in my Universe, anyway. You know what the Universe says: Thoughts become things. Choose the good ones!

Heard this song in the car today, and it struck just the right chord for a girl who found out an old friend has cancer, is helping another friend through a breakup, and is gearing up for a beautiful weekend on Lake Superior:

There's a darkness upon me that's flooded in light
In the fine print they tell me what's wrong and what's right
And it comes in black and it comes in white
And I'm frightened by those that don't see it

When nothing is owed or deserved or expected
And your life doesn't change by the man that's elected
If you're loved by someone, you're never rejected
Decide what to be and go be it

There was a dream and one day I could see it
Like a bird in a cage I broke in and demanded that somebody free it
And there was a kid with a head full of doubt
So I'll scream til I die and the last of those bad thoughts are finally out

There's a darkness upon you that's flooded in light
And in the fine print they tell you what's wrong and what's right
And it flies by day and it flies by night
And I'm frightened by those that don't see it

And the best news of all is that my special super bright bike light came today -- so when the darkness comes upon me in Copper Harbor, it will be flooded in light -- road full of promise indeed!

Promise

Today was a bit of a roller coaster for me emotionally. No practice this morning, so that may in part explain it. Last day of tryouts for my son, that may be part of it too. When I got home from dropping him off, I argued with my daughter a bit and decided I needed to have a seat on my meditation cushion and see what showed up.

I know the point of meditation is not to think, but thoughts come: that's what they do. And the thought that came as I sat down was of the day five years ago that my first love and I got to revisit the summer camp where we met. It was such an incredible day, and when he and I were chatting this week over Whatsapp, we both recalled how perfectly delightful that day was for both of us.

And then I tried to let go of that thought. And then I succeeded. Sort of. Because the one that came next came not with a peaceful feeling, but with a flood of tears: I found myself trying to think of a day like that with the New Englander that would let me touch the goodness without all the sadness, but it wasn't possible. I thought of the first full day we spent together, and all I could do was cry. Although it was a beautiful day, that's not what I feel when I recall it; I just feel sadness and loss.

I'm at the point now with myself that I no longer wish to be feeling differently than I am. So I let myself feel sad, and afterward, as I went about my day, I felt less grumpy.

Later in the day, riding home on the beautiful path along the lake, my thoughts turned to the tears shed earlier in the day and why it still feels so sad. I think it's something about the promise I felt on that day and on so many days with him. It's hard when something promising slips through your hands. Really fucking hard.

Facebook didn't help by providing me with a flashback to the photo taken on this day last year, when the kids and I were camping with the New Englander in Maine at Acadia. That's probably another reason the sadness is more prominent today.

When I got home, I decided to watch a movie on Netflix. Without too much searching, I found If I Stay, which I hadn't seen when it was in the theaters but was curious about it.

Wouldn't you know it? This movie opened up still more grief about the promise of my last love, in the form of this aptly titled song:

And meet me there, bundles of flowers,
We wait through the hours of cold
Winter shall howl at the walls,
Tearing down doors of time.

Shelter as we go...

And promise me this:
You’ll wait for me only,
Scared of the lonely arms.

Surface, far below these words

And maybe, just maybe I’ll come home

Who am I, darling to you?
Who am I?
Gonna tell you stories of mine
Who am I?

Who am I, darling for you?
Who am I?
Gonna be a burden in time, lonely
Who am I, to you?

Who am I, darling for you?
Who am I?
Going to be a burden

Who am I, darling to you?
Who am I?

And in this line:

You're supposed to break up with somebody because you're not in love with him not because you're completely in love with him.

I wasn't 18 (like the character in the movie), but I found myself puzzled by this in my breakup too.

I don't get it. I may never get it. And I don't know how long it will take to get over it. How many more days, weeks, months or years will it be before the main thing I feel when I remember my time with the New Englander is something other than a feeling of grief and loss? I don't know.

But I know that the time will come, and I know that in the meantime, I'm fully capable of being and feeling where I am and what I feel today...

