Blocking the Punch

Sometimes you're going the wrong direction, putting energy into something that's leaking so fast, its momentum is ever slowing. You have to decide to stop wasting fuel and take things in a different direction.

Wisdom isn't always easy. Sometimes it's incredibly frustrating, and feels a lot more like defeat. That's where I am. I'm not even sure I want to call it wisdom, but that's the only thing I could think of that seems to fit and hasn't the negative connotation of "giving up"; I am not a quitter, thank you! But sometimes wisdom is knowing when to walk away.

Nothing's ever plagued me the way this has ('this' being the end of a very dear relationship, with a very dear man). I can't say I'm surprised that it affected me so, but I was surprised by it. The whole dang thing was a surprise, from start to finish, everything seemed like something I didn't expect. I didn't expect it to be so easy. I didn't expect to get so much advice; I didn't expect to get so much judgment. I didn't expect to feel so special. I didn't expect to feel so low. I did not expect to fall in love with a staunch Lutheran...didn't see that one comin'. Probably the worst thing of all, I didn't expect to want to walk away from a man I loved.

I tend to claim to know myself well, - though lately I've been questioning it - and in that I've always been so sure that I won't have more than one relationship. If I'd bother to get romantically involved with someone for any substantial amount of time, that would probably mean it's the real deal. I not only know myself pretty well, but when I'm wrong I'll own it. Not that I'm not afraid to admit it but that I'll get myself there, because honesty is important to me.

I fought really hard, just short of completely altering my life to keep fighting. That's been me a lot, too. Not trying to sound like a martyr (if it still sounds that way...oops), but I'm loyal and I know relationships take sacrifice and compromise. Being the go-with-the-flow type girl that I am, I tend to bend to whatever, let go of a lot of things (with some exceptions, of course), get trampled, even get neglected...All because I have this picture of that being what you do in relationship: give of yourself. And then give again. Which has helped me run into some doozies of relationship in which I value it more than the other person does.

I don't say all this to be melodramatic, or to paint a harsh picture of him - I say it as catharsis, as holding myself to the new direction, and as offering my story to anyone out there in hopes that they might learn and grow without having to go through it, too. Maybe they will anyways, but they'll know that it's survivable.

If there's one thing I've got going for me, it's been that I'm generally pretty resilient. Certainly it's a God-given thing, and not to my own credit. I have gone through some things in my life that I forget were my experiences because they're so far in the distance and didn't manage to hold me back. This, however, has been a time in my life I've been genuinely worried that I won't bounce back; that I'll be too scared to go anywhere near love again. However, my advice wouldn't be to guard your heart in that way you know I despise, rather it would be "protect yourself". If others won't protect you in how they treat you, and it's not done for the sake of your growth, that might be a sign you're taking one on the chin when you shouldn't. It's kind of like the phrase "throwing good money after bad"; all the self-sacrifice and fight in the world may not wake them up to the fact that you need them to come through and to fight. You also can't, and shouldn't, run from every relationship just because you get hurt sometimes. It's a fickle balance, whether or not to take one for love.

This was the first romantic relationship I've had to stop giving to, but I've had a handful of other very close relationships where I needed to walk away or stop investing, and I'm speaking from all of those. It doesn't get easier, just more recognizable. It doesn't get less painful, but feels a little like taking a breath because you blocked a punch. And it doesn't stop the love.

Why is it Good?

**Disclaimer: This piece was written pre-deconstruction of religious beliefs and faith system. Many of these beliefs inform the sentiments of the writing and are not in alignment with my values. As this is a part of my journey and an extensive blog over years, I have chosen not to remove a majority of my posts written on faith. Please as a reader, take this into consideration and take what works for you, leave what does not. I also apologize for any harm my words from this past perspective may cause to any readers.**

"Why is it good?" The words sting every time I hear them. The adjective applied to this particular Friday doesn't jive with a lot of Christians, usually the ones with a view of God as good, loving, forgiving, and merciful - my people! Turns out though, my people tend not to delight in Good Friday.

