Struck

The problem was, my heart got so bruised, so broken I had to put my vulnerability on lockdown. Even in the worst of the pain and confusion, I knew I didn't want to keep it that way. And I missed the companionship, so I guarded myself and sought relationships I didn't need to actually invest in. Relationships that were guaranteed dead-ends. 

Much like those serendipitous conversations that strike up with your seat neighbor on an airplane. A brief, beautiful bit of humanity in an interaction that feels so simplified – a kind of ordinary magic. And yet, when the plane lands, you don't exchange information, you might not even know each other's name. As if the agreed-upon course of the context, you exit the plane, walk down the jetway and each join the swirling sea of strangers. No matter how profound it may have felt in the moment, you may never think of the person or the conversation again, even though you carry it with you. 

This era turned out to be exposure therapy, teaching me that not every ending is earth-shattering. But it also brought to the surface a sense of being taken for granted and devalued. And in the last of the string of such relationships, I began to snap out of it. I could see through the facade I'd built for myself, that I'd been choosing supposedly-safe relationships when in reality I ended up getting hurt because they didn't really care about me. And I didn't want to tolerate being disposable anymore – that was the very thing that shook my core in the first place!

When I began to realize the relationship I was in was one where I was merely a stand-in, that's when someone strikingly different crossed my path. Someone rare. And although I try not to let myself entertain the thought, I think it ruined me. It brought me back to what it feels like to not just be a buoy someone clings to for a while. The magic of the airplane seatmate who you were meant to know not just encounter. I was caught by surprise how clear it was; a grounded feeling that I was wary to trust. 

But life had its way as it does... So, I find myself back at a similar yet different place, wondering "Now what do I do?" Only this time I'm not heartbroken, I'm...struck. Struck by the feeling of that reverberating in me, and doubtful that it's something you can simply hunt for a replica of and find. That's not how it works. Maybe for some of us life will only entail brief airplane connections. Having magic you get to hold onto might be the myth of the cinematic happy-ending, granted to some by dumb luck. I'm sort of left waiting to feel differently; to be open to the possibility that special could be more than something I had for a few moments in my life. More than a figment of the imagination to hopelessly long will realize. That I'll even know what it is, should I see it. 

Every Time

Every time I tell myself it's the last time. Every time I feel like I can't survive it again. 

Eventually though, my relentless heart yearns. Somehow it keeps believing that something good is out there for me, even though time and time again, being hopeful only gets me hurt. And each time it makes it harder to continue to hope. 

People will say kind things, like they believe that a good heart won't go to waste...but I don't. Because I have given everything they could want, they'll say, and still toss me aside, let me go, push me away. I find myself more afraid to keep hoping that my heart – that I could be chosen, than I am of the pain of being unwanted. 

Because it's not about not being good enough or believing I'm unlovable. If I'm honest, it seems entirely random. Coincidental. I don't believe in fate or destiny, or things being meant to be. I think we all just collide. And I'm increasingly unsure, each time, if I can keep trying to collide with someone in hopes that maybe they will choose me. 

All Sorts of Confused

It's coming up on a year and I feel all sorts of confused.  I continue to be in this strange, disorienting limbo.  I openly talk about and make light of all the woes of dating because I don't really want to be doing it.  I know that I don't want to be alone for the rest of my life just because what I thought was the big love of my life actually destroyed me.  But as it turns out, it's incredibly difficult to heal from that destruction.  And it's incredibly terrifying to think of letting anyone try for that with me again.  I can't fathom trusting someone.  I'm in disbelief that anyone will make the memories fade to the background. 

I've always prided myself on knowing how to sift through it all in dating.  Sure, there are awkward moments or things that are hard to say, but I've always been able to tell when someone isn't for me.  Aside from intentional questions and keen observation, usually there's this undeniable sense in my gut.  I can't feel that anymore.  Some men seem kind, smart, funny, are attractive, and have it together, but I feel nothing at all.  I find myself lost in not knowing what to do.  For the first time in my life, I know without a doubt I am scared to be vulnerable.  Not even just scared, I don't want to and I don't feel it.  I'm scared in general.  It's almost like I don't even know how to take dating seriously because I'm just...broken.  I was the most vulnerable I've ever been toward someone and it broke me. 

Yet, I try because I'm lonely and because I think, maybe somehow someday I'll find a way to be open.  Maybe I'll strike luck and someone truly good will find me.  But I don't really believe that.  And I don't know anymore how I'd recognize that.  Even the kindest are capable of changing you with their hurt.  Then I think, maybe I'll just wait for someone to fall for me, then I'll see if I want them too.  Though my integrity would never let me do that!  

My feelings feel the same as they did a year ago and I don't really want to wait for them to change if they haven't in that long.  Yet I don't know if or when my gut will speak to me again.  Maybe it's still in shock, too.  I'm confused, lonely, exhausted, and scared, nearly a year later. 