Photograph

Enjoying the paddleboat at our cabin!

Today my son and I spent another 5 hours in the car -- this time en route to his friend's family cabin in Western Wisconsin. Google maps told us it would be 4 hours, but we got lost. So did a lot of other people at the party, as it turned out, so that made us feel a little better.

We listened to the radio most of the way, listening to mostly old songs but also some newer ones. We also talked. I told him that I'd communicated with the New Englander and learned that he was headed to a wedding of a friend this weekend. And then I told him that for years I've thought that the New Englander would find himself at a wedding and think something along the lines of:

"Holy shit! I had this amazing woman and we had this incredible love and she wanted to get married but I didn't realize how good we had it and seeing my friends together, embracing their love and embarking on this path, really makes me wish I had decided to do that with this amazing woman whom I loved so much."

I didn't actually say all that to my son, but you might as well know that's pretty much how it goes in my head. What I did say was something more along the lines of "I just don't know how you walk away from a love like ours, and I always wonder if going to weddings makes him regret leaving."

My son said he didn't think it was a good idea to think about that now.

Methinks he is right.

Cue one of the many love songs we heard on our journey today:

Loving can hurt
Loving can hurt sometimes
But it's the only thing that I know
When it gets hard
You know it can get hard sometimes
It is the only thing that makes us feel alive

We keep this love in a photograph
We made these memories for ourselves
Where our eyes are never closing
Hearts are never broken
Times forever frozen still

So you can keep me
Inside the pocket
Of your ripped jeans
Holdin' me closer
'Til our eyes meet
You won't ever be alone
Wait for me to come home

Loving can heal
Loving can mend your soul
And it's the only thing that I know (know)
I swear it will get easier
Remember that with every piece of ya
And it's the only thing we take with us when we die

I too believe that loving can heal, that it can mend your soul, and that it's the only thing that really matters in this life.

We keep this love in this photograph
We made these memories for ourselves
Where our eyes are never closing
Our hearts were never broken
Times forever frozen still

But I don't want to be in the pocket of anyone's ripped jeans. Because our hearts were broken. And time didn't stand still:

So you can keep me
Inside the pocket
Of your ripped jeans
Holdin' me closer
'Til our eyes meet
You won't ever be alone

It marched on. Bringing healing. And also, in fact, a lot of time alone. Just enough to make sure I've got space in my heart to fall in love for real again...

Love is a Losing Game

There might be kind of a string of Amy Winehouse posts -- because the power of that movie and the music in it is running through my head non-stop.

This particular song, from closer to the end of her career, is also brilliant and sad:

For you I was the flame
Love is a losing game
Five story fire as you came
Love is losing game

One I wished, I never played
Oh, what a mess we made
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game

Played out by the band
Love is a losing hand
More than I could stand
Love is a losing hand

Self-professed profound
Till the chips were down
Know you're a gambling man
Love is a losing hand

Though I battled blind
Love is a fate resigned
Memories mar my mind
Love is a fate resigned

Over futile odds
And laughed at by the gods
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game

It can be. I wish that weren't the case, but it is. There are, of course, things we learn from these losses, and these are always the things we need to learn, but we have to be awake to these lessons. By the time her marriage ended, Amy was so disconnected from herself she couldn't take anything positive away from the loss...

Innocent When You Dream

Away he goes...

I drove my son to sleepaway soccer camp yesterday. It wasn't easy driving away, even now that he's 15 and has been away at camp before.  And today is my last day to spend with my daughter before I start my 16 day yoga teacher training intensive, during which I will get to see very little of my kids.