By now I might have you thinking I missed a word, or had a major typo or something, because no one could possibly delight in Good Friday! My roommates and I had this conversation just the other night. As I was at the sink doing dishes, I heard the fateful words. I explained how when I was younger someone ridiculed me for loving Good Friday. Thankfully, I don't even recall his words, and while I was younger and thinner skinned, I still know he was cruel about it. I went on to explain just the first reason I could think of to love this day.

Believers don't all too often set aside time to acknowledge, deeply, the sacrifice of death in our stead - though an undeserving people - that we may have life. Not to put ourselves back into shame, but to recognize just how great a gift is the grace that Christ would take to the cross to reconcile us to the Father, ushering us into eternal life.

My favorite thing about the crucifixion (yes, that's a real sentence I wrote) was after Jesus gave His last breath, and His spirit left Him, it says "At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom." In Hebrews, the author talks about the High Priest being the only one allowed to go past the curtain into the Most Holy Place, this where the Spirit of the Lord was. The author says that no longer do we have a High Priest who only enters once a year and sacrifices for himself and the people so they he may enter, but we have Jesus, the High Priest of the new covenant with God.

If not for Jesus, I would never be welcomed into the presence of God freely. To me, that is what the tearing of the veil means; all who are in Jesus are welcomed into the presence of God without reservation. In fact, we are expected! God is jealous and longs for us to come to Him. Jesus' sacrificial death is the very proof of that.

I'm Not Okay Yet

I'm so tired of being in pain. I keep mistakenly telling people I'm doing better, usually because I haven't cried in a couple days, so I think it's true. And I just want it to be over.

Truthfully, the swells just get further apart, I guess, but still another inevitably appears and pulls me under. I could be having the best day I've had in a while, and it comes. It is a persistent bastard, pain. I want so badly to just rid it from me; to not feel like a wave of despair is creeping around every bend. I knew it would take an ambiguous "forever", I just didn't know each day could be so heavy and feel so long. That they would slowly stack up as a meaningless figure that simply informed me how long it is I've been entrapped.

Everyone wants me to be fine, so instead of talking about it as incessantly as the thoughts are streaming through my head, I cry in the bathroom for a few minutes and leave with puffy red eyes. I feel like a fool, for loving with a heart so open, but there's nothing I can do but hold to the shred of hope I have that someday it won't hurt.

Grief is exhausting, pain is relentless.

My Needle in a Haystack

This heart is still sad. Even in the unwanted assurance that I found in my journal, it is still sad. Each of those entries also contained record of the good and the great of the relationship. So as I sat down to process in my journal, another wave of it rolled over me.

Here I thought I'd come to accept that this is where we are, but another bout of reality also came to me: it was something special. I had devoted hundreds, probably thousands of words to the excitement, connection, and joy, aside from the struggles and worries.

Lately, my thoughts and feelings seem to be rolling around in my mind like clothes and one of those rubber ball things in a dryer. Not many people have been able to really understand what it's like, to mutually love and then let go of that in spite of a mutual desire not to. It makes so very little sense, when you're in it. I have the unfortunate privilege of having broke off this relationship once before, myself. I doubted and ultimately reversed my decision, if you will. But in the time I contemplated the validity of that separation, I was honest with myself and a few others about the complexity of everything going on in me, as I questioned giving up what I'd had. My mom has been there. Her and my dad went through a breakup of a few months after years of being together before they were married. She told me that you'll know because you can't live without them. Those words tumbled around in my mind along with all the memories and feelings about all the memories...

I'm an independent woman (shout out: Destiny's Child, I'm throwin' my hands up at ya). Just before I started dating Shawn, I was beginning to feel really, truly alright being single - which now I think of all the times people have said that's when it comes along... I don't really love the idea of feeling as if I can't live without someone, but it is true in an emotional sense. Upon returning to my singledom, it felt as if my life had quickly become hollow. It seems everyone else is paired off, and I'm the creature on land that will inevitably go extinct because I'm not part of a pair. You realize after a breakup, that people fit you in when you're single, but no one prioritizes you. And so I missed it.

