Something Changed

How do you deal with a broken heart? Is there some special formula, or are we reduced to just filling ourselves with loosely tested, overly prescribed blue pills, red pills? I think I'll forgo that, choosing to feel the genuine pain of love lost rather than the numbness of not feeling anything. Or worse, throwing myself into work, or just generally keeping busy, as they prescribe. "Are you keeping busy, dear?" Jam packing my itinerary has never been a solution to solving life's "little" problems. It sure takes our minds off things for a while, though. But, eventually we have to deal with things. Things like:

The two things I thought would never happen again:
1) I never thought I'd fall in love again.
2) I certainly didn't think I'd get my heart broken again.

But I guess that's the chance you take when you risk everything. It is the ultimate exposé, the final showdown, the opportunity to show everything you have in your secret cache and in one’s individual Pandora's Box.

All these people drinking lover's spit.
Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.

As scared as I was to say it, in the end I did and I'm glad I did because I meant it and he really meant something very significant to me.

I love you.

And if it was said on the last night we were potentially to be together, that's alright, I can live with that. I know I did the best I could do and was the best I could be, given the circumstances of profound bad timing.

How can you compete with a ghost? No, she's not dead, but they spent 10 years together, during the very formative decade between the ages 20 - 30. She's moved on. A different life. Abandoning him. He the one who loved her so much. Maybe not romantically after all of those years, but certainly a familial love, that binding love, that blinding love that was ripped away from him before it was time. Before he was ready.

I'd said before how new love stirs things up. I counted this morning how many men I'd claimed to love in my relative short existence. Nine. How many did I truly love? Would walk to the ends of the earth for? Would sacrifice life and limb for? Not all. So maybe it wasn’t true love. That's always been a quest for me. True love and the possibility of its existence. Far more than seeing if God really exists.

I need to believe it does.

I'm puffy from crying, relenting finally this morning to remove the remains of the rivulet roadmap of mascara down my cheeks. A poor version of Alice Cooper. A sadder version, far less evil. I feel like I'm close to exhausting my friend pool for emotional support. I need guidance. Comfort. He needs the same. A sage that is empathetic, someone who can tell him he's not alone and what he's feeling is totally normal and in at least one time in our pathetic lives we've been hurt so badly that we can't distinguish waking life from a dream state, a surreality that doesn't make us want to feel anything, especially the pain we're feeling right now.

We search in vain for clarity. We need concise answers for the things we feel because they don't make any sense to us at all. "If only I could get my shit together...." We live in this world where there are always solutions to problems, or at least they work the bugs out the beta version with version 10.97. Things are packaged neatly in eye-pleasing colours and boxes. The whodunnit's villian eloquently and correctly accused discovered in the third act by the elegant detective with the Belgian accent, twirling his handlebar moustache, tapping his silver handled cane on the the parquet floor. But unfortunately the ways of the world don’t necessarily work that way.

At one time in my not so recent past, I wanted answers so desperately I went to see psychics (plural).

Fuck, I can still smell him.

Anyway, back to the psychics. I wanted to know about a certain fella I’d been with a few years back, then rekindled something several months ago. They all promised he would come back. And I was so patient. One of them prophecised there would be a choice I’d have to make, between him and another man. In the end she said I’d choose the one in first chronological order. But then I met Jeremy. Was he the other I’d have to choose from? Two days ago there was no choice. After being with Jeremy he really raised the bar in standards certification. The psychics didn’t tell me anything about him. He was a surprise. I think in my path I became happier not really knowing. The worst thing about being told your “future” is once you know about it you have this tendency to wait around for the future to happen. “Is it going to be today,” you ask yourself for the 14th consecutive time that day. “How about now?”

What is certain is uncertainty. What dispells fear is the choice to love again. And here on just that topic: the righteous chicks, the Bene Gesserit, from the movie Dune, delivering a little litany against fear:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain. 

And I’m not talking perfect love, because again, perfection is unachievable and even if it wasn’t it would be pretty damned boring to have to face day after day. “Oh, here’s comes Perfect, again.” Tedious. Predictable. We’d resent it. Him.

Yes, I got hurt but that’s okay. I learned so much about myself during the entire, albeit brief process of loving someone new. And I got to love someone again. Someone really great. So, I consider myself lucky. [She said through gritted teeth as 1st runner-up, allowed to perform pageant-of-life duties only if the winner was unable].