The Relationship

The relationship

It was the hopeful one, the one after the big one, that last one that broke me and shattered my whole life.  This one lit up a spark in my heart.  

Had God heard me? Did I really deserve this? Was I even ready, capable, of a healthy relationship with a healthy individual?  It turns out I think I was, or am becoming… 

A gentle soul came into my life and gave me a pair of wings and a shovel to dig deep.  Gave me eyes to see things I couldn’t see before.  Gave me words to speak my truth, slowly and hesitating, allowed me to state my needs and be honest and vulnerable, no matter how hard it felt.  Allowed me to reconnect with my desire and my beating heart.  

And guess what? It was still alive and well underneath it all.  Beating strong, loving strong, desiring strong.  

And after some months of still being in the “seeing what I want to see and hearing what I want to hear (daresay an old and stubborn pattern of mine) I saw it.  I wanted more… it is usually the case isn’t it? More love, more open heartedness, more vulnerability, more commitment.  And once I saw that it wasn’t there, not quite available, maybe not yet, maybe not ever, I couldn’t un-see it.  

I let that knowledge brew inside me for a few weeks, wrote about it, talked to him about it.  And eventually realized it had to end.  It had allowed me to see that I was not getting quite what I wanted, not fully.  So many things were aligned and beautiful, but many others missing.

I did not feel fully seen, or rather, fully valued or loved.  I was loved only for who I am outside of my reality, in those few beautiful short getaways we had together.  Not quite so much in the muck and mire of my daily life, my family, my children, my chaos. 

And guess what, those things aren’t going away. And I don’t want them too.  I love my big raucous family, my kids, my unpredictable ever changing life full of surprises and difficulty.  I am a mother.  I am alive through all of it.  And I want and deserve a partner who sees it and sees the beauty in it and loves me not in spite of it but precisely because of it.  

That partner might never come into my life.

But I was not made to settle for less.

I was not made to subdue my desires or to shrink my expression and love to fit a smaller size, or to compartmentalize my connections to only parts of myself and my life.

I want to be fully seen and loved for all of me.  Irreparably, desperately, passionately loved and desired.

And so it ends.  Just as gently and softly as it arrived.  The ending as the beginning.  My heart a little sadder and heavier.  But my self esteem and worth pretty much intact.

There are all kinds of souls on this earth, and not all of them will want me or love me, all of me.  And that is fair and good.

I only pray that I remain open to the possibility that it does arrive for me.  That this dream that has survived all the droughts and all the failures and all the heartbreaks, remains alive and open in me.  That my heart continues to stay wide open to it all, to this heartbreaking, wondrous life of mine.