I missed him. In revisiting all the stress-points, I also passed by the sweet moments and the giddy infatuation. The type of things I could write about, because they're charming and special, but they were ours, and so I won't. I missed the things I liked so much about him, from his eyebrows, to his giggle, to the way he parented, to when he got choked up, his smile - even the way he so often fell asleep at random times (which drove me crazy)! I missed the ease with which we could be together and talk. I missed waking up to an affirmation. I missed having someone to share every day with, not only that but someone I loved.

At the same moment that I was trying to document my coming to terms with where him and I are, I was feeling, again, the loss of so much good. I thought to myself, how will anything ever compare in my heart and my memories?

It's as if I'd found my needle in a haystack. I don't really expect to find another, nor do I even want to try.

The Threads to Unravel

For the last forty-five days I've been a mess. For much of my life I've been lauded by many friends for being steady...But for the last month and a half I've been the most unsteady I've felt in my adult life.

A normally joyful, hopeful, resilient person, I got the wind knocked out of me. Big time. I spent 287 days investing in a, by then, very serious dating relationship. Of those, 158 were before I broke it off for a month, and 129 were before he broke it off...for good. It was one of the toughest, richest experiences I've had. Long distance is sort of a relational incubator - if you care at all about your relationship. And we did; we texted constantly, talked on the phone for over an hour daily, Snapchat will never be the same - in fact I might have to delete the app because I don't really care about it now. We put in the work of a good relationship, and that's what we got.

So when it happened, a heavy silence and a wave of tears ensued, like an immediate hurricane of feelings. These are the kind that seem to drown you because you can't get out words and the new reality you're ingesting punches you in the gut. Oddly though, I myself had been questioning the very reasons he cited. In fact, just the other day I revisited my journal from the first stint of our togetherness, and found them echoing in a foreshadow that I'd somehow forgotten. The old adage: love is blind...

In the last few weeks as I processed my new reality, I waded through the remaining flood of emotions. I couldn't wait to not feel the way I did, but I wasn't ready to let go of hope. I had spent many of those days and weeks and months with him thinking I was on the road to marriage. This man and I crossed each others' paths and found out we really liked each other, -- even more, we really loved each other. Now, we were ending that thing that I thought was "it".

Something I've been told over and over is that what I'm experiencing is "normal". I have hated that each time I've heard it. Why should anything about parting from your love be normal? I never expected to date and love someone - let alone for them to love me - but that it wouldn't work out. While some may call that naive, (and fine, I don't care what those people think,) I don't think it is naive to hope that love is important. There's a weird paradox I can't fully articulate: I don't regret the relationship, but if I'd known at the beginning that it wouldn't work out I probably wouldn't have bothered. Ah, hypotheticals... Truly, I don't regret it, although it is so incredibly painful to set your mind, heart, and life to the tune of something that suddenly stops. So, yeah, if I'd known...

The thing is, I did know. But I had that optimism, that fight. All the more confusing that that's the stuff it takes to make a lifelong relationship last: hope and persevering in love.

Then there's the natural progression of relationship which makes things all the more complicated, well in Christian dating anyways. If the relationship works alright, it will continue on its trajectory toward marriage and without an honest, critical eye it may go that way when really it shouldn't. In my case, the same breaking points that were there all along somehow didn't deter me from mentally and emotionally following the foreseen trail to a wedding - and I'm so not that girl. I pay attention to things, and to myself. Yet, when I read through the journal entries from our beginning and well into serious conversations, the threads that would unravel it all were dangling there throughout. It's just that I am the girl that sacrifices for the most important relationships in her life.

In fact, now I'm a little scared of it all. How do people do this over and over? I'm left with all these lessons of experience, and the feeling that I don't ever want to use them. I won't try to say I'll never bother to be in love again, but the reality is that this wasn't something small and simple. It was an all-in, go for the gold type thing. So no, walking away and falling apart doesn't feel normal, nor should it. But maybe I can just settle in, with my piles of unwound, tangled thread, and that will be okay. I'll be okay. Just me.