Sometimes

Sometimes I really wish I could just have a realization that he didn't love me. Sometimes that's the subtext and it fits, but then I rewind the tape further and find myself more confused - if that wasn't love, then what is? And then I find myself scared because I don't know what the fuck love is. I know that I think I still have it for someone who I think didn't have it for me. At best, liked some aspect of my company, but not my heart. Couldn't have liked my heart, or he would've been careful in how he let it down.

Sometimes that all feels very true to me. Then I get scared if I believe it, I won't know how to move forward. I already don't know how to move forward. My heart is frozen in place. Memories playing as a montage, interrupting my thought. I'm constantly asking myself: how did he just let that all go? How did every one of these million little moments just disappear from him while they haunt me? 

Sometimes I get so confused, reconciling the truest moments of him, to the ending; the kindness of the person I knew, with the cruelty of how he treated me after. Which one is true? Because they're incongruent, they can't both be true. I see these little flashes of who I thought I knew as him; the deepest place in him, the core shining through the cracks at the surface. I loved that core. I've truly never loved someone like that. And it was found worthless. Disposable. Meaningless.

No wonder my depression morphed:  The very best thing I thought one could offer to another in this life, didn't actually matter. And I didn't know it, I thought it was all that truly mattered, to love and be loved deeply. It's terrifying that I thought I was loved and thought the love I gave was significant, but neither seem true anymore. As time passes and I'm still trapped in the mystery, the cognitive dissonance is too strong – I can't believe that it was ever real. It feels like it was a dream I had. 

Now I hold myself in without even trying. I keep me from being touched. I have no desire to be open. It feels as though I might disintegrate, if I ever dare to love again and still only lose; if I let myself be seen to my depths, only to be unwanted. The pain of that is still so heavy, I find myself amazed I've survived it this long. 

Far From Through

It dawned on me, this isn't going away. I've never loved someone that way. And like the drop on your stomach on a rollercoaster or driving down a steep hill, it hit me: I might always feel this. I don't doubt that I can love again, if that's where my life and path leads. But I have this anchored feeling; grounded in me heavy and settled, like gravity of a thing - that this love will persist in me. It brought me to tears writing that, because the missing is so heavy, too, and I don't want to feel it. The weight of carrying a care that is severed and knowing it will be my companion for a long time, maybe even indefinitely. It's another facet of grief. 

I realized recently I'm in another wave of grief. I didn't really feel it for a while, at least not often, and my life went on fairly normally. Perhaps I even distracted myself from it. But you can never do that for long with grief and longing. They make themselves known; demand your attention when you've turned away from or lost sight of them. They remind you that they are far from through here. 

Though I've never done *this* before, I do remember feeling like I'd never not feel it. I've loved someone in a romantic relationship before, but this was different, deeper. This was past the infatuation, to the part where you've examined it and you choose it. I knew this was what I wanted, because it was like the way that coming home feels or the way you know your own name. It's a strange and confusing feeling to reconcile now with the fact that he's not in my life. To find yourself in a mix of certainty and want for something that no longer exists. Yet the knowing presses on as if bent on torturing me, while my grief attempts to chip away at it. As it turns out, when you know and you choose like that, it's an arduous process to break down. 

While I know I end up sounding mellow dramatic, I try to explain that this wasn't like any old breakup. This is removing from me the fragments of it all. This is coming apart from a whole lived and envisioned life that was based on a togetherness that isn't anymore. For some reason others can be quick to dismiss its significance, but I'm still here, one half of the togetherness, living with still open wounds it left on me.

There is a gaping hole in my life that I'm forced to become familiar with. In spite of my loneliness, as I succumb to it, I'm finding right now I need to be single. I'm finding my heart needs indefinite time to sort through how such certainty became such uncertainty, calling my intuition into question. I don't know if I know how to choose someone. I don't know if I know how to receive love or what it even actually is. I don't know if I know how to love someone else. I don't know how my heart will heal from this ... but I know it's far from through. 

What Dating Has Taught Me About Myself

People always talk about how you learn so much about yourself through dating.  I guess I never realized until now that they're right, but in reality how it is so harmful.  See, the men I've dated have taught me that I'm wonderful, "enchanting", amazing, kind, intelligent, sexy, - but not worth it.  "It" being effort, communication, honesty, time, respect, self-reflection, being heard, buying a drink, leaving a prime parking spot...you name it.  I'm great – but not worthy.

Don't get me wrong, as I've had to tell my therapist many times, I don't believe this at all – but they all seem to.  So I keep getting my hopes up and dashed, whether a shallow or deep encounter.  Each and every time, I can think back and find somewhere he didn't want to put the work in.  Now, I'm not demanding backflips through crazy hoops, or asking for anything unreasonable, by any means.  In fact I think I'm asking for what I deserve, as a human being offering my time and heart.  Somehow I haven't met a man that is willing to put in the effort where it's needed.

