Sweet Victory or Sweet Defeat......
I have looked at my phone ten times this morning alone. I pick it up in my sleep to see if it has that light flashing telling me I missed it. The call, the text, the voicemail. None have come. I keep thinking if I just give it some time and space, as in the past, it will work out. But, I don’t think so this time. It has been much longer than it has been in the past. It was a week ago we last spoke. The cold words I still hear in my head, “we are going down different paths”….and I agreed. We are. But something inside reminds me that there have been similar words spoken before…and with time it will come back as it once was. After the bout of melancholy, when I am missed enough. After the emptiness fills the heart and I am once again needed. And I, not understanding how things can be so good one day and finished the next.
And I have tried to let it be. I have tried to embrace the idea that I cannot fight hard enough for someone who isn’t fighting for the same thing. I cannot make someone walk down a road they don’t want to walk. So I have resisted. Not always successfully. I have faltered twice since vowing not to interfere. I have text without response. And the sting of that rejection was enough to reacquaint me with the truth.
You can’t make someone love you. You can’t make someone accept you. You can’t make someone change their mind.
I know this road very well. The time we spent deliberately coming to know one another is enough time for me to know what is going on. There is running and escaping. And the experience is being stored in a time capsule in the mind. That is what happens. And I cannot change that. It doesn’t mean they care any less. It just means they care differently than I want.
Distance is what they want. And distance is what I need. Distance for me from the feelings. But achieving that is the struggle. Twice this weekend I had opportunities to run away emotionally and impede the sadness through setting something on top of it. While it seemed to be inviting and precisely the thing I did when I first started seeing my rock star, it isn’t what I want. A romance, another adventure, another scoop of golden brownie ice cream. None of those will help this come to an end.
Perhaps, the reason I have considered not moving on from my rock star, the reason I have considered taking up the flirtations of others, or the reason I have wanted extra chocolate on my sundae is simply because I am wholly aware of what is to come. When I begin peeling back the next layer that I have been all but stapling down in the last six months….there is pain. There is grief. There is Paula. And she is raw. Ready to explode, as if being shot from a cannon.
Ah, and writing is my liberating release. Yet, prose put me in danger of vulnerability. Something I too often guard against. The well meaning “suck it up and move along” friends who offer me counsel by telling me I deserve more and need to get happy are at my doorway offering hospitalization if I don’t come around in the next few days. Therein lies one more fear to face: Authenticity. I feel feelings. I feel them deeply and I lay them out in black and white for the world to see. This is who I am when I am real. And as frightening as that is, it is also cathartic.
I will put my feelings first. I will absorb the nature of that which I am dealing. I will realize the lessons and I will continue to move forward. For me part of the process is acknowledging the sadness of something that will not be the way I wanted. And I will salute the victory in the fact that I recognize the many lessons that lie ahead.
Onward, but tears are allowed.
I have looked at my phone ten times this morning alone. I pick it up in my sleep to see if it has that light flashing telling me I missed it. The call, the text, the voicemail. None have come. I keep thinking if I just give it some time and space, as in the past, it will work out. But, I don’t think so this time. It has been much longer than it has been in the past. It was a week ago we last spoke. The cold words I still hear in my head, “we are going down different paths”….and I agreed. We are. But something inside reminds me that there have been similar words spoken before…and with time it will come back as it once was. After the bout of melancholy, when I am missed enough. After the emptiness fills the heart and I am once again needed. And I, not understanding how things can be so good one day and finished the next.
And I have tried to let it be. I have tried to embrace the idea that I cannot fight hard enough for someone who isn’t fighting for the same thing. I cannot make someone walk down a road they don’t want to walk. So I have resisted. Not always successfully. I have faltered twice since vowing not to interfere. I have text without response. And the sting of that rejection was enough to reacquaint me with the truth.
You can’t make someone love you. You can’t make someone accept you. You can’t make someone change their mind.
I know this road very well. The time we spent deliberately coming to know one another is enough time for me to know what is going on. There is running and escaping. And the experience is being stored in a time capsule in the mind. That is what happens. And I cannot change that. It doesn’t mean they care any less. It just means they care differently than I want.
Distance is what they want. And distance is what I need. Distance for me from the feelings. But achieving that is the struggle. Twice this weekend I had opportunities to run away emotionally and impede the sadness through setting something on top of it. While it seemed to be inviting and precisely the thing I did when I first started seeing my rock star, it isn’t what I want. A romance, another adventure, another scoop of golden brownie ice cream. None of those will help this come to an end.
Perhaps, the reason I have considered not moving on from my rock star, the reason I have considered taking up the flirtations of others, or the reason I have wanted extra chocolate on my sundae is simply because I am wholly aware of what is to come. When I begin peeling back the next layer that I have been all but stapling down in the last six months….there is pain. There is grief. There is Paula. And she is raw. Ready to explode, as if being shot from a cannon.
Ah, and writing is my liberating release. Yet, prose put me in danger of vulnerability. Something I too often guard against. The well meaning “suck it up and move along” friends who offer me counsel by telling me I deserve more and need to get happy are at my doorway offering hospitalization if I don’t come around in the next few days. Therein lies one more fear to face: Authenticity. I feel feelings. I feel them deeply and I lay them out in black and white for the world to see. This is who I am when I am real. And as frightening as that is, it is also cathartic.
I will put my feelings first. I will absorb the nature of that which I am dealing. I will realize the lessons and I will continue to move forward. For me part of the process is acknowledging the sadness of something that will not be the way I wanted. And I will salute the victory in the fact that I recognize the many lessons that lie ahead.
Onward, but tears are allowed.
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