Keep Going

It was supposed to be cloudy all day today.

But as I sit on the back porch writing this, the late afternoon sun shines down on me anyway.

Clouds are my warriors favorite weather.

My husband’s too.

And my son’s.

Now that I think about it, clouds are also C’s favorite weather.

Me?

I need sun.

I’m solar powered.

I open my mouth and gulp the light rays.

Birds sing all around me.

I wonder how it is that I’ve managed to surround myself with humans who need gray.

He’s been having a rough stretch, my warrior.

You know how that saying when it rains it pours is both a cliche and one hundred percent how life goes sometimes?

That’s the moment he’s inhabiting right now.

For awhile it seemed like my presence in his life was helping.

Softening the blows that seemed to just keep coming.

Then seemingly overnight something changed.

He pulled away.

His expressed affection faded.

His texts were few and kept to surface level topics.

He did his best to communicate with me, asking for space to be in his feelings.

But it felt just like every other time someone has broken up with me.

I was so scared.

It really felt like I was losing him and I didn’t understand why.

I cried every day.

My heart started to break and I had three panic attacks.

Everything in me told me to run, this was not safe anymore.

But I didn’t.

I resisted the urge to flee with all of my might.

I sat with the fear, uncertainty, insecurity.

I realized something.

This pulling away felt so familiar, so recognizable.

And I thought of C.

How when it got to be too much for her, our exploration together, she had a similar reaction.

Texts got less frequent.

Affection was no longer articulated and offered.

There had been a relationship space we had been cultivating, the safe landscape of mutual vulnerability and shared investment.

It was a little world we were building, to inhabit and grow within.

Together.

I looked around one day and realized she was no longer there with me.

I was still open, ready, willing.

Risking security for the unknown, the way it always is with love.

Yet she had left.

It felt like I was out on a limb, and she’d been right there beside me.

Only now I was on that limb alone.

I think you can sense it.

When a partner leaves that energetic world you build together.

It’s palpable.

And as I reflected on that time I noticed it felt very similar to how I was feeling now.

So I called C.

We’ve been able to form a pretty deep and supportive friendship over the last months.

And I felt comfortable asking for her insights.

I laid it all out for her.

Everything that’s happening for him, and how it’s impacting his capacity to connect with me.

As I spoke, I could almost hear her nodding in recognition.

Heard audible “mmm” and “yup” and “uh-huh”.

When I had finished she had a lot to say.

I know you, she said gently.

I know you want to hold his pain, to carry it for him so he doesn’t have to suffer.

Unfortunately, that’s just not how it works.

Sometimes, she continued, people just need a minute.

Maybe right now, he has to journey through this in his own way and his own time.

If you can be patient, I think he’ll come back around.

But also, she added, you get to discern whether waiting for him to return is something that is doable for you.

You get to choose what’s right for you.

As we talked, I thought about how confused I had been with her back then.

How lost and alone and abandoned I had felt.

How her avoidant attachment patterns triggered my anxious ones.

I asked her questions I’d always wanted to ask, but never felt brave enough to.

What started as an advice session about my warrior, morphed into a heartfelt conversation clarifying how that time had felt for her.

What she had needed, what she had been unable to reconcile.

I felt a new sense of understanding and perspective on the entire experience.

It did help me to pause in my panic, to not react from fear, to stabilize in trust rather than doubt.

But also it offered me a healing I hadn’t been aware I still needed.

After we said goodbye, I let our conversation percolate in me awhile.

What a beautiful journey we’ve had, C and I.

First loves.

Devastating heartbreak.

Twenty years of separation.

Reconnecting and falling hard and fast, again.

The long arduous process of falling out of love with her, again.

And then, this new chapter of sweetness and friendship.

I realized, she’s one of my closest friends now.

I can tell her anything and the level of intimacy and history between us can hold it all.

I wonder if this was always where we were meant to end up.

Life is so funny that way.

One heartbreak can turn into a beautiful blessing.

One blessing can shift quickly into heartbreak.

It’s easy to run.

When things get messy and hard and unknown, the safest option is to bail.

Protect.

Shield.

Yet if we can linger in that scary liminal space where change manifests, there is growth.

There is transformation.

And if we can muster enough bravery, there is resurrection waiting on the other side.

I sat with this reality.

In the stillness, clarity came.

I choose presence over control.

I choose devotion over safety.

I choose uncertainty over what is known.

I choose to stay.

Not out of martyrdom.

Not out of performative loyalty.

Not putting someone else’s needs over my own.

But courage, to see where it will all lead.

Resilience, to abide in the discomfort of unraveling.

Hope, to see a new way of being in connection.

I can’t predict what will happen.

If my warrior will come back to me, or continue to drift even further.

All I can know is what my heart is made of.

Tenderness.

Bravery.

Deep, abiding, expansive love.

Devotion.

I pack it all into my metaphorical relationship toolbox.

And I take another step forward on this journey.

One foot in front of the other.

Trusting the beating heart-shaped map in my chest.

It’s only directive?

Keep going.