It's exhausting and discouraging. I know I don't deserve to be treated this way, but I find myself questioning if there's anyone out there who will treat me as though all the things they think are attractive about me, actually make me deserving of their effort.  That anyone will treat me as if once found, I'm someone unquestioningly worth effort to keep around.  I find myself taking what I can get, until I am frustrated that I have to tolerate these things – because even confronting is too much. 

Dating has taught me that I'm both too much and not worth it.  Can you blame me if I feel completely closed off to admiration always intermixed with rejection?

Love and the Grief of Vacancy

I miss him in such a deep way, it's almost become subtle. It's not in my face every day anymore, it's just down in my gut, just there. It's something I live with now, a perpetual sense of loss. My new companion is the void left by my old one. Yet, I can't count how many times lately that I've felt happy or okay and then felt guilty, realizing it feels like continuing on after someone's died. It feels truly like that kind of grief. And sometimes still like I'm crazy and the whole thing probably never happened. That seems more like my mind still trying to make sense of it, whereas my body, my gut knows that I had someone close and I lost them. 

I've had and lost love before, and that hurt, but not like this. The love wasn't like this, neither was the pain. At first, in the weeks following the end of the relationship, I had the sense that it had changed me and that it was in a way that no loss had before. It broke me down to a degree I can only remember one other time in my life coming close but it still misses. More stable now but still living with it all in my gut, I know that it changed me. 

For a while in the relationship I'd get flashes of anxiety about losing him someday, to the end of life – I was that kind of in love. I was already predicting how painful it would be to have loved long and deep, then lose. And I experienced that, yet, I don't regret it. I thought I did, in the heaviest of the pain. But when you do love long and deep, it's not something that can simply be undone. Even after incomprehensible hurt, it did not go away. Days, weeks, and months have passed without a word, since we last touched, since I said goodbye not even knowing it was going to be the last goodbye; he chose to die to me, and still love persists in me. I suppose that's why I also felt anger: in spite of it all, I longed for him.

The strange thing is that lately I feel mostly okay. I also often feel a pit in my stomach and heavy tears overtake me. But a lot of my life feels okay. Only there's this big, vacant space in it, where something is undoubtedly missing. It's as if standing in your home, but there's no furniture or belongings. Everything sounds different and you feel peculiar wandering about in it. It's both foreign and familiar; it's a little normal and yet completely wrong. Disorienting. Yet it's reality.

It wasn't my choice, this reality, but I've survived it by a strand of hope I somehow had for not ending up alone. The tiniest belief that maybe someday when I choose someone, they will also choose me back; someday, when someone really sees me, they will value what they see. They will be scared to lose it – not scared to accept it. I've been sustained by the littlest, faintest hope that the ability to see and connect and put in the work will be recognized for its value and held onto with a grip both fierce and tender. That I'll be loved with the same unrelenting love that I can't help but have for the ones who take up space in my life. That someone will lay their head next to mine at the end of the day and feel awe and gratitude that I'm sharing this life with them.

Worth & Hurt

I do want it again. The head over heels love. Gratefulness just to be near them in the day-to-day. The inability to imagine life without them. But I find myself wondering, do you get that more than once?

I know I can open my heart again, but won't anything else feel a little less sparkly? Or will my heart be resistant to feeling head over heels, grateful, and like something could possibly be forever? Logically, I think it's the latter, as I know my wary heart is fearful in resisting hope that there can be something sparkly again. I sit with a mixture of longing and fear; daunted and yet unable to let fear keep me from being seen. 

After my last relationship, I kept hearing this thing to me that drove me nuts: "it's not a reflection of your worth." I know rejection isn't a reflection of my worth, though it is my painful and perplexing reality nonetheless. When what you really want is to be seen for who you are and found captivating, inspiring to gratitude, and an undeniable fixture in one's life; for someone to recognize your worth and grab hold of the chance to share in life with you? Yeah, rejection of that very idea is painful. It feeds hopelessness. It bolsters fear. 

Yet the only reason I can dare to try to open my heart is because I know my worth. I value sharing life with others and find that the most fulfilling relationships are the most intimate ones, in which full selves commune. I know that what I have to bring to a relationship, especially a partnership is something worth having and being grateful for, committing to. But all of that doesn't mean I'm not scared to offer it because the last time I did it was rejected, and that hurt. I am not concerned that I'm unworthy, I am afraid of ever knowing that pain again.

May Take to Another

Not too long ago, I "got back out there".  Initially I told myself, I was going to date the old-fashioned way, picturing casually getting malts in an ankle length skirt without all this pressure of will we be together forever, or is he just trying to sleep with me? But really, I set out that way because I was downright terrified of the prospect of letting someone in my heart again. And I fully doubted anyone else could get there.

It's still a bit surreal sometimes that it hasn't just been a long week since I've seen him, or even that I didn't dream the whole thing up, start to finish. So when it came to accepting that he had run away for good, I thought maybe my way forward was just to try. Ground myself in reality by moving forward in some way. So...