So I was already feeling emotional this morning, but this song put me right over the edge:

The bats are in the belfry
the dew is on the moor
where are the arms that held me
and pledged her love before
and pledged her love before

It's such a sad old feeling
the fields are soft and green
it's memories that I'm stealing
but you're innocent when you dream
when you dream
you're innocent when you dream

Running through the graveyard
we laughed my friends and I
we swore we'd be together
until the day we died
until the day we died

I made a golden promise
that we would never part
I gave my love a locket
and then I broke her heart
and then I broke her heart

Yeah Tom, it happens. And it's ok. Our hearts get broken in large and small ways throughout our lives, I reckon. And as long as we allow the heartbreak to open us rather than shut us down, it's all good...

Never Be the Same

Yesterday I read Sheryl Sandberg's post on Facebook about the death of her husband. It was really powerful -- if you haven't read it, I recommend it. Here were my big takeaways and what it brought up for me:

1) Sometimes it feels as if grief will swallow you whole, as if the emptiness you feel will consume you. But losing someone you love leaves you with a choice: you can give in to the emptiness or you can, as much as possible, choose to seek meaning in the life you still have.

I totally hear this, agree with it, and do my best not to let grief consume me. The further out I get from the loss, the easier it is to do this, but it can still hit me like a ton of bricks sometimes.

2) Losing someone you love makes you even more grateful for those you love who are still in your life.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Especially my children. I treasure every day with them.

3) After losing the love of your life, things will get better, but they will never be as good again.

Hmmm. I guess I don't know about this one. I didn't have the experience she had, where you find the love of your life, get married, have kids and expect to grow old together, only to have one of you die. I guess I can see how this might be true for her and people in similar circumstances.

But for me, I see things going one of two ways:

1) I'm going to fall in love again with someone new and realize he was the one I was supposed to be with and marry even though I thought it was the New Englander; or

2) The New Englander is going to have some sort of life-altering moment where he realizes he is worthy of love,  capable of giving and receiving it, and nothing else matters more than that, causing him to show up on my doorstep ready for round 3, or 7, depending on how you count how many times we've tried.

I know number one is more probable. I get that. And I'm good with that, if that's the way it's meant to be. I just feel in my heart that I need to be open to both possibilities.

Speaking of feeling in my heart, as I contemplated the third takeaway from Sheryl Sandberg's post -- about things never being the same -- my inner jukebox pulled out this oldie from Christopher Cross:

It was good for me
It was good for you
Now nothing either of us can say or do
Can change the way you feel tonight
Sometimes love just slips out of sight

Just one thing before you go
Just one thing that you've got to know
No one will ever touch me that way
The way that you did that very first day

And I'll
Never be the same without you here
I'll live alone
Hide myself behind my tears
No I'll
Never be the same without your love
I'll live alone
Try so hard to rise above

The years go by
There's always someone new
To try and help me forget about you
Time and again it does me no good
Love never feels the way that it should

I loved you then I guess I'll love you forever
And even though I know we could never stay together
I think about how it could've been
If we could just start all over again

Guess I'm not alone in maintaining the fantasy, huh, Chris?

Hold Back the River

I heard this song in the car on the way to my favorite Yin yoga class tonight:

Tried to keep you close to me,
But life got in between
Tried to square not being there
But think that I should have been

Hold back the river, let me look in your eyes
Hold back the river, so I
Can stop for a minute and see where you hide
Hold back the river, hold back

Once upon a different life
We rode our bikes into the sky
But now we call against the tide
Those distant days are flashing by

Which really set me up for another big release in class. As soon as I laid back on the bolster, as most people do while we wait for the teacher, the tears began rolling out the corners of my eyes:

Hold back the river, let me look in your eyes
Hold back the river, so I
Can stop for a minute and be by your side
Hold back the river, hold back

Of course, there's no holding back the river. Not the river that took away the man I loved most in this world and not the river of tears his departure left behind:

Lonely water, lonely water, won't you let us wander
Let us hold each other
Lonely water, lonely water, won't you let us wander
Let us hold each other

There's no holding each other. Not anymore. There's just me. Letting Go. Again. And again. And again...

