Right Lane Ends
Lane Closed
I keep seeing these signs on the freeway. Not particularly note worthy except that my ex boyfriend’s name is Lane...and to the universe I say "ok, ok, I get it...finally"
I am seeing these signs all the time now. I mean, maybe they have always been there but for some reason, 18 months since we broke up, I am seeing them all the time now.
So, I am taking them as a sign from the universe that the time has come to let him go...
Ok, I have been letting him go for a long time now, but I am talking about completely releasing the idea that he was the love of my life. “Right Lane ends...Lane closed!”
I think that it is time and I am sure that my friends and family are really sure it is way past time. But I have not been ready...until now.
I think I was holding on because if I let the idea of him go, it left me with the very scary proposition that I am alone in the world again...not the most important person to someone else. I know that I am important to my kids, parents, co-workers and friends but it is different to feel loved by an intimate partner, a lover. This untethered feeling left me clinging to someone that the universe very clearly told me was not for me months ago. Why?
Lack of acceptance?
Force of will?
Demand that things be different than they are?
Stories that my head made up?
Yep, Yep, Yep and Yep...but most fundamentally, I could not live with the idea that if Lane was not, in fact, the love of my life then I had not met the love of my life. I couldn’t accept that I had to keep looking which I found exhausting (I am 49 for fuck’s sake - seems like I should have gotten there by now). Don’t get me wrong, I loved Lane. He was the love of my life right up until the moment he left me. He showed me that while we may have shared a great love, we were not meant to be life partners and grow old together.
Over the last 18 months, I have had to grieve this most fundamental loss, that I was not done with love yet. What I thought was the revolutionary love experience was still yet to come...I cannot even put into words how very much this caused me to not want to get out of bed in the morning. I have literally spent the last three decades in the search for the love I could not live without and here I sit, as my fifth decade winds down, partnerless, loveless and alone.
This is what I have learned: life is a grind and love is also a grind but my attitude that I am too tired for either of these is a choice. I get to choose to quit or take a break or pause from life and love. But the attitude I bring to my life and loving is my responsibility. If I choose to be exhausted by still being on the quest for love, that is totally my deal. I could just as easily decide that the most exciting part of my life is still ahead of me so I could be elated rather than exhausted...it is up to me.
What I think kept me stuck for so long is that I believed for me to be whole that I had to be loved by someone else. In review, Lane did love me and I did love him, but he was really just a vehicle for me to learn to love myself. I mean really love Erin. I used men to run away from me my whole life; Lane was the brick wall at the end of the proverbial “lane”. I didn’t realize that hitting that wall didn’t mean that I was done with love, I was just done with Lane (or rather he was done with me). I thought, for a long time and needed to believe for a long time, that he was coming back around. I saw the ending of our relationship as something of a detour rather than a dead end.
Today, I can, in fact, see and believe that the “right lane” has ended and for me, “lane closed”. I feel empowered and no longer tied to the unhappiness the thought of him used to bring. I am ok throwing myself back out there in life and love. I remain forever grateful for the lessons loving Lane brought into my life. He healed a lot in me which has made me a more viable partner. He also, through his love of me, taught me that I am in fact lovable. I am worthy. I do deserve. And like any good metaphor, there are lots of other “lanes” out there on the freeway of life. My real job is to do my research then follow the worthy ones to their inevitable end or not. I will never, ever believe again that the end of any particular lane, means that I am done, simply that I am just changing lanes...