Swipe left, swipe right. Swipe on your ex to find out he swiped right (interested) on you...? Never mind that confusing nonsense. Then another right swipe, SUPER right swipe on a joyful, handsome hottie that to be honest I thought to myself was out of my league. There's no way he'll be into me, so what does it hurt? *swipe* But in real life leagues do not exist, which I keep forgetting. Simultaneously, I still told myself – and this guy – I was not ready to put my heart out there, but wanted to connect with someone again. 

Independent of starting to chat with a new man, I realized something else that I've realized before but had since forgotten. See, I thought about my closest friends. My best friend I've known since we were in first grade, I love her dearly. Another friend I've known for several years, she too has claim of significant space in my heart. Yet another I've only grown close to in the past couple years, but I can be fully honest with her and admire her greatly. All are very different people that I deeply love and no one love supersedes or negates another. So then, no matter how significant my love for my last partner was, it doesn't mean that there isn't more available for someone new. 

Now, don't get ahead of me, I am not saying I've found love. Rather that I was pleasantly surprised to find myself genuinely intrigued by someone new. And a little less afraid – and maybe even a little excited – of the possibility that my heart may take to another. 

What Reverence

What reverence I have for big, deep, vulnerable, altering love. I'm not eager to find it again, I have a healthy respect for the risk that it is. I see it as a far off, distant future that could be. No imaginations of what it will look like and who it will be - only haze, and a sense of openness but not quite desire. A quiet longing, but a knowing fear. A caution to do everything I can to not have it only to lose it again. A hidden, buried thought that if I don't want for it, I will be okay. I tell myself I have safety within myself; I can be okay no matter what...but love had me awestruck at its heaviness, its weight. Losing love makes you sure you'll never want for it again, build around you a fortress, impenetrable and therefore unaffected by comings and goings. Yet appreciating love, even that which is lost, makes one long to know it again someday.

An Entire Person

I keep thinking to myself, it should be easier to not miss him after all this. But I also keep thinking, it's just not that simple. 

Today it occurred to me: this is the loss of an entire person from my life. There is no one else that I talk to every day. I suddenly lost regular frequency of physical touch which has a huge effect on mental, emotional, and physical well-being. As an extrovert, I was thrown into truly living alone for the first time in a decade – after having someone close in my life every day. There are days I go without seeing another soul, where I feel pain because my being is not witnessed by another human. 

When I feel a bit pathetic for longing for something that became so unhealthy, I use my training to remind myself that my body and emotional brain (bonding/attachment centers) are struggling with this adjustment as much as my logical mind struggles to make sense of it. I was a goner. Sold out on him being my person and continuing to share a life together. That is something that most people must not be thinking about when they say whatever it is they might say about how I should feel; what it's like to lose someone entirely and abruptly from your life.

And I've been trying to tell myself how I should feel, too. Trying to push past the weighty and hollowing sadness, but that doesn't work. I have to wade around in the confusion and the pain for however long until stepping out feels possible. Yes: feels. Because no matter what I try to tell myself, I wake up and my chest hurts, signaling that I am sad today. My breaths are a little short. Oh! I feel lonely. I have succeeded to avoid these feelings most of this week, but I can't avoid them fully. 

This kind of end is like a haunting. There's nothing that can be done to relieve it, it just is until it will not be some day. I do not believe time heals all wounds – that's how I got in this mess. Time allows some healing to occur so that the pain decreases, however, some wounds never fully stop hurting. Healing from the loss of someone who was incredibly close to your heart and in your daily life before disappearing is an arduous process. It requires presence to the pain. And the thing about time is, it must be allowed to pass, yes, but it also must be endured. There's no avoiding that either. It isn't simple as a trite phrase implies. 

Healing from the loss of a love so dear is long and slow, and painful as hell.

Alone at the Bottom

I have felt completely tossed and tumbled, like being swallowed in a sea of confusion. Wearily trying to find my way to the surface, to catch my breath and it pulls me back. 

This is the biggest rejection of my life. There is no simple way to process it. Not everyone has experienced this kind of personal rejection. Likely few have been completely blind-sided by someone they let their walls down with. So I keep trying to explain it and saying that I can't find the right words to describe how much it has afflicted me psychologically. (A therapist nails it in the caption here.) When the reality you've lived in for over a year is brought into question, you start to think that maybe the love you thought you were given was also an illusion. I don't know, because I don't know what was going on, other than I wasn't getting the whole truth and was being kept happy for some reason. The ironic thing is how much it hurts in the end. Keeping up a charade only made this so much harder to process. When what you thought to be true for a long time is revealed to be partly a show, it is incredibly exhausting and complicated to not only grieve but try to make sense out of what it is you're even grieving. Am I losing someone I loved, or did I really know that person? Am I losing the kind of love I'd been hoping for, or was that all just a show too? Can I trust my perception of reality? How about of whether someone is genuine? Why work so hard to make me feel loved, then cut and run the moment it was most convenient?