Slip Slidin' Away

Heard this song in the car today:

Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

...and it felt appropriate for marking this day for a couple of reasons:

1)  Last night I went to Yin, where you can only dream of something slip slidin' away -- nothing happens that smoothly or quickly or painlessly. And yet, it may well be that it's the place where the most letting go happens. Kinda like with life. It's the heartbreakers that hurt like crazy that really open up a person. I should know:

I know a man
He came from my home town
He wore his passion for his woman
Like a thorny crown
He said Dolores
I live in fear
My love for you's so overpowering
I'm afraid that I will disappear

Totally get that fear, but in my experience, the more you walk toward loving another human being with your whole self, the more that self is revealed.

2) I went to hot yoga this morning, and try as they might, my band aids just didn't quite manage to stay in place through all the sweating:

Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away...

Love Love Love

Yesterday when I was looking for the new song by the Femmes, I found a similarly titled song:

Well, maybe I'm a crook for stealing your heart away
Yeah, maybe I'm a crook for not caring for it
Yeah, maybe I'm a bad, bad, bad, bad person
Well, baby, I know.

And these fingertips
Will never run through your skin
And those bright blue eyes
Can only meet mine across the room filled with people that are less important than you.

All 'cause you love, love, love
When you know I can't love
You love, love, love
When you know I can't love
You love, love, love
When you know I can't love you

So I think it's best we both forget before we dwell on it
The way you held me so tight
All through the night
'Til it was near morning

Ouch! This is gonna hurt for a while!

'Cause you love, love, love
When you know I can't love
You love, love, love
When you know I can't love
You love, love, love
When you know I can't love you

And when I heard it, this is what I thought:

Yeah, so that happened. Except I was the one love love loving and he was the one who couldn't love me. Not how I wanted him to love me. And I did know it.

In other news, I crashed my road bike today. All things considered, it wasn't too bad: Minimal damage to my bike: broken toe clip and messed up chain which some nice young man fixed for me at the scene, and minimal damage to the right side of my body: bruised and bloodied elbow, hand, thigh and knee. In short, I feel banged up, and I don't particularly like feeling banged up. I hope I don't wake up feeling worse tomorrow...

Changes

I went to the gym today, not just to teach yoga, which I love doing, but also to hit the treadmill. Reluctantly. I don't know what's going on with me this year, but I just don't feel like riding my bike in the bitter cold. I don't feel much like running in it, either, but I do feel like eating, so I can't really afford to give up exercising.

As I was winding down my miles on the treadmill, this song came over the speakers at the gym:

I feel unhappy
I feel so sad
I've lost the best friend
That I ever had
He was my dad
I loved him so
But it's too late now
I let him go
I'm going through changes
I'm going through changes

I love this song. I love how young Ozzy is, and I love how it reminds me of my love of Ozzy. That's right my friends, I had an Ozzy poster as a freshman in the dorms at UW-Madison. I only wish I had a photo to prove it.

This song also reminds me of my days in another dorm, my junior year, in England. I had a very good friend that year who was a huge fan of rockers like Ozzy and David Lee Roth, and he indulged my love of their softer side. I came to find out this indulgence was due to his crush on me -- which I didn't learn about until I had already gotten off with one of his mates from school. At that point in my life, I just wasn't able to pick up on subtlety, though part of me wished I had when I heard this song blaring from my friend's room in the middle of the day in our dormitory:

We shared each day
In love together
We found a way
But soon the world
Had its evil way
My heart was blinded
Love went astray
I'm going through changes
I'm going through changes
It took so long
To realize
That I can still hear
his last goodbye
Now all my days
Are filled with tears
Wish I could go back
And change those years
I'm going through changes
I'm going through changes

Oh well. I reckon we would have both done things differently if we could go back and change those years. He would have been more forthcoming about his affections, and I would have chosen my nice, attentive friend rather than his brooding, aloof mate. But we can't go back, we can only live and learn!

Don't Turn Around

The crew at the top of the "Beehive"

We had such a wonderful time at Acadia. Whale watching, sea kayaking, hiking, camping -- it was all really, really great.

