I have always had this romantic heart. I haven’t always shown it. In fact, to this day, few people know about it. But it beats strong and I have always waited patiently to be noticed by “my person” and I have always been sure that man would march into my life and insist to spend every moment he had left with me. As the years ticked by, I (like everyone else) came to accept the world didn’t work the way Disney had told us all it would. I actually had to be more than “just me” and even then, no one would feel so moved by my very existence. I started to see life as a compromise and love meant finding someone you could get along with – a friend – the rest was just getting through the day so you could wake up and do it all again the next.
I eventually found the man I would marry and build a family with…and he was funny and we laughed together. We shared common interests and had similar priorities. We had enough in common that everything else was workable. We established our roles and our routines. We chased our individual dreams but built a home and a family together. We grew different and apart but stayed grounded and connected through our family. Over time, we talked and laughed just as much as ever, but rarely with one another. We created alternative worlds and we passed in the doorway, one in – one out. We didn’t fight and we didn’t hurt one another, we simply didn’t stop what was happening. We failed to intervene. We didn’t stop loving each other overnight, but we did stop loving each other. I began to feel hopeless and I gave up on love. Like so many women (and probably men too) I focused on the kids and my career and ignored the glaring hole.
until...
I went for a run one Saturday and in the middle of the run, it hit me. It wasn’t over…it didn’t have to be. I could end this relationship and have hope of finding real love. I knew it also meant I could spend the rest of my life alone too. I knew it was going to hurt people I never wanted to hurt. I knew – but I didn’t know. Not really.
I didn’t know that the loneliness of missing your kids is so far beyond anything I could imagine. I didn’t know that the house would be so quiet or that taking down the Christmas tree would be a form of torture. I didn’t know that I would watch my kids sleep just to get more time with them. I didn’t know I would eventually fall into real love only to have my heart broken. I didn’t consider that if I stayed the same person, I would get the same types of relationships time and time again. It has taken me all this time to realize I had to change. In so many ways, it may have been ME that was the problem all along.
I am not the type to beat myself up or lament a decision. I don’t regret any of my choices and I even feel a little bit of pride that I was able to take a big step off a cliff. In the process I have learned a lot about myself and what I am capable of…and I feel as though there is no storm I can’t weather. Actually, it goes deeper than that, I truly believe I grow most in the hardest times. I have not found the thing I left seeking…or at least I have not found it in another person yet. But I have found something very special inside me, and in the friends who gather around me, heartbreak after heartbreak, listening to my sad stories, nodding their heads in solidarity, supporting and advising as though they haven't heard it all before
I think this was perhaps my path. I needed to explore the world alone for awhile with only myself to rely on to begin to appreciate what is inside me. I still don’t know how this story will go. I might spend more nights alone than connected. I might always wonder if I destroyed the only love I will ever know. I may always tear up when I think about how I put myself ahead of my kids, if only in this one decision, it’s magnitude forever shaping the people they will become. But I will do it all with my head held high because I was at least brave, if naïve. At least active, if impatient. At least passionate, if foolish. I sit here tonight, alone and at peace with what comes, what goes, what is, what will be…knowing that I did more than put one foot in front of the other, I dared to change course.
“The reward for the climb is not praise or promotion, it is a new view.”
I will take my lumps whatever they may be, gladly, in exchange for the view.