These are among the questions I struggle with. But am told "one day it will get better" - how? Just accept that a partner could leave at any moment? I'd rather be alone than let someone do this to me again. "You say that now..." yes, I do. How should I keep believing that I want a companion to share life with when I was just shaken to my core by thinking that I'd found that with someone who hurt me instead? "You don't deserve this" and "Someone would be lucky to have you" not to sound conceited but, I know. I actually don't question my worth, I question why giving my best wasn't enough? Or not desirable? Why being me was sustaining but not commitment-worthy? It's not what I believe about myself, but what I was shown. 

And it's almost like my system is telling me I'm being abandoned, which makes it so terrifying to be alone – alone in my house all the time, alone all day; sometimes days in a row, alone in my finances, alone in my cooking, alone when I go to sleep and alone when I wake up – yet I cannot fathom how I could ever know that I'm safe in an intimate relationship again. Or how I'd muster up the courage to risk it.

You'd think it's been a month and a half, I'd start to be okay. But I'm still struggling. Every day. My extravagant self-care consists of eating and bathing regularly, plus a 20-minute walk daily. I don't know when I'll feel good enough to work. I can't afford not to, but I happen to have an emotionally involved job. Even the paperwork is a growing disaster. The dishes pile up. The house is a mess, but no one sees it. I find myself wondering how many days go by that no one even thinks of me now. Who am I really important to? The person to whom I thought for certain I was, is contentedly moving on. Which tells me I was pretty disposable to someone I thought loved me. (Or was thought of as strong enough to handle it.) And that feels incredibly lonely. 

A close second is being with others and trying to share how this all feels, only to be told it gets better, or there's a lesson, or it hurts so much because that's how much I loved... It's hard to pull off but it's more kind not to make someone feel alone when they are with you.

Which has also made me realize something I don't think many people think about. Societally we're not only very focused on romantic love, but we're also incredibly busy. Chase after all the experiences. Work work work. Grind grind grind. To go from being in an intimate relationship for years to solo out of nowhere, is to experience a kind of whiplash. And what feels like no relief in sight, because we live in a way that the romantic relationship is primary and everything else is supplementary or optional. Until you're single, and then all you get is supplements. And yourself. Which, I can only speak for myself, but I am not an endless well to meet my own needs. Some of them, yes, but also for some I need others. That's to be human. Contrary to the popular individualism of the day.

So that's all I'm navigating mentally and emotionally right now. Facing down my 30th birthday which, frankly, I don't really care about. I was looking forward to it but the past year has been so up and down, that it sort of seems like it'll be just another Monday. 

The one thing, the one cliche I can tell myself that doesn't totally feel false or invalidating is that it must be only up from here. This is my rock bottom. My lowest place. And I'm on the ground. At least I love myself enough to try to keep going, to keep crawling, because maybe, possibly someday there's some hope in the future. 

Grief and Knowing Yourself

"To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom" -Socrates

In the past many weeks I have seen so much of myself. Though they've been weeks of living hell, hanging on to functioning – if you could even call it that. I've always gleaned from and studied what I'm experiencing, always hoping to gain understanding.

If I had a dime for every time I'd been told not to overthink, I'd have...some amount of money. Some dimes. But I know the line between processing and slipping into obsession. To process, my mind will turn something over and over until I understand it. Whether it's learning how something works because it interests me, or understanding human interactions to try and be better or at peace. These last several weeks have been set on the latter. Making sense out of this.

In this time, I've been getting these gut feelings, followed closely by a wave of fear that would topple me and attempt to destroy my footing. There were a few days that I'm not sure I'd ever been so challenged mentally and emotionally in my entire life. I thought back to past breakups, and while they were trying times with much processing, they did not compare to this. Though I hadn't quite put my finger on why.

But these little moments of clarity have come. I know myself, I'd think, I know what went on and who he is. I know.

I'd reached out for support because I was suffering so greatly. I needed to make sure others were aware of me. I felt an immediate and sudden shift to my aloneness. But with sharing of trouble, comes advice. I tend make my mind up and then test my certainty against advice or input. When down for the count, this became slightly less important than trying to eat something that day.

Still, I felt that knowing inside of me. I felt a newfound sense of attunement with myself. See, I'd been struggling with feeling distant from many people, and within that feeling like I'd been changing and growing so much over the past several years, that some in my life didn't know who I am now. I looked back at past painful struggles with grief and moving forward after the loss of a relationship, and I correlated it with when depression set in. At the time, I was beginning to question my faith and find less comfort in it, more unease. This put a discomfort in some of my relationships, as well. Not only was there misunderstanding or a felt lack of space for grief over the relational loss, but it is incredibly difficult to question the Christian faith.

The past few years then, I lived with the weight of this. Going on hiding a part of myself, and feeling to some extent like I was both alone and could not fully trust others. What I'd actually done was grown weary of expressing who I was and what I believed, whether about grief or about questioning a long-held belief system.

As I felt myself thrashed among the waves of grief in this recent loss, I knew I had to reach out for help and tell others how to show up for me, and that I had to be authentically messy as long as it took. This approach has been incredibly healing for me in regard to those old wounds. I think it's something I could only allow myself to do because of the work I've done (with the help of therapy) and what I've learned in spite of depression over the past years, particularly this past year.