We didn't leave to drive back to Portland until about 8pm, so it was late and we were all tired. I volunteered to drive since I'd had a caffeinated latte that afternoon which is not something my body takes lightly.

We all chatted for part of the trip, but then my daughter and my ex fell asleep and my son was playing a video game. Luckily, I had plenty of good tunes to listen to, including this one that felt quite apropos as I sang along:

I will survive without you

Don't tell me that you wanna leave

If you wanna leave
I won't beg you to stay
And if you gotta go darling
Maybe it's better that way
I'm gonna be strong
I'm gonna do fine
Don't worry about this heart of mine
Just walk out the door
See if I care
Go on and go, but

Don't turn around
'Cause you're gonna see my heart breaking
Don't turn around
I don't want you seeing me cry
Just walk away
It's tearing me apart that you're leaving
I'm letting you go
But I won't let you know
I won't let you know

Unlike my Ace of Base friends, I have let him know. And he wouldn't believe for a second that I don't miss his arms around me holding me tight. I don't know that I've ever missed anything more:

I won't miss your arms around me
Holding me tight
And if you ever think about me
Just know that I'll be alright
I'm gonna be strong
I'm gonna do fine
Don't worry about this heart of mine
I will survive
I'll make it through
I'll even learn to live without you

I know I will. I just wish I didn't have to, and being back with him this week is reminding me, as I knew it would, of all the things I love about him:

I wish I could scream out loud
That I love you
I wish I could say to you
Don't go

I felt that way as he was leaving Madison, but I knew I couldn't ask him to stay if it wasn't what his heart was telling him to do. And there's something about him here that feels healthier than it did when he was living in Wisconsin. If him going means getting healthier, then I feel like I have to be for that, even if my heart refuses to play along:

Don't turn around
'Cause you're gonna see my heart breaking
Don't turn around
I don't want you seeing me cry
Just walk away
It's tearing me apart that you're leaving
I'm letting you go

And I am. I did it once before, and then he thought he might come back after all, and then I told him the things I felt were issues that needed to be worked out before that could happen AND he had a big drag of a personal issue he had to deal with, and by May, we felt we had no choice but to call it quits. Being back together this week makes that seem like a huge mistake -- letting us go -- but I can't make that decision for both of us and I don't want to be with him if he isn't able to joyfully make the choice to be with me...

Rama Lama (Bang Bang)

{Bang, bang}

Those are the first two words in a song I was introduced to today. They are also a fairly apt description of what it felt like happened to me today.

There are moments, when I'm really letting myself feel my pain, where I would give anything for:

1) a gunshot wound, or
2) 26 miles to run, or
3) another couple hours of Asana (yoga postures).

Why that list, you ask?

1) Gunshot wounds: I have a new favorite show -- it's not new at all, but I'd never watched it, and I'm watching it now on Hulu. It's Grey's Anatomy, and gunshot wounds are among the many injuries with which the surgeons deal. By all accounts, they hurt like crazy, but the docs do their best to anesthetize the pain. No anesthesiologists were on hand at the workshop.

2) 26 Miles: My friend and training partner for the half marathon I ran last June, the woman who introduced me to the concept that a half marathon wasn't necessarily less than, decided to run her first full marathon. Filled with self doubt in the week leading up to the race, I tried to get her to focus on positive self talk and the evidence of what she's done in the past. She texted me tonight that she did it in 3:50. Her goal was under 4 hours. She said it was a beast. I'm sure it was -- I haven't managed to go the full distance myself. But in the moment when I read her text, all I could think was how magical that feeling of total physical exhaustion after a run is. Not to mention all those endorphins. None of which come with a sitting practice.

