Fade

I was a sparkling, outgoing little thing as a child, and various events around the ages of four and five changed that. I twisted down and inward, learning to distrust friendship and limit the risks of connections. Being a Third Culture Kid exacerbated that, "gifting" me with the dichotomy of going deep quickly (because time with people may be limited) and yet holding back from true connections (because everyone says goodbye.) My sister became the true extrovert of our family, with my brother at the other end of the extreme as one of the most introverted people I know. My parents are both introverts who know how to work with people All The Time.

Me? I was an introvert who wanted friends and didn't know how to make them. And as I gradually became more confident and entered my career, where I work with people All The Time, the extrovert within began to blossom.

It wasn't until my world fell apart almost two-and-a-half years ago that I started making stronger, more intimate friendships, however. When I had nothing left to lose, because I was on the cusp of losing everything anyway regardless of my level of honesty, I finally connected with people. Online, in real life...in both arenas, I reached out and gathered in and connected.

Not all of those friendships have withstood the test of time. Some had their moment in the journey, and they gradually faded away into the background. A couple have imploded due to argument and disagreement and hurt feelings. And a few...well, a few have been torn between then and now.

I have two friends who were the closest I had to best friends in the Before. Both women were married to friends of The Ex--this was, in fact, how I met them. Both women were there for me--oh, so very there for me--when my marriage was fatally wounded and then festered and decayed until it had to be amputated. They were there for me through some of the worst of it all.

C stayed by my side for more than two hours one night, listening and worrying and listening some more, as I rocked in a corner alternating between keening in agony and pouring out my pain. Then she tucked me into her own bed and fed me in the morning. She and her husband opened their house to me unconditionally. If I had needed it, they would have moved me into their spare room.

M listened and commiserated for hours over the phone and in person, despite the awkwardness of having been on the other side in her own marriage (which was mercifully salvaged) of the same sort of final disaster that tore mine apart. She stuck with me despite having to mediate between me and her husband, the closest thing to a best friend The Ex had or has. She loved me, she forgave me, and she cheered me on toward health and healing.

And now, in the After...Both women are still friends. They still love me, and I them. But the intimacy is slowly waning, replaced by an unspoken awkwardness as they--and I--are torn between two worlds, two circles, two friendships. It becomes easier and easier to not call, not email, not meet for quality time. And while I doubt that I will ever stop considering them friends, the reality is that they are no longer in my closest circle, nor I in theirs.

I am torn between whether to take steps to regain that old intimacy or continue with the status quo. I've never been extraordinarily good at making friends, although I have more close friends now than I've ever had before in my life. I've never been terribly good at keeping friends either, at fighting for friendships when they are threatened or begin to fade.

It is easier, after all, to keep a buffer between us, whether physical or emotional. There's less risk that way.

But isn't that what I'm trying to learn to do? Take the risks and hazard the pain?

Growing is hard.

Afraid

A blogger friend of mine (not a close one, but still) just lost her husband in a horrible and completely unexpected way. He was in the hospital for several days before they finally turned off life support and let him go. She is left, stunned and bewildered, with two very young children and a life turned upside down and inside out.

I found myself unable to reach out to her, unable to comment, unable to join the ranks of bloggers asking for prayer and support and love for our internet friend. When the news finally broke that he was, indeed, gone, the most I could do was leave a short and rather lame comment saying that I was saddened beyond words and sent my love for her and hers.

I couldn't even pray about it.

I'm not linking her blog here, because I have no intention to use her tragedy as the focus of this post, as it is essentially a self-centered (and selfish?) one. This tragedy SHOULD be about her, and instead I find myself utterly incapable of moving beyond the visceral fear it triggered in me. Because this is my nightmare, the ultimate fear of abandonment, one that I never truly had until I opened myself up to the risk that is True Love.

