After eight years of being with one person and thinking of my life within a certain context, I find it challenging to begin again. There are days when I am not sure who I am or what I am doing with my life. It is not that he was my whole world but my life formed itself around that relationship and without it I feel this freedom to be something different. Sometimes it is overwhelming - being faced with the question of what to do and how to be.
Sitting at my kitchen table, surrounded by things that are an expression of what I love in life helps me to define this. Art - by others and my own, music, great food, fabulous coffee, my brand new little herb garden, books. . . I can look at these things and know what I enjoy about life.
But sometimes I still feel lost. I went out last night and walked around town, alone. Walking helps the thinking.
Someday I will look back and it will all make sense.

I had a most wonderful, idle, weekend. There is something to be said for idleness and I am perfecting the art in my life. I find that too often I have so many things to do that I try to do two or three at once and I am left feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by all of it.
I need to make room for doing nothing, for sitting in quiet thought, for walking hand in hand with no real destination. Time for snuggling up and going back to sleep when my mind wants me to get up and be busy with something.
Last weekend was an excellent opportunity to do all of those things. I had no goal of entertaining myself or doing anything one might consider a leisure activity. I wanted to be idle. Upon waking Saturday morning, I promptly went back to sleep. I think I did this several times over several hours. My morning and afternoon was filled with lounging about, only to be interrupted by eating. A perfectly relaxing day.
My evening was to be spent with a friend, we met up around six and traversed the town eating little bits of food at whatever place we decided to go into. Cupcakes, cookies, truffles, smoothies, crab cakes, beer, wine, gravlax, watercress soup, whisky, a martini, more beer, 1/2 of a duck, carrot cake, beer, gin, blarney puffballs. . . . it was a lovely and leisurely food journey that was completely unplanned. We would exit a building, choose a direction and start rambling along, stopping where we pleased to consume something that sounded yummy. 6 hours of walking and eating and enjoying the day together, enjoying the fact that we had no where to be, and nothing of importance to do except to be together.
Sunday was something of a repeat. We slept until 2pm. We went out in search of food. Following this was a lot of napping and being lazy. Nowhere to be, nothing to do. The night ended with a funny movie, we passed out on the couch and eventually made it to bed.
I think there is much to be gained from knowing how to be idle. I work so hard at getting stuff done that it is hard to stop doing long enough to think a little and recharge. This world we live in demands constant action and what do we get? A great many stressed out, medicated people who buy lots of stuff to feel good. I am not willing to be one of those stressed out, medicated consumers. It is time to change.

dear wonderful friend

he finally called - of course. he was at work - duh. he wants to get together - of course.
thank you for your kindness, there is nothing easy about this path I choose. it is made easier for knowing that there are people like you who are willing to be a friend and listen to all of this, to offer words to advice and caring, thoughtful reminders that I have a beautiful life even when he is not in it.

I know that he is well intentioned and honest with me. he would not call and say the things he has said if he did not mean them. there is no reason for it. it is completely irrational for me to think that this is easy for him. sometimes it overwhelms me. I don't even know what to do when my head fills with all the suppositions and unknowns.

i wonder if this will ever heal - will i ever trust him and be able to believe that it is as simple as two people who are insanely in love with each other and uneasy at what that means.
you give up a lot when you decide to love and trust someone. you give up that sense of control, you give part of your life to someone else and no matter how hard you try to be your own person, there is some part of you that they always carry with them and it belongs to that other person. there is some part of him that will always be mine and I have to take care of it, nurture it, care for it - and when you have something that is so silent it is hard to know what it needs.

i guess that it needs love, a lot of it, and without anything attached. that is the hardest thing I think - to love and be there without any expectation of getting anything back.
he has a lot of healing to do and so do I. I can't expect that after 10 days everything will be all better but this past 10 days has felt like an eternity.

i lay around doing nothing, thinking about this over and over again. sometimes that is good and sometimes it is very bad. I spent two hours of my Friday in another universe filled with him and questions about how this might turn out - and that is the most ridiculous thing to do as there is no way I can know how this will turn out.

on one hand I can truly, honestly, see us being together for a long, long time. there is so much love and happiness between us - for each other. so much appreciation for each other, awe for how we feel when we are together. on the other hand, life and personality and all the bullshit that we have to work through in life makes it hard sometimes. hard to be together - hard to face the fact that if we are going to be awesome together we need to face up to and conquer all the crap that we bring into this relationship.

it all comes down to fear. we are afraid of each other and this thing we are when we are together.

how do I explain this. . . .