It is difficult, especially in times of grief, to be aware of oneself and find the energy to fight for that self. It is risky and feels even more vulnerable to ask others to be there for you. And it is all necessary to allow the grief to be with you.

"To thine own self be true." -Shakespeare

The Split Path

Man, it really blows to wake up every day feeling like shit.  I didn't feel this way in depression for some time...  I feel numb, hollow, and achy all at the same time.  The actual thought of him never being in my life again is unreal.  I swear it feels like my chest – my heart actually aches. 

Then I go back, always the same, to wondering how in the hell would I ever do this again?  In the past, I wanted to want to marry someone, just because we were together.  Now, I wanted to be with and build a life with him, I began seeing the way we were in each others' lives as beginning to build a shared life.  I saw someone I trusted to share well in life's challenges, who gave me comfort and support and laughter, who shined a light on my dark days. 

There are many reasons and yet no clear one as to why we are not anymore.  Maybe that makes it hardest of all.  He was there and present, loving me so well, I never thought there was a major plot twist coming.  It's like all my systems cannot process the change in course. 

And I believe that love stays.  I value the trust that I've earned, the person who I love...I just don't know my place, anymore.  The one that he wants, not whatever one he thinks I should have.  

My damn heart keeps hoping.  I'm so rooted in my gut, that I can't go in the direction of "shoulds".  It's like I have to follow through, to the end of the path, or the fork, whichever it may be, to believe against her.  It's not that she's never been wrong, that inner voice, it's that too many times I've doubted her and messed things up. 

It does feel like I'm at a fork, and either path appears treacherous.  There is no way without pain.  I've sat here a few days.  I'd started down one, but something didn't feel right.  Maybe I'll just never learn how to not be loyal to a fault.  I've tried before and it wasn't less painful, nor did it evidence being "right". 

I suppose that's kind of how my gut-inner-voice works though.  I'll sit here, at the split path, until she tells me the way.  And I'll do my best to trust her, – and if she's wrong, I'll double back.  But either way there is pain. 

Single, Pushing 30

One of the hardest things for me to process about the end of this relationship is the implication that I should hope for a new one in the future.

Not long from now, I turn 30. I'm at a place in my life where making new friends is hard enough, let alone the thought of trying again to find a life partner – I don't want to. I'm at this point where I just want to be known. In my early 20's, I loved the life of meeting people constantly and having a lot of brief encounters, finding that the world is full of people to be known and opportunities to have fun. I had so much fun! I knew so many people, just a little bit – which tends to be enough for the good times. I was also constantly learning about life, able to experience it to the fullest in any given moment.

I'm not scared of turning 30, I've sort of been looking forward to it. But for the past couple years I've been feeling the change that comes at this time. It's harder to make friends. It's harder to meet people, let alone people who share your values and your humor and your interests. The people you know are harder to spend quality time with.

As I struggle to begin adjusting to being single again, I can't help but think of how disinterested I am in the get-to-know-you process, particularly teaching others about me and certainly not investing in others only to find out there's a barrier. And I would love more friendships but I want to skip to the comfortable part; to the depth. I don't want to be single forever (and now there's my eggs to think about, thanks 30's), but the thought of wading through profile pictures, trying to sum myself up in a limited amount of characters, getting ghosted from chats and dates, nearly being taken advantage of, and wondering if I'm "their type", if I'll be good enough...

Not to mention, I work hard in relationships. I think a lot about them. I want them to thrive. I want to feel free to be myself in them. In the past few years, I've narrowed my focus to a few close friendships that feed me and give me life. But it's the nature of things that the older you get, the less time we have for one another. So the loss of an intimate relationship at this stage of life is especially challenging. I find myself facing all these questions about the future that I can't possibly know the answers to; I don't bother to try, except that they are my constant, nagging companions in my solitude.

I know I'm past the age where the brief encounters give me life, or where I can convince myself there's a lesson or a purpose; what I want is to be known and to go deep. I'm past the point in my path where I'm hopeful about going back to a stage that was once fun and exciting, that now seems dreadful and hopeless.

And it's not that I need any convincing, it's that I've gotten to know myself better year after year. The past few have been hard, and I know that I am still burnt out. And I thought I'd found my person so I don't want to fill their space. Nor do I believe I could.

The Real Thing

I've been feeling like there's a strong juxtaposition from intentional dating and online dating, but I haven't been able to put my finger on it but it sort of just dawned on me in twofold:

I recently went out on a few dates with a guy, we'll call him Andre. Throughout the dates, there were things I didn't like but was trying to be open-minded and go-with-the-flow. After all, the most recurrent unsolicited dating advice I get is to not be so picky (which to me sounds a lot like lowering your standards or expectations, or turning off that little voice in your head that's skeptical). It's not like it wasn't enjoyable to spend time with him, but it wasn't enthralling like the beginning of either of my two relationships. I had moments of not fully liking my time with Andre; he was alright, but underwhelmed me. For having these qualities that interested me, much of the rest of him didn't, and some things even turned me off of him. That probably sounds harsh, but it just wasn't there and I wish I hadn't ignored it when I sensed it.

