“It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”

― Chuck Palahniuk

Seasons like relationships shift.

Leaves and lovers fall away.

I’m letting her go, the one who thought she would be a wife and fully embracing me. In my solitude, in my longing and creativity– I am present.

Darkness clings, dampening my kitchen longer into the day. Something sits. Uneasy this morning, in my belly, where I tend to sense and hold things. 

Pink and lavender sweetly kiss an otherwise, bruised sky and my laptop glows aggressively. Turning towards the east, I salute the day, wholeheartedly! Dim the keyboard. With every other breath, type a word or two. Return to this stunning sunrise. Cold is coming. Sipping my coffee I think– I’m not ready. 

Wrapping my thick-red robe, round me I curl into my corner chair. This is where I meet myself in hopes of meeting everything I care about more fully. Making room for more care for people and things I have not yet met. Space– for service, joy, fun and work. Care heals wounds that time alone cannot.

Rose-blush spreads from the north, glowing through trees that form the border between my neighborhood and the field next door. Spaces left wild amidst the growth of this little city warm my heart. This splash of color tastes like hope. I don’t trust hope the same way I do opening– but hope heals too. 

Fall barely exists here, brief as it is. Beautiful. Maybe I would like to have a love affair like that– brief and beautiful. Fall wakes in me longing like no other season. Nervous desire. I confess– I am nervous to love again. Hearts can be skittish, no matter how they long to open, when they have been dropped.

I sink. 

Dropped. 

FUCK! 

Really? 

Remember.

An anvil in the belly. 

Dropped.

That was how I felt at the end of my last relationship. Dropped. As we dragged toward our wedding date, everything seemed to be falling. Not in love. All over the floor. I felt like I was the only one who wanted to pick it up. So we broke. That was a grace. We spilled all over the floor, and I mopped myself up. Moved back to the mountains where I grew up. 

My body tenses. I rise, move into the kitchen to refill my cup. The glass Bodum, beaker sits on the stove, in a bowl of water, how I keep my coffee warm. It doesn’t burn it or ruin the flavor. It’s gone cold anyway. When I think about what would have been, I go cold and hurry back to my cozy corner, abandoning the refill, like I’d abandoned my own instincts before, only I need coffee less than I need my real-self.

I’d have gone on, playing band-wife only for real, with a ring-set on my finger and everything. I wanted that ring-set. He’d chosen a moonstone set in black oxidized silver, molded from a real tree-twig, to propose to me with. It was too big as he slipped it on my finger in front of our friends, at a barbecue, the night before my thirty-sixth birthday. He’d dropped to his knees. I dropped– with him. If this were happening– I wanted to look him in the eyes as it did.

Pause. Breathe. Closing my eyes. Remembering. Opening my eyes. Taking my reality in. Present.

The gorgeous Turkish carpet turquoise, bronze and olive warm earthy colors usually soothe and ground– muddy in this light. This carpet came to me by magic, really, I picked it up at the Habitat For Humanity Re-Store for a song. $50 bucks for it and the blue, orange and taupe, Pendleton blanket that drapes this shabby velvet chair, in which I now sit. Funny how easily treasure comes to me now that I have started valuing myself again. 

The sky’s palette has shifted too, the artist must’ve spilled everything together and slopped the muck all over the canvas. Mountain-muddled. 

This memory is sharp. Sharpness cannot be ignored. It must be met gently.  

At home that night, he was all over social media, posting and talking to friends but I did not feel that he was there for me. I wanted to lay in bed. Be with each other. Had this really happened? Yes it had! And we should have been more into each other than anything else, but it was a show. We were not really a part of it, not the real us anyway, who I had seen briefly on our vacation together, earlier that month when we’d stayed at an old hotel and gone horseback riding together. Played twister with a friend. 

Next morning I woke to the: “you’re leaving yourself behind” headache, only I had not yet named it that. It was still the: “lets try to figure this out” headache, then. 

Touching my temple in the here and now. I am here for me now. Present. The plants that fill my living room, sway slightly as if a breeze just passed through. I smile. There’s no window open, just my heart and the waves it makes, as I plunge deeper into this memory.

We went to the pub, our local drinking hole, owned and run by friends, and I drank more than is good for me, which is not very much. We came home– probably drank more and he cooked dinner. I can’t remember what, bustling about in front of the stove, Pandora blasting through the speakers as I passed out on the deck. The deck, a little oasis, potted plants–massive rosemary and lavender bushes– a hot tub and a Koi pond that bubbled and soothed. 