I cried more tonight than I have in months. He terrifies me.
The things he asks of me are more than I have ever given to anyone else in my life. Complete forgiveness when I would rather hold a grudge. Trust when there is absolutely no reason why I should trust him again. These emotional battles are the most challenging things in my life now and maybe ever. . . so far.
Giving my heart and soul into the care of another, I have never done this with anyone. He brings so much joy into my life and it was a shock to realize I could be so happy with anyone. Dinner with a guy who I have eaten an uncountable number of meals with and I have a million butterflies inside at the idea of seeing him. After everything we have been through - that you still make me feel this way is beyond my comprehension. I was with someone for 8 years who never affected me this way.
When I was 20 years old I met someone who is a truly wonderful person. We started spending time together and really liked each other. Then we started dreaming together, we created all these dreams for our life and what we would do, what it would be. . . then I ended up married to those dreams. When it all fell apart, I mourned the loss of those dreams.
I realize now that relationships are not made of the stuff of dreams. They are made of those tiny, breathless moments and in the best relationships, they happen over and over again. What we have leaves me breathless, over and over again. Every moment with him is timeless and amazing. I have never had this before and I am not sure that I will ever find it again.
Can I walk away from this and live my life knowing that I decided not to give him another chance?
So when he tells me that he is sorry for everything, that he is sorry for being afraid, that he is sorry for being his dad, and wants to do whatever he has to do to be with me, to heal this, to get back to where we were and then keep going all I can do is sit, with his arms around me, and cry.

Ethan

Ethan: "Happy Mother's Day, I love you."
Me: "I love you very much sweetie. I am glad that I am your mom!"
Ethan: "Me too! I just wanted to tell you, that without you, I wouldn't be alive."

Ethan is 6 years old and I love him more than anything or anyone. Pretty amazing what being a mom does to your life.

from xkcd

talking to my "big brother"

I don't have a big brother. I grew up as the oldest with just one little brother. I don't ask him for advice - it is not how we are. So when I need big brother advice, I find that I am stuck.
Tonight I called a friend of mine, he is just a few years older than me, and I asked him to be my designated big brother. He has a way of listening, asking questions, and giving advice that I imagine to be what an awesome big brother would do.
Our conversation boiled down to this:
"Life is a coin. You can spend it anyway you wish, but you can only spend it once. Can't remember where I heard this but it couldn't be more true. Don't be afraid to get your heart broken, if it happens time will fix it."
I think my big brother gives awesome advice.

it's my birthday, bring the filet mignon. . .

My phone rang on Monday and it was the last person I expected to hear from. I felt ill. What does he want? He calls me after a month of absolutely no communication and wants to see me that very evening. Why? Why could he want that and why would I agree to it? My birthday. I agreed to spend my birthday with him. We spent nearly four and a half hours together when I had planned to give him no more than two.

"I am so sorry." It was the first time he has apologized. The apology was unexpected. It was honest. It was out of desperation. He is not happy. How can you be happy when you walk around trying to be the person you think everyone else wants you to be?

He is so stubborn and arrogant (as am I) that there had been no admission of wrongdoing over the past four months, all along defending his actions as his process. I have done this very same thing so I must forgive him for it. It is the fact that he was, by his own admission, intentionally deceitful that pains me. We made agreements and spent months building trust in our relationship and it took him less than two weeks to destroy it. Can I accept that it might happen again? There are so many things to talk about, so many questions.

The truth is that I love the boy who hides under all the bullshit. I know the person he keeps hidden away from the world who is so passionate about food and wine, the boy who wants to sit in his garden on Sunday mornings drinking english breakfast tea, the boy who lectures me on the molecular structure of organic solvents when I wonder aloud about rubbing alcohol removing ink from my fingers.... I love how we finish sentences (correctly) for each other and laugh until we are rolling on the floor. There was one night I thought we would get thrown out of a favorite restaurant because we were laughing very loudly about something that made no sense at all. ("I have a monkey, bring the filet mignon" whatever that means.) The hostess kept rolling her eyes at us and I was sure they would ask us to leave. They didn't and we just kept laughing.

When you find that person who is such a joy to be with, how can you be stubborn and angry and unforgiving? I try to be that way and I fail. We all have our bullshit in life and somehow I am willing to forgive him for all of his. I do not know if we can be together but I know that I forgive him.

I asked him, "what the fuck do you want, what happens now, why are you here?"
He responds, "I'm in love with you and I want to have you in my life. Can we just spend some time together, maybe we can get together and cook. . . just start there."

How can I deny him this? I love to cook.