And therein lies the problem: it seems in online dating I have to let my guard down more because my gut tells me that certain things are yellow flags, which is not very open-minded. When really, I think I've let other people's advice get in my head too much. If it were up to just me, I'd trust my gut, which was usually telling me the right things in hindsight. And truthfully, it is up to just me. It's not anyone else's call, because it's not theirs to live with. For instance, with Coffee Shop Guy, had I better listened to my intuition, I could've avoided some things that were detrimental to our relationship. If I had been better attuned to myself...

Then it's that there's something about just noticing someone in life that works better for me. Online seems to be more about curating, or forcing something to be interesting because you should, if you want it to be successful. And it seems because there are all these options out there, one should be able to find tons of suitable people to date. The reality is that it's rare to find someone you feel intrigued by, turned on by, and excited to be with, and for it to be mutual. It's not like opening an app suddenly presents a huge selection of potentially dreamy, magnetic lovers ripe for the taking. But that's the illusion, which adds a pressure to the process and the act of swiping.

Frequenting an establishment and noticing someone, the way their face looks when they think or how their eyes sparkle when they talk, or how they put on their jacket, – all the while wondering who is this human that's become irresistibly fascinating – found simply by existing in the same space. Or noticing someone who's been under your nose, who you've known for a decade without a clue you could be best friends and that they're quietly so very cool.

It's hard to expect someone's fish and football pictures combined with an extensive three sentence self-description to stir the same wild curiosity that can organically bubble up in you when crossing paths with another human in real life.

It's hard to beat the real thing.

Keeping Time

I'm the sentimental type. I think about anniversaries, they're etched onto my mind in a way it practically helps me keep time. But it's almost been a year and I'm at least okay now, but I still don't understand what happened. I live with a daily melange of feelings of love and hatred, and no place to put them but let them simmer in me and maybe, if I'm lucky, they'll just evaporate.

See just a year ago, my heart would change in a way I didn't think it ever could – though, truthfully, it also didn't. Maybe some people can do the love and let go thing, but I'm not cut out for that. Just a year ago, in spite of this, I finally managed to let go. Then a mere few weeks later a man came into my life and casually charmed me off my feet. Impossibly cool, but aloof so it didn't seem to matter to him that he was cool...which made him even more attractive. (Yes, I see the cliche.) I usually have a good read on people, I kind of get how we work and how we interact with each other, I feel like I can often see through people to their motivations and values. Yet somehow I got duped.

I tried to move on, thought I was ready and it would take someone else proving to me that not all that's left out there are emotionally stunted men who are so cool they'll break your heart without remorse -- icy. I tried to move on and one mediocre or crappy instance after another, I'm finding myself feeling discouraged and yet with clarity. The good old-fashioned way really knocked the wind out of me a time or two, so I go through these phases of attempting to date the modern way: apps. It always seems to go a variety of ways, none of which are successful. There was the zero chemistry guy, the CSG doppleganger who was also too cool for human decency and communication, and the guy who doesn't know what "no" means, or "owe" or "don't". That last one, left me missing the aloof emotionally closed-off guy because at least he was respectful of my body and my "no". And that left me missing the one that couldn't be. Which then made me realize, I need to get comfortable.

I hate being single, because compared to having someone who knows all about your life, checks in on you and thinks about you daily, and is gaga for you, and on and on – compared to that, being single sucks. I wish there were a more eloquent way to say it, but I don't have the patience and, well, it's a thought for another time.

Almost a year ago I was high and dry in life - no job, broken heart still mending, long overstaying in a place that was meant to be temporary. I can't help but look back at that version of myself and envy her. She didn't know life was just winding up to take another swing the second she'd get back up, that that handsome guy stealing glances at the coffee shop would break her heart all over again, too soon and too carelessly. I envy her because she didn't know it would get so hard again.

The me now? She knows that you don't find the real good stuff all that often and you can't force it where it isn't. She knows that no one's really deserved her since the first one. She knows that was special and to look for something like it. Hoping? That's another story.

To Put Off the Conscience

My life seems to say to me: remember that time you got your heart broken, oh and that OTHER time, and when you didn't matter to that person enough to have a conversation, or not enough to that person to bother to see you, or that person to pay attention to you?

And it stings. And aches. The place where the wound was gets poked and prodded again, the moment it seems to heal.

And I wish I knew what it was like to be able to put off the conscience and do what I wanted to, even if it hurt others...and yet, there are constant reminders of what that looks like in our world. It is the reason anyone is on the receiving end of something painful, even life-threatening, and I don't want to be the cause of that in someone else's life.

