Being that it has been a few days coming, this is long and perhaps confusing because I am vague on details. Still, it is a window into me and if you're willing to take a moment to peer inside then thank you for sharing this with me.
Recap
So these last two weeks -please pardon the cliche- have been a complete roller coaster of emotions for me. Some moments I'm fine. At other times I am complete mess of tears, unable to stop and unsure as to why I'm really crying. Some days the world is great and I understand my place and purpose, other days I just want to step off of this wheel because I'm too lost to keep going. It is the human experience. As strong and level headed as I may wish to be, hope to present on the exterior, I am only human.
I don't know if I've ever truly experienced mourning to such a degree before in my life. Or if I have, I did not recognize my feelings to be mournful. Joana put it best when she wrote to me:
"It's weird how sometimes the only thing that seems to lessen heartbreak is blame or anger.. that little piece of something to hold onto. and when you don't have that.. shit. damnit - now what? just cry until your eyeballs feel like they're floating around in their sockets and out onto your cheeks??!? ... it is mourning in its most real sense. there is no logic or control or talking yourself out of it. it's part of the process."This is exactly how I feel when these fits of sadness come on. I have had no label to put on it really. In past incidents I've been angry over the wrong that had been done to me and I could simply focus all of my energy in that direction and eventually I got over it. In this case I've had none of that to hold on to. Despite being able to rationalize the situation, I was still feeling sad, vulnerable and yes, occasionally unloved/able. I couldn't explain it away.
It took the persuasion of one of my committee members, a professor I was having a meeting with, to convince me that I needed to take a day off and mourn- and that it was okay! Obviously, I heeded her advice and took a day to myself. It was well deserved and I felt ten times better afterward.
So I can say that I understand and accept the situation as it is. I have control over myself, my actions and my thoughts in this, and nothing else. It takes two to tango, so to speak, if one of us cannot handle the long distance thing then we can't force it to work. That doesn't change how much we care about each other, or the great times we've had, or what we've been able to learn from each other. I understand why it is what it is. Concomitantly, just because I can rationalize this and see it from all sides does not discount my feelings, it does not make them invalid or unnecessary.
A tangent on the social constructions of love and happiness
I am surrounded by love. There are so many people in my life that have been kind enough to share this with me and I am so blessed to have them in my life.
It's difficult sometimes, though, because our society has placed so much value on romantic relationships, life-partners, marriage, family- all of these things outside the realm of just friendship (which I would argue can be way more influential than family at times) - many people weigh their happiness and success in life according to their experience with these social behaviors. In one of my fits of sadness, I really let my guard down and allowed my ego to creep up.
Based on the social constructions of love and relationships, thoughts ran through my mind: What did I do wrong? Am I ever going to find that special someone? Will I ever find that someone to share affection, appreciation, allowing, attention and acceptance? How could I possibly expect to meet anyone while I'm so involved with school? Does that mean that if I continue on for my PhD that I will be lonely throughout my career in academia? If I meet someone after I graduate with my PhD, will my mom be around if I choose to have a family?
A slight aside here. I wasn't thinking about any of these things while being in this last relationship or even beforehand for that matter. Everything was glorious and I was perfectly happy with the way things were, precariousness and all. There was no need to dwell on any of this. It was when it ended that my ego decided to step in and bring its faithful friend fear along with it.
Some of these thoughts are just silly for me to be thinking about- but apparently natural for anyone facing fears of abandonment and rejection. I've never been the kind of person to believe there is just one person out there for everyone. I know that love is not restricted to one person or to simply being romantic. I believe wholeheartedly in the idea that people come in and out of our lives for a reason and a certain amount of time, for me, it takes a lot (you must have done something really bad to me) for me to stop loving any of these people. This is inclusive of friends. I've also never really been the kind of person to believe in marriage; it seems like a performance that one makes for the sake of their family, friends and ego that wraps love up in prada and cocktail shrimp for all to gawk at. Marriage is so consumptive-based that it seems to lose the essence of what love is. I also recognize and respect that for some people it is not so much a performance as it is an expression of the commitment being made to their partner.
Seeing many of my friends, my peers, in committed relationships, getting married, having children really gets me thinking though: Am I really where I ought to be right now? I'm thankful that I can answer this with certainty and say "yes."
Oh what a tangent that was!
Lessons
As stated before, I believe that our paths cross for a certain period of time in order for us to learn a lesson from the other. I realize that I am being redundant because I've stated this before in other blogs but I will reiterate for my own sake. Being in this last relationship has been an eye-opener for me. I have come to learn so much about myself. About what I am capable of offering another in love and friendship. I have learned where I am willing to compromise myself and in what ways I am not. I have been able to face my fears of commitment and abandonment and therefore have been able to grow and blossom in ways I wouldn't have imagined before.
The momentary lapse of sanity mentioned above was just that. I am so happy with where I am in life right now. I am happy for my friends who have found that special someone and are creating their own families- that is awesome. It's simply not for me, not right now. I don't think I can iterate enough how amazing my friends are and how much I appreciate the love that we share. Without them I don't think I could come to my realization that while romantic love is nice and welcomed, I do not need it to be happy ( I use my instead of the because it is my truth). I am always connected to and surrounded by love, it's just a matter of recognizing it - just thinking about that is an awesome thing! (Thanks Charles!)
By the same token, that doesn't mean that I need to try to be happy when I'm feeling sad. Even though I can rationalize a situation and understanding that I am surrounded by love, I do not have try to rationalize away my emotions. It's okay to mourn the loss of something. It is necessary to experience the emotions as they arise, recognizing what they are and letting them run their course. Like a river that cuts through the mountainside this outpouring of emotion can clear the way for new beginnings.
I find it interesting that as we leave a relationship we hold the other up, painting them to be something they never claimed to be. In my case, I created an illusion of what was, could have been, what I believed to be inherently true. I was devastated when our relationship ended. I was then deeply disappointed when I discovered another truth. As the Dalai Lama would argue, however, nothing inherently exists. It is circumstances that create meanings, a kind of dependent-arising if you will. Disappointment is a kind of loss, the loss of what we had hoped something was or could be. At the bottom is the loss of an illusion to which we were clinging or on which we relied. It has taken me some time to understand the circumstantial meanings of all of this. It has been an exercise, of putting together the pieces of the puzzle but now it all makes sense. So much so that it makes me laugh now. Thank you for freeing me from yet another one of my illusions.
What a journey this has been! Thank you so much to those of you who have shown me love and support throughout all of this!
Peace,
Mari
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