3) More asana: I realized today at the workshop that the reason -- ok maybe not the reason but a reason -- why I'm so intent on getting my practice in is to keep myself from really feeling what I'm feeling. Once again, today, when the time came to sit, it was a struggle. Not quite like yesterday. I had more tools. I sat more comfortably and that made a big difference. But after we sat we talked about pain, and the ways in which we numb ourselves or try to go away from the pain, and that it doesn't work. It can't. That the only way to get out of that vicious cycle is to see that you are in pain, and watch the tendencies that you have to push it away or numb or get yourself to feel a physical sensation to replace it -- even if that physical sensation is pain, it's not difficult in the same way as psychic pain -- and affirm that you aren't going to leave yourself.

I've heard that teaching before, in various guises, but today it really hit me in a new way. Maybe because I wasn't trying to figure out how it applied to my Dad or my last boyfriend, but instead I was breathing in how it applies to me. And it hurt.

Yesterday during the workshop when I felt the tears coming, I stopped them. Today I let them rip. It was uncomfortable, not unlike the discomfort I felt being singled out as the one who hates meditation because of the comment I made yesterday, but it was better than pushing them back down. By the last hour, I was really ready for the weekend to be over. I started thinking about getting a latte and going home to watch an episode of Grey's. As the last hour progressed, I started to get a headache. A really bad headache. I made it through, rode my bike partway home with another workshop participant, and then started up the hill for the solo part of the journey. My head was pounding so hard I felt like I was going to throw up. I almost got off my bike to lie down in someone's lawn but I wanted to be home, so I rode on. When I got home, I tried cold on my head, I tried heat, I forced myself to eat something so I could take some Ibuprofen, and then I crawled into bed and managed to fall asleep. For three hours. When I woke, I still had a headache, but not nearly as severe.

I'm guessing it was some kind of release. It seemed to serve the same purpose as nausea during pregnancy -- when you feel sick, you don't want to drink -- the body's way of protecting the baby during the first trimester. When I left that retreat with my head pounding, I couldn't go get the things that would take me out of the space I was in -- coffee, tv -- I was in too much pain to access them. And maybe that's what my body/heart/mind/soul needed:

Could a body close the mind out
Stitch a seam across the eye?
If you can be good, you'll live forever
If you're bad, you'll die when you die

Hearing only one true note
On the one and only sound
Unzip my body, take my heart out
'Cause I need a beat to give this tune

I love the image that that last verse conjures up. Like you could just take out your heart and remove the source of your pain, and just use its beat as music. This chick, Roisin, is super cool, but unfortunately, the message of the workshop was not to unzip your body and take your heart out. It was to go more deeply inside it. Especially to the places that scare you. "You can get so much closer to the pain than you think you can," Michael assured us.

I'm here to tell you that you can, but it will hurt. A lot. And I've got a ways to go before I get as close as I have a feeling I'm going to need to go to really heal.

I'm feeling tonight a bit like I did after I had left my husband and then found out that a family member had died. I just so badly wanted to be comforted. I showed up on his doorstep in tears and he told me it wasn't fair to him. And it wasn't. I get that. But I wanted to be held.

That's how I feel tonight. Like I understand that this is the path I am on. I get that it involves loss. I get that I am alone right now. I get that I need and want to follow my heart:

And if I need a rhythm
It'll be to my heart I listen
If it don't put me too far wrong
And if I, and if I

And if I need a rhythm
It's gonna be to my heart I listen
If it don't put me too far wrong

And that it won't put me too far wrong. But damn I wish there was someone here to hold me tonight...

Walking After You

With all the snow flurries lately, I've been doing my share of shoveling, and I often listen to Slacker while I shovel. Today when I went to turn it on, they had a top 33 Foo Fighters countdown in honor of that sexy frontman Dave Grohl's January birthday.

