They are the natural result of hard truths...and I had mine yesterday. Just like that, the hard truth landed...I could not stay in the relationship with the guy. I have tried and tried and tried to have this work but I am not dealing with someone who is all there, and while I know that on so many levels, I have so wanted to believe him when he said he was more capable. He isn’t.
It is amazing to me how very far I will go to make something work. Something that I want quite desperately. And the love of a man who sees me and hears me and wants me and shows up for me, well, as painful as this is to admit, I apparently will go to some major fucking lengths. And I cannot rectify that with myself. I am a hard charging, bend the universe to my will person who also has this nasty habit of just exiting the building when stuff I don’t like happens. And I guess this relationship and all its starts and stops is no different.
I have used my will to conjure up truths that were not really truths, and ideas and feelings and all of that because I so wanted this to work out. And I can see, he is just not the guy I keep hoping and needing him to be. I mean he is totally capable of being that guy for a hot minute. But as soon as that hot minute is over, I am left bereft of feeling and safety.
We cannot help who we fall in love with...we really can’t. It just happens or doesn’t. And I am not an easy lover. I do not like the easy ones. I am difficult and hard and exacting and that is just how I am and not attracted to perhaps the ones I should be. Never have been and am getting to the place where I am losing faith that I can be different more rapidly than I can summon hope for a different future for me.
I am grateful I am a risk taker and part of being a risk taker is that you are always pretty sure how whatever you have just jumped into is not going to work out. It isn’t like you don’t see it coming, you just wish and hope and pray that perhaps that acute assessment might be wrong and it just might pan out this time...but when it doesn’t, you know, you saw it coming even if you didn’t want to see it. I am a long shot believer, to my core. And that is perhaps the most honest and romantic thing I have ever owned.
And I saw it. The train wreck that is on my doorstep today. And I prayed it wouldn’t come or to be wrong about my increasing feeling that perhaps somehow, someway we could avoid the impending crash. I knew it was coming the entire time...I just have this incredible hope, and will that perhaps that tiny speck of something other than complete dismay will take root and grow. Grow faster than the dysfunction and addiction will. And it never does. I can see that now.
I hate this part the most, when you have to sit with the hard truth that grew into the hard reality and lick your wounds. I so want to build a bridge and get over it. But love is not like that, you don’t just shut the door, say a few prayers and move to the next whatever it can be. Loving and losing is a process that takes time and healing and is not something you can just decide to be done with and then move the fuck on. I mean you can try, but my experience with this is that one of two things happens, you either jump into something else way the fuck too soon and then that become just a distracting sideshow to the pain and anguish you are trying to avoid feeling, or you do not grant yourself the time and space and healing to occur so you end up repeating the pattern after a little while.
I wish I was capable of allowing softer realities to be mine. I wish I could love differently and better and less selfishly. But I do not seem to be able to. I am a hard charging, hard loving, let’s defy the fucking odds kind of person and so there will always be perhaps more pain than there needs to be. Always.
I do not regret going one more round. I do not regret it. I love him and I tried. If there is one thing I can say and see and love about myself is that I always see the best in people and my very forgiving heart allows for me to grant access to myself in ways that many others would not. But I am a realist always. I saw how this would end...and so I am not all that upset about it. I wish he would change and want to get better. But he doesn’t and there is absofuckinglutely nothing I can do about that. Nothing. And I have too much recovery and grace to go down with him...
And while I am barely in charge of my own recovery. I mean, I am here and have amassed a number of years but it is still absolutely a day at a time for me. One wrong turn, one failure to enlargen my spiritual condition, one misstep and I am goner just like him. And perhaps, maybe all of this had to happen so that I could see that the only person I am ever responsible to change, accept, save is me. The rest of you are on your own...sorry. Not sorry.
For me, I saw that day so many years ago, this part of me that was indeed worth saving. And I have been attempting to grow that and protect it and move that tiny seed towards full flower. I keep thinking that I am further along than I am...but that is ok, because reality is always going to come in hard and fast for me. And so I am left with no choice other than to find the willingness to save myself, from myself, one more time.
I know, I know, there is another way to live. But that way doesn’t really interest me. I have to be here doing this, the hard way with lots of hard truths, and realities to grapple with and from. And that is just who I am. And I will find some grace and peace and love for me in all my healing brokenness.
And for him too. I am not sure how much longer he is going to be here and that causes me so much heartbreak to admit but I know it is truth nevertheless. Healing isn’t for those who need it, just like recovery isn’t, it is for people who want it and are wailing to do just about anything to get it.
Again.
Still.
