I have a few things to say

It's been a long time since I have written. A lot has been happening. The changes I have gone through emotionally have been too frequent to write about (I'd think 'I need to write about this' but two minutes later I'd feel differently), and to be perfectly honest, the process has been too personal even to share here. It is not what I intended to do, but I have found healing to be an incredible and at times overwhelming thing that happens to both the human body and soul. Sometimes it is all you can do to step back and let it take place. I feel that what I have been through in the last few weeks is so personal, so individual, so dark at times, and so filled with potential at others that it can only be uniquely mine. So I apologize if that is not what I promised or what you expected, but it is the process and I am learning to go with the flow. Today I'd like to share with you the experiences of one day, and some of the insights I have come to recently. It is a story of healing, that took place a week or so ago in Michigan. Michigan is my home, and a place where Matt and I spent many happy days and nights on the shore of lake Huron. Here is a journal entry I wrote one afternoon.

July 24, 2010
Rain. Said goodbye to Matt today in the rain. Sitting on the rocks, staring into the lake, I heard sounds I've never heard before and felt things I've never felt, though I have been here many times. Did you know that you can hear a storm coming before it gets close to you? Whistling through the tress, banging on tin roofs, pounding the ocean, breeding its own kind of anticipation. Did you know that you can watch a storm lifting, see the line of sky where the clouds shift, fading from calm to black, hear it rustle through the branches as it leaves a line in the sun, light in its wake, did you know? How warm you can feel as the rain pours down on you, feels good on your skin as it slowly drenches you, like the feeling of relief, so I protect my mug of tea but not my head, drink it slowly, earl grey, how ironic, tastes like rain water, let it fill up again with tears. I cried. I cry and it feels good. I watch one self of mine going back into the house, warm with love, and chopping every vegetable imaginable to make a huge kettle of soup, watch myself drinking it down. There is therapy in chopping, there is comfort in a soup made by two mothers. but I do not do this and then the rain comes again and I cry again, let myself be washed over by these rains like spring, and I am warm again, and I cannot tell what are tears and what are rain drops, it seems my whole body is saying goodbye. Goodbye. You are only a memory now. You no longer exist. Oh you were good, and I will miss you, I know. It is ok to miss. Goodbye old friend. You were good. I loved you wholly. Goodbye. Goodbye old friend. It was fun, wasn't it? Those memories are happy ones, but you are gone now. Goodbye. Goodbye old friend, I say to the sky alone, goodbye. Rain down on me. Drench me. Goodbye old friend. I see a ship in the distance, a sailboat with no sail washed by choppy waters. Goodbye my friend. I see it also in my mind, and there it is packed with things, the labors of a love. It is packed with him, with the memories, with the pain and the love he carries, the things he will need with him. Goodbye old friend. I kiss him goodbye. I have prepared you with everything you need for your journey through life. I have given you everything I had to give. We have prepared each other for this moment. Goodbye old friend, I say to you as I push you off and watch you as you float away, waving goodbye frantically from the shore, I watch you slowly disappear. Goodbye...

I sit on the rocky shoreline a little while longer, watching the empty space on the horizon where you once were, letting the tears run down my face again. yes, I will miss you. You were a good friend.
Goodbye.

Though it is still raining, I leave the shoreline, make my way back up the path towards the house, every ounce of my body hanging heavy with rain. I do not know how long I have been gone, maybe 20 minutes, maybe an hour, maybe more? My steps are heavy. I am weighed down with water but my soul is light. I have said goodbye. I am not quite at the doorway when my two mothers rush to my side, each carrying towels; they dry me and drape me. Thank god it wasn't snow, one says. They put their arms around me, hold me close, they understand; they send me to a steaming hot shower, no questions are asked. When I come out again, time has passed away again. My mothers are humming in the kitchen, chopping and chatting, every vegetable imaginable. I am in need of greens. This is home, I know.

...

Somewhere in all of this I have come to realize the importance of accepting the process of healing, a process I was resistant to without even knowing it. Oh I know, all the books tell you to accept the process. But how can you do this when it hurts so badly? What does it even mean? In michigan I became very sick. I'll spare you the details but suffice it to say I was in some ways as sick as I have ever been. My body was purging an illness. A disease had crept into my veins and was in need of exterminating. The body acts in strange ways. We must trust the process. Our bodies know the right way. The illness in my body is gone now, and the injury in my heart is subsiding. I feel better. I am stronger. I am healing. I have supporters, but I am my own champion. I am so lucky to have me.

I will say just one last thing, one final realization from this process for tonight.

I have come to see that leaving you was an act of self-love. Yes, it was painful. More painful than I could imagine. It was full of self-doubt, self-hatred, and guilt. It was a wound that cut so deep, to my most secret self. But it was life saving. Leaving you saved my life. I can see that now.

For the record.

As long as you want to state a few things "for the record" I have a few things to say myself.

It's a horrible thing, being lonely. It's probably the worst feeling in the world. I should know. It's the way I spend most of the time these days. Of course, I know that my happiness should be motivated by internal forces, that happiness comes from within. But you know what? Mine's not. My happiness rises and falls like the chest of a runner, who has just finished a marathon. It collides like a car crash, explodes like a rocket ship, and then derails like a roller coaster. Not pretty, as you can imagine. My happiness has always depended on external factors. Like you.

I know, I'm working on it.

In a far away place I lie alone. In my room, a puddle on the floor, there is no wrong or right, there is no future, and only empty emotions fill the past. There is only this moment. And I am alone.

There is a song that I love. It is perhaps a lesser known song by the band Third Eye Blind, but any real alternative junkie should know it. It's called Motorcycle Driveby. Unlike How's it gonna be?, which perfectly captures the indecision and fear of regret when a relationship is ending, Motorcycle Driveby's message is one of hope, even as his relationship is ending. He sings: "I've never been so alone...but I've never been so alive."

My oldest friend and I relish this song. We know its secret, its power. We have been prone to singing it at the top of our lungs, radio blasting, with the windows opens, wind blowing in our hair, cigarettes in hand. We even sang it (perhaps indirectly) as we drove across Canada once, to dump a man's favorite possession on the empty highway of the great Canadian Shield. Vindictive bitches? Perhaps, but in that moment we believed in the power of Motorcycle Driveby. We believed it could set us free. But you know what? We are lying to ourselves. Who really feels that way? Vindicated by the loss of a love? Not I, I'll admit. No matter how you slice it, it still hurts. I only wish I felt that way.

My emotional quality is better captured by the old standby; the Simon and Garfunkel classic I am a Rock, of course. A song that will at any time or place find me belting out lyrics, or curled up in fetal position, or both, so desperate but oh so truthful. That song has always managed to express exactly what I am feeling when I am most alone. And frankly, we are all alone most of the time.

This is not to say there have not been improvements. Lately I can say his name, or talk about the little things. Seeing a happy couple doesn't make me want to cry. I don't get choked up when I see something he gave me, something we created together. I simply move on, let it pass through my fingers and through my subconscious. The emotion is a little less raw now. Instead, a dull, lingering sadness has set in. Everything seems a little less bright today. The days linger on. The sleepless nights are longer. And then they are gone just like they began.

I suppose this is progress; this is what it means to let go. And I wonder what it would feel like to completely let go. To let myself fall. Fall away from all this sadness; fall through the haze of emptiness, fall out of love, fall into another man's arms, fall into circumstance, fall for you. How would that feel? To completely let go? I think Jeff Bridges said it best in his portrayl of a washed up country music star in the Musical-drama Crazy Heart, when he sang the line, "Sometimes falling feels like flying."

for a little while.