I had never heard this song before, but it sure is lovely:

Tonight I'm tangled in my blanket of clouds
dreaming aloud
things just won't do without you
matter of fact
I'm on your back

I certainly went through a separation that wouldn't do for me this summer/fall. But on his back? Nah.

if you walk out on me
I'm walking after you

Walking after him? Nah. I wanted to, but I knew that he needed to go, and that if everything I felt about us turned out to be true, he'd come back:

if you'd accept surrender
I'll give up some more
weren't you adored
I cannot be without you
matter of fact
I'm on your back

if you walk out on me
I'm walking after you

another heart cracked
in two
I'm on your back

I'm not gonna lie. I can't, really, because my blog chronicles the story of my heartbreak. My heart felt like it was cracked in two. It had some healing to do, no question. Some healing from old wounds. Some healing from new ones. And I'm still going to need to heal from that separation.

So far though, that healing seems to be happening more rapidly by embracing the love again. The love that never went anywhere.

Turns out, I didn't need to be on his back, 'cause I was in his heart. The whole time. Looking back on it now, I might've just trusted that would be the case. Because part of me knew it. But I was afraid. Afraid that if I trusted and lost, it would hurt more.

In hindsight, I don't really think it works that way, but I also wonder: if I hadn't left a space for the possibility that we weren't meant to be, would he have had the space he needed to arrive at the conclusion that we are? Methinks not.

A friend of mine said to me that she thinks if she'd gotten a phone call six months after she'd told her boyfriend what she needed and he'd chosen what appeared to be the opposite of giving it to her, she would have been tempted to tell him she'd moved on.

"Yeah," I said. "And if that had been true for me, I probably would've said that. But it wasn't." And it isn't...

Romeo and Juliet

I was in need of a sing-a-long number on my way to work this morning, so I got out an old CD mix and stumbled onto one of my all time favorite songs about heartbreak:

Love struck Romeo
Sings the streets a serenade
He's layin' everybody low
He's got a love song that he made
Well he finds a convenient street light
And he steps out of the shade and says something like
"You and me babe how about it?"

Juliet says, "Hey it's Romeo
You nearly gave me a heart attack yeah well"
He's underneath my window now she's singin'
"Hey la my boyfriend's back
You shouldn't come around here
Singin' up to people like that
Oh anyway, what you gonna do about it?"

Oh Juliet the dice were loaded from the start
And I bet
And you exploded into my heart
And I forget, I forget the movie song
When you gonna realize?
It was just that the time was wrong
Julie

For me there's something particularly cruel about the idea that love is right but the timing is wrong, but lucky for me, my favorite verse to belt out is up next:

We both come up on different streets
And they were both streets of shame
They're both dirty both mean
And yes even our dreams were the same
But I dreamed your dream for you
And now your dream is real so tell me honey
Now how can you look at me as
If I were just another one of your deals?

Oh, I used to scream that line when I was a young co-ed, and I'm pleased to report it was just as satisfying as a forty-something soccer Mom:

Now you can fall for chains of silver
And you can fall for chains of gold
You know you, you fall for pretty strangers
And the promises since they hold
Well you promised me everything
And then you, and then you promised me thick and thin
And now you just turn away and say
"Romeo I think I used to have a scene with him"

Oh Juliet when we made love you used to cry
You said, "I love you like the stars above
I'm gonna love you till I die"
There's a place for us, I know you know this song
Now when you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong?
Julie I'm so in love
So in love yeah

Somehow, just because I read about it happening in a high school English class, I didn't really believe that when you love someone like the stars above, the timing might still be wrong:

But I can't do the talk
Like they talk on my TV screen
I can't do a love song
Not the way you sung it to me
I can't do anything
But I would do anything for you, oh no
I can't do anything
Except be in love with you

Yeah now all I do is miss you
And the way it used to be
And all, and all I do is keep the beat
I keep bad, bad company
And all I do is kiss you
Through the bars of this rhyme
When Julie I'd do the stars with you
Anytime

Then again, I didn't really think you could love someone that much, and now I know you can.

Thanks IG, for this fabulously satisfying song about a big, big love that wasn't fully realized on the material plane. Just in case that's how it goes down for me, I'm glad to know you and your song are here for me...