My body knew what my mind did not want to accept, this was not going to work! It had already, not been working for some time. Amidst waves of alcohol and cold silences–I had shut down. 

It’s not easy when things are not awful to just walk away. It’s easy to justify staying somewhere that feels, mostly ok. My body would not let me be just ok, though. It would be up to anxiety and headaches to remind me to come back for me. 

The night my fingers finally unclenched my relentless clinging, he’d rejected an attempt I made to communicate– again. 

Hope held for intimacy vanished like summer, suddenly cold. Instead of chasing– I held myself. Placing hands on belly on heart. Listening to the small, deep voice within, say, “Stay with me, Justice.” How many times had I projected that onto him? I stayed. Held myself. Met myself. In that moment, the skull crushing headache rolled back, like a motorcycle visor, revealing the face of the rider. Pain eased as tears fell and I knew– it was truly over. 

It was devastatingly sad. Heart-break. A beautiful opening!

My body shivers, not from cold but with the memory of how far I had drifted from myself then. Looking out across grey mountains, to the north, not the west through this window I will myself to be here. Present. Trembling, my eyes take in the jewel-tone orchid on the table to my left. She is lovely. Vivid. Violet. She wouldn’t survive in this environment except that I take care of her. 

Remember Me. Meet Me. I will never leave me behind again!  This is a solid promise I keep reaffirming. This is also the root of why I am afraid to open to love now.

He was not the love I long to know, though for years I wanted him to be. When I grieve it is really for the parts of me that I shut down, trying so hard to make us work that I weep for. 

It’s been over between us for nearly two years, coming up on the anniversary. I do not dream of him. Do not pine for him, yet this weight that I feel this morning was something that I took on for him. That’s only partially true, it’s more likely, I had been carrying it forever or at least since I was small, the way I used to carry my brothers. It’s familiar, this weight, so I stop and file my nails to move some energy and get dust on my laptop. 

Now I feel agitated. That’s a good sign. I guess I was depressed then, but not now. What was under that depression?

A-gi-ta-tion. 

Often I don’t want to see what I am agitated about for fear I cannot do anything about it or that it will rock what little stability I have found in my world. So instead of moving, instead of making  changes, in the past, I’ve clung to that weight, as if it were my foundation and my body shaped around it. Formed habits and behaviors, to hold it in place. 

I chuckle! I have effortlessly lost weight since I moved back to the mountains, since I left him and all of our shitty habits behind. Yeah, there we go, now I am agitated. That was what needed to be felt.

What else is there huddling, buried deep in my soma that longs to uncurl as I now uncurl my long legs and stretch? I breathe and probe gently, curiously with no malice towards myself or these memories. The blue nubby blankie does nothing to ease this chill that shakes me to my core. I shift the curtains searching for any sign of light. Notice the artist has daubed a bit of whitish-yellow amidst the sky muck and my breath tastes like honesty. 

Val-i-da-tion! 

I hate that word sometimes. It’s ok. We all have needs. Need is not a dirty word but a most holy-human expression of our selfhood. 

It was like being together, even when it wasn’t great gave meaning to my love. Look what I can do, what I can endure. Look! Such a good little trier! I can be an even better communicator even if he doesn’t want to. It’s all on me! There’s the headache, oh joy! And there’s the weight. Right. There. In my belly, as if it had never moved. 

Memories can be cold and thick in the body.

I stretch. Shiver. My little gold chair feels too small. My body feels too small for these feelings. Shove at the curtains!  Deep breath– light please! The artist complies. The little yellow daub wobbles warmly and suddenly there is a patch of blue too. 

Wildly alive and ready are the words that drip from my fingers this morning, as the dog snores from the sheepskin, and my little asshole cat slips outside to terrorize the neighborhood. He’s a felon, my cat and I have to vigilant with him. I remain vigilant yet at ease now, awake aware– trembling with life. Present. The sky seems to waver. The artist is shifting the canvas.

Deep breath Justice. It is over. Life’s begun anew. 

I hold my bruised little heart and rub the salve of surrender into those sweetly, raw places. “I love you, Justice.” I whisper. In response a dazzle of light! Cannot tell if it’s the artist or me. Close my eyes. Crystalline drops form in the corners of my baby-blues.

This promise, I here and now make to you, “I will never leave me behind again!”