After having glimpsed a bit of who I wanted to be, the me I was so eager to truly regain, falling back into a life of routine & waiting, I was, well, I was defeated. I felt powerless. Just completely out of control of my own circumstances, my own feelings, my own life. I stayed. For far too long. But it was hard for me to let go. I have always been a person that stuck with decisions she made. I could be cut-throat when I was not yet attached, but once I'd made the decision that this was what I was signing up for, I seemed to be someone who could never let go.
I knew about what commitment really meant. I was not fickle. I would be more likely to force a decision I made than to ever let it go. To me that meant failure. To me it meant giving up. Having parents that have been happily married & super-ridiculously in love, but also ones that had stuck through difficult times, taught me that love was easy, but relationships are work. At the time, I could not see that both had become work for me. I simply said, hey you don't get to 'that' unless you do the work now. So I pushed. I believed I had to do the work. That once the work was done all would become easy.
Eventually, though, I found myself truly seeing what I was a part of. What I had not only let happen but had been a part of creating. I truly saw that it wasn't just the relationship that was work. Our love was work. Serious Serious WORK. Gone were those beginning feelings....gone were the middle feelings....hell, we may even have been past the end feelings. There was nothing left. I was living with a ghost. One that worked opposite hours. So the little bit I did see him, the few hours he was there, well he wasn't there. His response was to withdraw. My response, which was no better, was to push, to work, to force. No good.
One night, after one of our usual conversations that started with my expressing feeling lonely & ended somehow in my taking the blame for a gazillion things that suddenly surfaced, I sat in bed. Not sleeping. Alone. Thinking. Somewhere deep within I felt a stirring. It was I believe my Future Self. For me, that's my vision of myself once I've figured this whole thing out & finally have the life that makes me happy as a clam....like there is some point where I say here it is, here's the life I dreamed about, done. Though I know that is hilarious because life's never done. The journey always continues. However, having the idea that there's a me out there in the future that has quite a lot figured out & is pretty together helps.
That night. A few things came to me. 1-I could no longer live my life for 2 vacations a year (the times when things were actually fun & finding 'love' together was easy). 2-Changing for HIM was never, ever going to fix things. 3-He was never going to be the one to make the decision to end it. & 4-I DID want to change things-but for ME. & things that would not only NOT fix things, it would probably break things even further. BUT, that's what I wanted & I finally knew that.
It felt good to know that. It also felt SCARY AS HELL!!! I knew I was about to allow my admittance of 'he's not the ONE' surface. I knew I was about to start over. I knew that I had no idea how the hell my life was going to look. I knew that indeed I knew nothing. But I also knew I felt ok with that for the first time in my life.
So, after a couple of weeks of tearful phone calls to my mom, long walks through my neighborhood to get out the anxiety coursing through my body & a lot of internal pep talks to help me believe I wouldn't end up alone with 47 cats, I chose me.
& I wrote the following:
A Letter to You
Writing to you is sometimes
the only thing that gets me through.
Because I know that if you're listening,
this moment has passed
and I've come out on the other side.
And I know that you see me more clearly than I see myself,
so I'm asking for you to listen to my troubles
and maybe even asking for a little help
as I stumble through.
Because I want nothing more than to get to you.
And as I wade through
the murky waters
that my soul has become in this moment,
I hope you're smiling that knowing little smirk,
the one reserved for
the moments you've eased right through
those dismal depths,
just waiting on the bank
for the rest of us to clumsily find our footing.
Because if that look is on your face as you read this,
then it means there's an answer,
a reason for this moment
And that my journey to find it will bring me to you.
So I'll endure my aching heart,
And I'll navigate the tumultuous waves of my worry;
I'll silence the doubts of my screaming mind,
And I'll whisper reassurance to the ears of my soul.
Because you're listening.
Out there,
Somewhere,
I can feel you listening.
Yes, writing to you, Future Self,
is sometimes the only thing that gets me through.
Love,
Me...Presently
(and....if you check the earlier post, the lines 'Because you're listening, out there, somewhere, I can feel you listening', were the words I heard before...I just hadn't yet heard the rest of the poem.)
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