what is it good for?

Recently I chose myself. Choosing myself felt a lot like something I am not allowed to do. But after I realized exactly who I wanted to be, I didn’t care whether I was allowed. I was going to be it because it felt wrong to be anything else. That meant initiating a thousand small steps toward inner peace. I am still walking that path. The inside of myself is a cavernous craggle of confusion. When I think of the ways I hurt the people I love by telling them my feelings changed, I second guess the value of my own peace. I wonder if I’m worthy of causing someone else’s pain for the sake of relieving my own. Who’s pain hurts more? Why couldn’t I just focus on silver linings? In the end it was the size of the storm cloud that got me. That and knowing you don’t need to look for silver linings when the sky is bright blue.

I am mourning the loss of what has been my most formative relationship. I am grieving the love we had and that we don’t get a chance to do anything twice. Life must be lived forward and all that. I love my partner very much and I believe that he loves me. But the way he loved hurt the most tender part of myself and things couldn’t stay the same anymore. I realized I would never forgive myself for allowing that part to be passed over. He might believe the error was on his first test and that I am being too unforgiving of a rookie mistake, but really it was a last chance to show me he understood. He did not. Still, I stayed for nearly two more years. I thought maybe in time my heart would heal to be just as it was before the misunderstanding, but hearts are never restored to the same shape. The love story is written into the wound. For each day it went unaddressed the wounds edges turned further in on themselves in an effort to dull the pain, like a carved pumpkin during the hottest fall on record.

During this change to my relationship, I have been reflecting like a motherf*cker. It sucks to hurt other people. It sucks even more when you realize you could have made simple changes to prevent it. There are things I know I won’t do again. Pretending to be okay to keep the peace is top of the list. Lying to myself about what being okay feels like is a close second. It’s a lot harder to hide the truth from yourself than other people.

Hindsight is a b*tch as they say.

It’s important for me that I be honest with myself, of course, but what I can see so crystal clearly now is that saying I don’t want this to someone offering you something not meant for you is also a kindness to them. I tried so hard to avoid causing pain for anyone else. I would bear it for the both of us. I think I believed if I never said I was hurting out loud it couldn’t be true. I see the selfishness in that now. The dishonesty. I am ashamed of all I didn’t say. I will always carry that.

And I am patiently waiting for the guilt over my decision to dissipate. I know it will in time. I hope the decision proves itself to be a healthy one in the coming years. I also know that waiting is the only option for me. Alternatively, I could cast my guilt off onto someone else. I could pick some poor soul and hand them blame. I could even make a good case, but it wouldn’t stick. In the end we are responsible for our own actions even if we didn’t know enough at the time.

I think what my guilt is punishing me for is anger. Anger that I didn’t know then what I know now. Anger that I can’t change the past. Anger that I can’t make it mean something different in my mind. It is what it is, in the parlance of our times. A great man once told me that anger is energy for change.¹ There is the time before I got angry and the time after. It changes things. That’s the very nature of it.

I am learning that we each get a few events that mark a before and an after in our life’s story, like a novel split into parts. It doesn’t have to be anger to change you. You can be changed by grief. You can be changed by love. These before/after events increase in magnitude as life gets more complicated. I used to think that my graduation from high school was one of these before/after events, but then I graduated from college and everything that came before that felt unremarkable. Now, years after earning my degree, that moment has become less defined as well. Certainly, becoming a parent makes the list. Creating and nourishing another human forever changed my own humanity. I’m not sure that it had as much to do with the importance of the event as the amount of self-reflection involved. I had to decide who I wanted to be for my child. What kind of mother am I? What kind of mother does he deserve? Reconcile the differences.

Maybe that’s the factor that unifies these moments; a intentional change to the Self. The / between. Even in cases where we are unaware that a before/after event is on the way, a bad car accident for example, the notable change is found in the healing promise to never take another day for granted, not in the twist of metal. It’s the change intended that’s important. Not to say the wreck doesn’t cause it’s damage. The shock is still felt. The impact leaves bruises behind. Shattered glass must be extracted from the skin. Healing takes time and it starts slow.

But I have faith I will heal eventually. That all of us will. I have faith that my guilt will become right-sized and forgiveness will fill the hole it leaves behind. I’ve forgiven him already, thats easy to do when you love someone. I would never forgive myself if it happened again and it’s essential you can forgive yourself so that you and yourself can go on living together. If it ever happened again… I couldn’t risk it. So the relationship between my selves took priority, and the one between my partner and me had to change shape. I’m on the other side of my / and the intended change is turning out to be a healthier one. I am still rage-fire angry and grief-stricken at times, sometimes both at once. I am also at peace a lot more often. What I needed was a little space to breathe.

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1. I think his name was Walt? ↩︎