Pain can teach you that you need to harden yourself, or it can teach you not to be hardened toward others; rather to value them. Wounds can cause you to unleash pain on others like a wrath and continue to ache on the inside in a way that oozes outward to infect - or they can cause you to take care not to be a hypocrite with intentional actions and words.

More than anything I find myself prone to indignation that these are the ways we find it acceptable to act and to use the privilege of the time we've been given and one another's company.

What I Learned About Love

I can't tell you how many times I've thought to myself how pathetic I must be in the last two months. Pathetic! Constant ups and downs of missing someone who won't even acknowledge me, who didn't even value me enough to dignify me with a face-to-face conversation about the end of our relationship. I've missed that guy so much and it has felt pathetic. Why do I miss him? I have trouble letting go.

Even amongst feelings of anger and half-joking comments to my friends about how I'd like to key his car, I missed him. A lot. For weeks I've woken up with him as the first thought in my head, several of those times starting my day with a cry because this is what it is and there's not a damn thing I can do. I cared for someone and I miss him, and that hurts.

It's a familiar process, even though it's a different relationship than my last. The other one only just stopped hurting, it seems, but otherwise still feels fresh so I can't help but note similarities in processing another chance at love lost. See I thought after my first relationship I'd never feel excited or passionate about another man. I'm a loyal person, so I thought no one else would make me feel that way, could be that comfortable and easy. I thought I'd always feel like he was missing from my life. And for a long several months it did. But even after the dust fully settled, and I'd even moved on and been hurt by another, I realized I still love him. I'm not pining, I have no desire to pursue anything, but I still care.

I noticed it a time or two over the last year, and figured it was just that not enough time had passed. Especially before having another relationship, I thought I just hadn't fully found a way to move on. While that's partially true, the attachment was real and the separation painful, felt unnatural. And that's where I came to realize something: I was wrong when I thought I'd never feel a strong connection and love again, as if I thought I'd spent what I had to give. I wouldn't recommend trying to love someone romantically more than once (I hope, if anyone else, it's only one more) because it wears on the heart, but it can be done.

Just in this past week I started to feel normal again, not like I'd forever wake up each morning and cry, prying myself out of bed. The strange thing is that even while starting to feel normal and not broken, I still miss him. I still pray for him (nearly the only prayer I can muster, lately). I still just want to sit on his couch and listen to music and talk – and that thought still makes me tear up. Even though I'm starting to heal, still...

What I learned is that love isn't meant to be a passing thing, which is why ending a relationship that had it is so very painful. The love continues to persist in you without its object. Hence grief commonly becomes a companion. Painfully it doesn't displace love. But neither did loving once already inhibit me from it again. The beautiful, hopeful thing is that it's not all used up; I have not run out of love. Same in romantic relationships as with friendships long gone, the love leftover doesn't keep us from finding that there's more to be had and more to be given.

And the stuff that remains, it's okay.

Skateboarding, Good Tunes, & the Hots

It was about a week or two ago when I began to feel a little self-conscious that I'm still stuck on this confusing, painful end. I started to wonder if there's something wrong with me. I date a guy for a little over a month and fall head over heels hard, but it ends abruptly. Then I wait idly by for weeks in intermittent fits of anxiety to find out if he would break my heart more or indeed take me back as pondered over a lengthy cup of coffee just days after breaking up. The answer [eventually] was a firm and unkind no, which I then struggled to make sense of. 

And it was a week or so ago that I thought there must be something wrong with me for missing this guy in my life who hurt me so. It occurred to me I needed a fresh start, a ray of hope: I needed to go on a date. Where does one procure a date these days? On any number of phone apps, duh. Much to my surprise, I quickly had one set up. I thought, I've dated two guys who were "my type" and had an eery amount of interests in common, maybe I should give someone I wouldn't expect a chance. I'd begun to think that having common interests was a pitfall to my relationships, so maybe I ought to look for someone who had the big things and whatever else might not matter. 

Well, moral of the story is and will always be trust your gut. Which is to say, it was a dud. Part way through the date, a mere hour in, I felt relatively apathetic (in hindsight it probably also meant I wasn't actually ready to go on a date). I thought of the way I felt about Cute Coffee Shop Guy on our first date, or the Bearded Lutheran (I'm giving him that moniker as I'm sure he'd like it anyway) on our first date – pure excitement, intrigue, giddiness. Throughout processing the big breakup last year, and even this one, I've had people try to convince me that all that isn't important. This uninspiring date helped me to see otherwise. 

The problem with either failed relationship wasn't ever that there was a strong mutual attraction, great chemistry, and a plethora of shared interests. Both failed for other, greater reasons that couldn't be superceded by the attraction, the chemistry, or the interests. That doesn't make their ends any less painful, or me any more hopeful, but at least I know I don't have to want for something I don't want. Of course I don't love the prospect of spending my life as a single person, but I'd rather share my life with someone I'm excited about every single day – even in their weak moments – than with just any old warm body who looks good on paper. 

The blasé date helped me realize you can't force the rich, exciting, deep relationship to happen, but it sure feels fortunate and magical when you do stumble into one.