Be Careful of My Heart

I got a sweet email from an old friend and reader of my blog who suggested that this song would be apropos right now, and I reckon she's right:

You and your sweet smile
You and all your tantalizing ways
You and your honey lips
You and all the sweet things that they say
You and your wild wild ways
One day you just up and walked away
Oh you left me hurting

Yeah he did.

But I can forgive you for that now
You taught me something
Something took me half my life to learn
When you give all yourself away
Just tell them to be careful of your heart

I can forgive him, especially since I feel we both gained something from him leaving, but I am gonna need him to listen up to Tracy's wise words:

Be careful of my heart, heart
Be careful of this heart of mine
Be careful of my heart, heart
It just might break and send some splinters flying
Be careful of my heart, heart
Be careful

Please...

Wrecking Ball

I'm home with my kids this afternoon, and I was happily cooking them lunch while singing this song, which has been in my head the past few days:

I came in like a wrecking ball
I never hit so hard in love
All I wanted was to break your walls
All you ever did was wreck me
Yeah, you, you wreck me

"Mom! That's Miley Cyrus!" my son said, full of consternation that I should deign to sing such frivolous top 40 music.

"I know, but I like it!" I retorted. And then I watched the video -- wowza! Smokin' hot.

And finally, though the lyrics don't tell the exact story of my last love, the overall tenor of the song is definitely apropos:

We clawed, we chained our hearts in vain
We jumped never asking why
We kissed, I fell under your spell.
A love no one could deny

Don't you ever say I just walked away
I will always want you
I can't live a lie, running for my life
I will always want you

I came in like a wrecking ball
I never hit so hard in love
All I wanted was to break your walls
All you ever did was wreck me
Yeah, you, you wreck me

I put you high up in the sky
And now, you're not coming down
It slowly turned, you let me burn
And now, we're ashes on the ground

Don't you ever say I just walked away
I will always want you
I can't live a lie, running for my life
I will always want you...

If You Leave

This morning I woke up long before I actually got out of bed. It's such a peaceful time, that time in between wakefulness and sleep. I also recently learned from Jonah Lehrer's Imagine that it is the time of day most often filled with insight. He even suggests setting your alarm before you have to get up so you can lie in bed and give yourself space to think and get inspired.

I've been dealing once again with pain in my back, only this time, it's not the base of the spine, and it's not my neck -- it's the mid-low back. That, and an area of tightness right behind my heart that vacillates between merely annoying and somewhat debilitating. Yep, that's my body's not-so-subtle way of saying we're not done dealing with this heartbreak.

When this song came to me during insight time this morning, it felt like an old friend that finally came calling again after being away too long. But I also wondered why it hadn't come to me during the big leaving I experienced this summer?

If you leave, don't leave now
Please don't take my heart away
Promise me just one more night
Then we'll go our separate ways

We always had time on our side
But now it's fading fast
Every second, every moment
We've gotta, we've gotta make it last

I touch you once I touch you twice
I won't let go at any price
I need you now like I needed you then
You always said, "We'd still be friends someday"

If you leave I won't cry
I won't waste one single day
But if you leave, no don't look back
I'll be running the other way

Seven years went under the bridge
Like time was standing still
Heaven knows what happens now
You've gotta, you've gotta say you will

I touch you once, I touch you twice
I won't let go at any price
I need you now like I needed you then
You always said, "We'd still be friends someday, someday"

I touch you once, I touch you twice
I won't let go at any price
I need you now like I needed you then
You always said, "We'd still be friends someday"

Oh, if you leave
Oh, if you leave
Oh, if you leave
Oh, if you leave
Please don't leave

All I can think is that maybe it hit a little too close to home? Maybe I wasn't up for singing my pain quite like this when I was right in the middle of it? I'm not sure.

But it's here now, and listening to it, reading the lyrics, knowing that this is exactly what I've been through, makes me wonder how I survived it. How anyone survives devastating losses.

Resiliency. Grace. Faith. Friendship. Music. Thanks guys. Couldn't have done it without you...