so you can go ahead and tell your sons and daughters that the hardest thing that they will ever know in life is this: you will love one person fully. you will pour all of your love into that one person. they will be the secret behind your smile, your laughter, your confident stride, the whistled tune you carry with you as you walk the streets. it will not be the center of your attention all the time, but it will be the raison d'etre, albeit quietly.
and this person that you pour your love into will someday throw it all away at a moment's notice. it will take you aback. months and sometimes years of love. it will be hard to swallow at first. impossible to accept. why? what for? but they will throw it all away and close the door on you. they will not want your words, they will not want to know the details of how they have hurt you. they will simply walk away in silence.
then you will have to find some way to continue being in the world without your smile, your laughter and your confident stride. you will feel ugly. tired. you will have to perform meaningless tasks like going to the grocery store and looking for jobs. this pain in you will not go away for many months. your appetite will sometimes be shifty, sleep will be mediocre. days will get longer. the sun will shine and the world will continue to be beautiful but you will only participate it with great hesitation, sometimes it will be dreadful.
loss is, by far, the hardest thing to accept. mike said it right - relationships are like dreams; when you are in them you cannot see out of them, and then once you are out of them, much later, you cannot believe the state you were once in. well, right now i'm kicking around on the edge of one, but he's pushing me out. trying to hang onto a dream that he says is dead. fumbling.
people always mediate these situations by saying there are many fish in the sea. but when you are hanging onto the one you loved, you cannot have eyes for anyone else. there is no medicine to help ease the pain. there is no 12-step program. no 5 year plan. loss is loss. i have lost someone i love. he says he cannot bring himself to love me. i have about a million words to tell him but somewhere i feel like i'm not supposed to share them. that i'm supposed to keep them to myself. i will probably write a letter, with paper and ink, the old fashioned way.
how this week or this month will transgress, i don't know. i think it will be many months of this feeling of being lost in the world. 2010-2011 has been a strange transition for me. from archeological photographer to unpaid intern. jobless american collecting unemployment. a lady full of love for a man who cannot love her. things can only get better i hope.