I've lost people here and there--my great-grandmother, my aunt, The Ex's grandparents, several students--and while I have struggled with their deaths, I don't think I've felt the loss like a hole that could not be filled. I don't think too often about what it would be like to lose someone even closer, like a parent or sibling or even a grandparent (as all four of mine are still living, believe it or not). Mostly, when the thought crosses my mind, I feel numb.

Perhaps it's all avoidance.

Here's the confession, however (and I've only told two people this before): there were times during my relationship and marriage to The Ex, when things were at their varying worst, that I fantasized about his death. Not murder, no--just, you know, some sort of accident or disease or something like that. It seemed like a cleaner way to remove a source of conflict and pain.

God, that seems cold put in writing.

It's not something about which I am proud. At all. I consider it a measure of how broken my mind and heart and soul were for so many years. And I'm glad he didn't die, because I think the guilt would be crippling.

But I did have those thoughts, and I never felt much more than the acknowledgment that the change itself would be a wrench, but that otherwise...well, otherwise it would be a relief.

I have never felt, at any rate, that the death of any one person would be shattering to me, even though I know I would grieve.

That is, until about six months ago. MTL and I were talking about his job and the dangers associated with it, and he mentioned the reality of metal poisoning, and how his life may very well have been shortened by the quantities of various metals that have made their way into his system. At those words, I experienced a visceral reaction I've never had before: the utter terror of what it would be like to lose him to Death's inexorable grasp.

I've been unable to fully escape that fear ever since. It's surfaced again at different times: when he mentioned a scare he had years ago over a potential lupus diagnosis; when we've talked about getting old; when the deaths of others bring home the reality that everyone, inevitably, dies.

I didn't tell him about my friend's husband for several days. Not that it is someone he knows, but still--I often mention major events in the lives of my blogger friends. Not this one. The other night, during one of my all-to-recently-frequent teary episodes, I finally told him about the fear, about how I realized that by letting him inside all those walls and that armor, I've opened up my heart to the potential for extraordinary pain. Not only do his words and actions have more power to hurt me than anyone else's; losing him would be a mortal wound.

I feel melodramatic writing this out. I worry that you, reading this, will worry that I have tied my identity up in him and developed some unhealthy relationship, because that's the sort of thing I worry about. You thinking that, I mean. (I'm not good at confessions, really. Too much showing the cracks under the pretty surface.)

Whatever. I'm not saying I would die the next day or do something stupid or anything like that: I'm saying it's a wound that would never, ever heal as long as I did live. And I'm selfish enough to wish that perhaps I could go just a little before he does, or even better--at the same time. Because I'm not so sure he would do very well either. I understand, finally, how it is that sometimes there are those couples where the one passes away not long after the other goes, as though with that death, life simply did not have enough hold any longer.

(I am definitely imagining a time many, many years from now. I'm not sure how to feel about the trend toward longevity on both sides of my family tree, I have to say. Both a blessing and a curse, perhaps.)

I think that's why I struggle so much with this blogger's story: it drives home the reality that the end may be far closer than we ever imagine. And she has to keep going, has to keep living, has to stay there for her children.

The reality is that I didn't truly understand the risks when I decided to love him fully. It's too late to turn back, even if I wanted to.

Which I don't. I suppose that means that I know every moment spent with him is worth the pain of any moments spent without.

When I told him about my fear, MTL was silent for a while, then told me the story of his grandfather's death. When he was fairly old, he became ill with cancer. At the end, even sitting for a while in a chair became exhausting. One night, he woke, turned over in bed, took his wife of many years in his arms and cuddled her close, and then died.

That will be us, MTL told me. And in the meantime, if we live each day fearing death, we won't really live.

And then he took me in his arms and cuddled me close, and I cried.

"[in]sanity"

This one? I think it speaks for itself.

