I have spent these weeks going over all of it, and am disinclined to do that with you. Review doesn’t change the truth:   love doesn’t follow rules.  Love could give a shit about things like gravity, time, the plans we make for ourselves, hopes and dreams.  I can’t help but think of horror movies where the evil whatever keeps changing up and startling everyone again and people suddenly die.  Love is nearly a reverse:  a chase toward, instead of from, the most beautiful and terrible human condition imaginable.  It’s certainly still a horror story:  love is fleeting, unwilling to be caught, will always hurt you regardless of your careful handling.  When there are multiple consciousnesses sharing a love, there is no taming it.  We tried, together and separately, to hold on to a love we thought was ours.  It turns out possession wasn’t an option. We were lucky to have created a space in which love was so welcome, and present, for so long.

I have learned a lot about myself, all of it surprising to me in ways I took quite personally. Until this perfectly destabilizing moment, I understood myself to be lucid about my own actions, strong, full of conviction.  I have been none of these things since facing the truth of myself, forced instead to stare down my own arrogance and watch that fire dissolve into a puddle of self pity that I couldn’t help consider as an option for drowning.  I hid.  I canceled everything and stayed in my haven of a room–notably the first room I’ve had to myself in years, and full of daylight–deep in fantasy novels (big thanks to my best friend) and Sleepytime Extra tea.  Those raw days after injury are for licking wounds, and like a shamed animal I hid alone to do so.  A part of me now, as I have allowed grief and time to flow as they do, is able to gratefully recognize (some of? ugh) my own shortcomings before they affect me and those I love further.  The rest of me wonders how much damage I have done in this ignorance of my own tendencies.  Perhaps sated by my excessive apologizing, this wondering part of my psyche has finally let up on the constant bullying.  Now I face this brutal mirror:  there is a lot about myself I did not recognize, and much work to be done.

Everyone’s expectations of our selves and each other could use a fucking breather.  There’s a whole bunch of a hell of a lot that I have to say on this subject, but when it comes to going through a breakup, wow! We need to be gentle with ourselves.  Both of us are exhausted from crying.  We are wrung out, and I personally have been missing the delightful social part of me that makes jokes.  I panicked at her immediate disappearance.  It took me a while to realize she just needed time.  Injury, no matter how well it heals, stays tender a long while.  Dave too is over here beating himself up for… I’m not sure what and it’s none of your business anyway, but for a bit we were finding ourselves apologizing to each other through tears.  Now some time has passed, and we seem to keep finding ourselves in each others’ arms.  This feels very okay, and delicate in a way that makes me not want to share any more of it.  I am newly unsure of almost everything, but I have learned some things about love.  I am glad to invite her to stay under new circumstances.  I offer and welcome tender care of healing wounds, and I trust this man to hold my heart.  I forgive us both.  I love him always.  I am doing okay.