Loving...

Have you ever been in love?

Like head over heels? 

Where everything in your world is altered by this other person’s existence? 

It is quite a fucking feeling.  Intoxicating, terrifying, life altering.  Completely different than obsession, because the feeling, if you have it, is always mutual.  There is something so amazing about being the center of another’s world.  Where everything, absolutely everything revolves around them and for them around you.

I have only had it once.  One time when the stars magically aligned and for a little while we were madly, completely in love.  When I think back to that time, I just remember feeling high, good and alive in ways that I hadn’t ever felt before.  I felt connected to him all the time.  I felt seen and supported in ways I had never felt before.  I am sure I was never adored or adoring but we had that right up until the time we didn’t.

I am not sure when exactly we fell out of love. I know for me it happened way later than it did for him.  He the one that called it off the first time, then we traded break up initiations for the next year with him being the one to level the final blow.  I was devastated.  I couldn’t eat, slept all the time I could because it was the only place I found solace and comfort.  I was like the walking dead.  I was there, but I was so not there.  I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to go on living my life without him.  I was SURE he was my other half and I wanted that to be true more than anything.

Our love story felt like a bad biking accident I had once upon a time.  Flying down a ski resort mountain path during a beautiful summer.  Wind flying my hair back, sunshine on my skin, lighting me up.  I was flying high right up until the time I found myself on the ground.  Face trail rashed and bleeding.  Head hurting and pulsating.  My chest ripped open and the blood coming quickly.  I had a concussion, three broken ribs and a whole bunch of cuts and bruises.  I was a fucking mess.

That is how our relationship felt to me.  Two years of heaven punctuated by a hard fucking stop that left me scarred, bleeding and reeling.

I drove myself 3 hours home the night of that accident.  Broken, bruised and every part of my body hurting.  I probably shouldn’t have done that with a concussion but I am not one to ask for help.  I drove the three hours home, made a couple of calls to ensure that someone knew I was hurt and should probably check on me the next day in case I didn’t wake up.  I didn’t want to die out at my little ranch at almost 8,000 feet and have my dogs eat me.

This break up was the same.  I called a few people to let them know my emotional carnage, and that I could taste the blood in my mouth.  I swear to you I felt better emotionally and physically after the biking accident than I did the break up.

It took me the better part of two years to get over it.  I was just so sure we were meant to be together.  I just couldn’t let it go.  He was everything I ever wanted and I didn’t know how to let go of the love I felt.  I thought I was done finding love, after searching all my life.  I thought I was going to be able to move forward and onward with him next to me, forever.

That is hard to let go of.  That feeling that you have found your perfect other half.  And I held onto it as long as I could.  I spent the next two years wandering the trails around my house alone and weeping.  I just couldn’t get over it.  So it was fitting that I was on that trail when I found out he had moved on to someone else.  I am pretty sure that news came and I crumpled to the ground.  This would be the place that cryking was born (crying + hiking, for those who are new to my blog - I am sure I am not the first person to do it, but I am the one who coined the phrase).

Loving definitely feels like flying and is the best feeling I have ever known...right up until the fucking crash.  I know some people never have the crash.  They just fall hopelessly in love and stay that way the rest of their lives.  Not without loss and hardship, but somehow in spite of life being all lifey, they stay together and love each other for the rest of their lives.

I have never known love without the attendant crash.  That is just my path.  And I really do not enjoy a mouthful of gravel which is why, most likely, in the intervening seven years I attempted to stay out of love’s way.  I did foray out one more time and that, as you are aware, ended badly and was more like a train wreck than a biking accident.  The casualties more numerous and the carnage created a wider swath.

Despite all of that and thus, demonstrating my complete commitment to delusion, I still want to find love.  I haven’t given up, although sometimes I am fucking jaded beyond recognition.  I wish I was one of those people who could, badly mangled, decide to just sit out any more title bouts with love.  But I can’t.  Human relationships, love, connection, intimacy and heartfelt endeavors seem to be the place where all my spiritual work happens.  It sometimes feels like a cruel joke.  And sometimes I can see that my path, although harrowing and brutal at places, has resulted in me finding love within myself for myself in ways that I am sure I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.

Loving isn’t easy.  In my experience it has been fucking unbelievably brutal.  But I know I am better for it.  I am a better person for all the times I have loved and lost.  I believe the others are better for my efforts also.  And since the dude that broke me into a million pieces and I are now friends, I can report that he has told me on numerous occasions that his life and that of his children’s lives are better because of me.  That all of them experienced the glow and warmth of someone who loved them all without restraint or condition.

And it is a wonderful day when I can report back that I still love them all without restraint or condition.  I am over him and no longer hold onto the delusional belief that he was The One.  I can see now how very mismatched we were.  I couldn’t see it then, but I do now.  And I am grateful he and I found a way to still be in each other’s lives, in supporting roles, and that after the fire some semblance of love remains.

I don’t know if I ever get the high flying feeling without the attendant crash.  I hope so.  That would be wonderful.  And I remain committed to the cause...I guess it is up to the powers that be. I know, for me, that loving is always worth the pain because every time I love, regardless of how bad I lose, I grow the capacity for love and loving within me.  And that is never, ever wasted effort.

The cracked ribs and trail rash heals faster than the emotional scars of loving and losing.  But I know, because it has been my experience, that I am always better for the effort expended and the wounds delivered. Because I always come to know myself and my own capacities for love and loving better.

Again...still.