*********************************

"[in]sanity"

conventional wisdom says
we should take it slow
don't rush into things
test the waters carefully
wait and
wait some more

conventional society says
we being crazy
insane fools
we should take a step back
think and
think some more

but i've never been one for conventionality
i'd rather be unique
and when i look in your eyes
hear your voice
feel the beat of your heart
i know
this is more real than
conventional can ever create

so even though we're crazy
leaping off this edge
trusting in an ephemeral future
i'd rather be a fool with you
than sane without

"fear"

If you read my other blog, you know that I write and post poetry from time to time. There are a few poems that I wrote during the earlier days of my relationship with MTL that I never felt comfortable posting over on D and D. But as I look back at them, I think they may have a place here. I'll be posting them over the next few days.

This first one was the first poem I ever wrote for MTL--and the first poem he'd ever had written for him (that he knows of, at least). Less than a month after we first met, I already knew that he was Trouble for me, if I wanted to keep my heart unattached. Realistically? It was already too late.

Boy, am I glad.

*****************************

"fear"

you frighten me
to the core
your eyes see more
than i intend to show
strip away my defenses
peel back my armor
crumble the mortar of my walls
and all with such gentleness
that i scarcely feel it happen

i am naked
in more than body
and find myself yearning
to climb within your arms
rest against your chest
and let your heartbeat soothe my mind

i want to trust you
but hold back
unsure despite your words
for you are something new
and though what i've known
has failed me time and again
still
it's easier to stay with the familiar
i am uncertain
if i can take the risk of the unknown

although

when you look at me
i find myself opening
and i wonder
if perhaps i have the courage after all

Why It's Hard To Love

They left again.

As they always do. As they always have. It's a part of the life they've chosen, and all the pain and sorrow they feel at the leaving cannot change the essential truth: they leave me again and again and again, and I have felt that pain since I was a child.

Not just them, you see. Always there was the leaving, with me in tow, friendships made torn asunder and only sometimes fed fuel from time to time, rekindled in later years.

It made me angry. It makes me angry.

And I feel ashamed of that anger.

How can I be angry when their lives hold so much meaning? When they do so much good? How can I be angry when that life gave me a richness of experience that I value to this day? How can I be angry when I know that others have never had the depth of love I have been given since the day I was born, who have also been torn from friends and family, who have suffered tragedy of such dimension that my pain is dwarfed by theirs?

How dare I?

So guilt and shame is mixed with anger and sorrow, and the poison cocktail has soaked the crevices of my heart for three decades. I bandage the wounds but let them fester, ignoring the ache until they crack and bleed again.

I would not let myself fully love, for love means loss. Love means pain. And if everyone always leaves, than it must mean I am not worth staying for.

They always leave.

********************************

He bears many of the same wounds, though from different poisons. He too built the walls.

We dared each other to take the risk. And, gambling on the outcome, went all in.

I still panic about it. There are times when I want to reach out and pull back just a little of my Self, keep some in reserve, Just In Case. There are times when I can barely breathe with the momentary certainty that he will throw up his hands and shake his head and walk away.

I was angry this last weekend: they had left, and the anger I cannot admit was welling up into overreaction to everything and everyone else. He came to me, and I found that with him I could admit the truth, and with him I could weep, and he held me, and then he said the words that told me that he understood the deeper truth behind my fear and sorrow and anger and pain: I'm not going anywhere.

He's had to say it to me before. And I know he'll have to say it again. The fact that he even understands that need says so much about why I have allowed myself to love him as I have never loved anyone else--not just romantically, but at all. Some of those wounds are healing.

But not all.

The anger is still there, and it has washed me in darkness this whole week. I have been taking offense to the slightest things, feeling unintended insults from all directions, fighting back a shadowing of despair. Yesterday I had a moment when I had to remind myself, again, of his words. I'm not going anywhere. 

Becoming part of this new Us, this larger Family that reaches beyond just me and him, is a terrifying thing at times. I'm choosing to take more people into that circle that involves risk and loss. I'm choosing to open up my heart to the possibility of pain.

Because they always leave.

Even when they don't want to.