I don’t want to fill another journal with entries all about sadness, or coping with a fresh breakup. A breakup most would think shouldn't be effecting me the way it is. A relationship that was one-sided to say the least, a relationship where I was loved better, and more fully than I’ve ever been. But a relationship that I invested very little of myself back into. One-sided, walled off, jaded with sour and painful thoughts of the past, i kept this relationship at a safe distance. No. I don’t want to fill a new journal with those types of entries. Journals should be about growth and evolution, and honesty, and hope.... and so my first entry isn't about a breakup (in its entirety).
Its about how I fell completely -irrevocably and quite madly, in love!
Love- and all the things that accompany it: passion, excitement, joy, anxiousness, insecurity, is ... complicated and incredible and mostly inconvenient. It doesn't always surface at the time its "supposed" to. Which is incidentally what I learned today when I woke up with a warm, excited feeling growing somewhere in my mid section and expanding outward with a tremendous speed. I’ve written in the past, that there are no "supposed to's" in life, I still believe this.. I still believe God only gives us what we need, what he knows we can handle, what he knows will help us grow and be better men and women. Right now God decided He needed me to fall in love. To recognize these distinct emotions. To be enveloped by them... To fight so they do not fully consume me. Conquer me.
In my head, I wonder, "why couldn’t I have felt this two weeks ago, a month ago, five months ago??" but, I have to assume, I just wasn’t meant to, I simply wasn’t meant to fall in love until today. Until this morning, September 15th, 2011, on location for work in Yachats, Oregon, climbing on a rock by the Pacific Ocean to get a better view of a starfish in a tide pool.
This feeling of love was accompanied by some tears of joy, but also, all the thoughts that are normally accompanied with this realization:
"I want to tell you!"
"What will our lives together look like?"
"Where will we live?"
"Where will we travel?"
"Will my dog like your horrible cats?"
"Will your horrible cats torment my dog?"
"Perhaps we can take a vacation back here one day, so I can share just the exact spot I fell for you!"
But it isn't that simple. It never is, right?
I don’t fall easy. in fact, I wasn't sure I could ever truly fall again. now, five years after I’ve felt anything remotely similar, I welcome the emotions that clog my thoughts, and hinder almost all forms of productivity. I welcome them, even though I am completely unable to express them to the one person who broke through my hard shell and helped me to understand how to feel again. more-so, to actually feel again.
Having dated a brilliant writer for the better part of a year, and having not sat with a journal in my hand for some time- I find my own writing to be clumsy. Rambling musings about what I've learned and what I've lost and my feelings (which I am very aware are not unique, that I am not the first person to have loved and lost, and that I will not be the last.) But- this is honest. This is my reality- and though I am not the best writer or really even a good one, I feel its important to keep writing. to keep expressing what’s inside, to not let it harden again in my heart and form the bricks of the emotional walls Ive so easily constructed in the past. And so with that, I write, that I am happy. I am happy for the time I was blessed with someone in my life and the memories we created. Though I miss my brilliant, beautiful, smart, sweet, sexy writer, I know I had my chance. I know I didn't take it, I know its not the last opportunity for me, but it might be for us. I am happy - but I will always regret not embracing this unique soul while I had the chance to. A hard reality to face. Like winter coming, when summer never really started.
So, now, honesty:
I was proud and stupid. I guarded my heart when I didn't need to. I made easy, lazy choices. Now- I torture myself daily replaying what I could have done better, what I could have said so much better. I take a pill to go to sleep. I take a pill because if I don't, I'll lay awake for hours pretending we are laying together, close, intimate. Pretending my pillow is an acceptable substitute. I don’t eat enough, or at times, I don't eat at all. The most gourmet meal seems to turn to sand in my mouth, which seems to have stopped its production of saliva. I often contemplate giving up meat. I don't think I will, but the thought is there. I don’t want to be alone. I call anyone I can to tell them how foolish I’ve been. How I should have tried harder. How one of the best things that has happened to me is gone. To tell them how much I miss my writer. To tell them how much I miss my best friend. I dwell. I imagine what reconciliation would be like. Resolution. I force those thoughts from my mind. My writer has moved on. My writer is happy. My writer is not "Mine" anymore, but has opened up to someone else.
Love, is funny. As sad as I am, there is a happiness that this person, this incredible person, who is no longer in my life, is out there, just a little bit east and a little bit south, everyday, living, and loving, and connecting, and that is enough. Enough to get me through this. That is enough to help me focus on what’s next. On an undetermined future. On moving forward.
I pray. All the time. I pray and thank God for love. That I was loved the way I was. The way I am. That cannot die. Its the truth of our time together. The writer loved me. The writer changed me. I thank God for helping me fall desperately in love even though it’s so very long overdue. I’m not angry about it. It just is. And tonight I pray to God that He will help me put away my love for now. Not kill it. But put it away until there might be an appropriate time to pull it out again. And- if that time never comes, that He helps me evolve my love into something new. Something fair and something good. Something that works for both the loved and the lover. I will pray this often and with silent gratitude that with God, all things are possible.
And though, the most random of things bring bittersweet memories of our time together;
thoughts of sea turtles, woks, a black Subaru that my dog will always stop behind for me to let him in, memories of dive bars where we possibly drank too much Jameson, My couch, my kitchen, my bathroom, my bed, the new sheets (now not so new) I bought to sleep on with you alone, bad pop music, lemon sharks, Ikea, Kathy Bates, fake meat, dirty kittens, poorly tossed Frisbees, a sign on the way to the coast that reads "Wilco", the Thundercats, orchids, hilariously adorable chameleons, SUVs named after Indian Cartoon characters, my sleeping bag, old typewriters, poison oak, the smell of the beach and dingy beach towns, scrabble, post cards, and any mention of the following; the state of Texas, The Big Lebowski or any short story, not to leave out most all of the music in my IPod... I will move forward. I will be ok. I will be better than ok for having built these memories. For having loved again. For feeling love again.
So, this new journal will not be about bitterness. It will not be about the divorce of two souls. It will not be about the end of anything, because resurrection is always possible- So, this new journal will be about hope, about choice, about growth and honesty, and change and compromise, and most importantly it will be about the journey of falling in love.
and so, to the writer... I wish you love and hopefully, Ill be seeing you.
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