I rushed this to print as I was having a rushed morning and I forgot 2 important things.
One at the beginning and one at the end.
I am god here, so I can make changes as I see fit.
Not to saunter into the land of ‘should’ but I should have started this article this way.
There is a meme that makes the rounds every so often and it poses the following query.
I wonder whose arms I would run to if I was drunk in a room full of all the people I have ever loved.
For a long time I thought I knew. My answer remained consistently one person. But as the world turns, things change.
I knew then and I know now.
Of course I would drunkenly and sweetly say hello to all of them. I wish them well, because if I loved them once, I still do. This is who I am and what I do.
There are certain things I don’t do, with some exceptions…
Once upon a time I had sex with an ex. I was 26, we’d broken up after dating for 2 years, a year of that spent living together.
He was…how do I put this…extremely encouraging when it came to my own sexual exploration and me figuring out what makes me happy.
He came home from work one night and I had laid out a ‘picnic’ on a blanket in the middle of the living room floor. I was naked, propped up on pillows watching porn and masturbating…I was dinner.
He was great in that way. Nothing was taboo, I never felt shut down or shunned.
Then we broke up.
He had been gone for a month or two. Did that scheduled pop by to get the last box of his stuff. It was mid-afternoon on a lazy Sunday. We talked and realized neither one of us had gotten laid since we split and thought “one more time for old time’s sake”.
Oh
My
God…
It
Was
Awful
We laughed when it was over and both agreed to NEVER do that again.
Whatever spark had existed between us had been reduced to a soggy lump of nothing. Wait, that sentence implies wetness, there was no wet.
The next ex? No way.
Cut to years later, I forgot that lesson. The never have sex with an ex 101. I spent 4 shameful months in varying hotel rooms with ex-hubby after we split, and I gotta say it was emotionally damaging but the sneaking around part turned us both on so it was physically satisfying. Until it wasn’t.
The ex after that? Nuh uh. Ew.
The last 4 years have been spent ‘dating’ varying men. I call it dating because there is no other easy word. We eat, we talk, we watch movies and we fuck. Relationships without restrictions or labels I guess. They get nicknames and immortalized here. I get booty calls and good company. For the most part it’s a win/win.
We never really break up because we were never really together. It is an odd spiral of in and out with no beginning and no end. Infinity loops with pretty faces and strong hands.
And then sometimes, I trip in the feels and drown. I forget how to breathe and even just be.
That’s how it felt when he left.
One would think, and with good reason, that if I cried and cried over losing someone, my heart would know how hot that stove was and never want to touch it again…right?
You don’t know my heart. She’s a stubborn thing.
Cue the recently single ex.
I went over for a beer and realized how much I just loved his company. There are atoms present in him that soothe my own.
I said…
“I think that entangled particle theory is true. We keep bumping into each other in every life.
The hard part is over.”
He said he hoped so.
I said
“Being apart is the hard part.
Not knowing is the hard part.
Whatever conflicts or miscommunication there were was just that human ego mess that gets in the way of what our atoms already knew.”
He said he hoped I was writing right now.
I am. I was. I will.
Something about him changes the way I speak.
It’s all fine now. I had put him in a box labeled ‘not my person but definitely my people’.
Of course I coveted. He is beautiful. But that was past tense, that wanting him to be mine and to belong to him. But that goes against my evolution and logic really. Why lock something down when you can just enjoy its existence? That is the same mindset that makes people put beautiful creatures in zoos. And it’s really not okay. Nothing belongs in a cage.
I removed the sexual aspect of our relationship as much as I could. Friends after sex does exist. I am walking, talking, loving proof of this. It’s fine. We can just be.
There also exists, somewhere, a lightbulb that Nikola Tesla designed and made and presumably screwed in himself way back when. It continues, to this day, to light up the corner of some long forgotten room. No one really talks about it. It’s just there shining, against all of our modern ways of thinking about how long a lightbulb should stay lit.
I went over a second time. He surprised me with dinner. We drank good scotch and listened to good music, for this is what we do. At some point we laid down next to each other in the dark and I revelled in how content I was in that moment.
I once tried to explain how it feels when he touches me. But I can’t. It’s all galaxies and colours and the cosmos. Its lightning crashes and the smell of ozone. Its unwritten symphonies and bliss.
And I had pushed all of that away. To the point where my body fought it for the first few minutes he had his hands on me.
Might as well try to contain a tempest in a teacup.
I guess that is what it’s like. Akin to being a tiny ship at sea during a hurricane, but somehow knowing beyond doubt that this is just a ride and I will survive and be happier for the experience.
It’s funny though, these mind tricks I play on myself. Pushing away both the agony and the ecstasy contained within my past. This is just what I do to get by.
I fooled myself into thinking, it was amazing sex but that’s all…so I could remain friends with him and just be content with his company.
It’s not all.
Thankfully I thought that way long enough to heal and grow and just be okay with what is.
I thought myself a silly girl for how hard it was to let him go.
I wasn’t.
I had a concrete karmic reminder of what I lost. And it all came back to me.
I lost him once. I survived.
I’ve grieved enough for this lifetime and paid it all the way forward into the next.
I’ve realized I can’t lose him. In a world where everything is possible, that one thing is not.
The hard part is over.
