Big deal. So you fell in love with someone. Don't you see what happened? This guy touched a place in your heart deeper than you thought you were capable of reaching. I mean you got zapped, kiddo. But that love you felt, that's just the beginning. You just got a taste of love. Wait til you see how much more deeply you can love than that. Heck, Groceries - you have the capacity to someday love the whole world. It's your destiny. Don't laugh."
"...I think the reason it's so hard for me to get over this guy is because I seriously believed David was my soul mate."
"He probably was. Your problem is you don't understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. ..."
~ Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray Love
Within the first passage, I was hooked. Who was this woman with such a familiar voice? Her story wasn't mine, but it was like reading my own work, my own insight into life. (So modest of myself, I know, to compare my inner writing voice to that of an American autobio bestseller. Ah, well, if I've learned anything this year it's that confidence oversells modesty everyday.) And so it was that I have been reading Eat, Pray, Love religiously every night for the last two weeks. I've been cherishing it like I haven't cherished a book in years...
As a young reader, it would be nothing for me to be hooked on a book like this. I read everything like it was speaking directly to me. Since I read so much, I was an above average writer for my years, and so it began - this dream to be a writer, professionally. Somehow, though, I'm only beginning to hit that path at anything more than a strolling pace. Why was I so sluggish before? Gaining life experience? Trying to make money? Paying off debt? Not believing in myself? Terrified of the rejection to come before the success? Terrified of the pressure of success?
My life has happened this way for a reason. I may not know, in the moment or even a week from the moment, why something unfolds the way it does, but I trust that it is happening exactly as it should...
This summer, I fell in love. These were never words I shared with him, nor words - based on how he left things, and the feelings I have for him now - he ever needs to hear from me. Why is it that I fall so quickly for not just this last guy, but every guy in my past? I used to think it was because I was searching so desperately for love that I would pass it on to whoever might possibly be interested. Was that the lesson I was meant to learn? Yes, from the men before...but this one has sent me on a path of self-discovery so profound that I know there was more to it than that simple (yet very difficult) lesson I see so many women struggle their whole lives to realize.
My last grandparent died this summer. As I've mentioned before, the employer I had at the time did not handle it AT ALL well. But this was not a negative thing. My grandmother had suffered from frontal lobe dimentia for years, and I look at her passing as a release from the torture of her disease, rather than the loss of a loved one. She is with us more now than she has been for years.
I do not have a traditional understanding of religion. I cannot honestly tell you that I believe one solitary power looks after us all and has a plan for everything that happens. My understanding of what some people may call God is much more elaborate than that. In the past, I have explained my God as the first grandparent who passed away, my maternal grandmother. When I have come across a stroke of luck, or been saved from imminent danger, I have told myself and those close to me that it was my "Guardian Angel," my grandmother, who gave me so many things to be thankful for.
With the passing of my paternal grandmother, I now have two Guardian Angels looking down on me. They come from two different upbringings, but both had so much love in their hearts, that their duties as Guardian Angels are easily split between all of their offspring. In this time - on one of my most ardent spiritual journeys - I feel so blessed to have both of them for company. Janet's quilt is kept close, and Marjorie's words fill my head on the days I need them the most. They are both the role models I need now.
A month and a half after her death, Janet sent a helper my way. He may have been a soul mate, as Gilbert has described it above. He told me to do nothing of the decisions I was making with my life, which was best. Yes, I am adamant in this fact, if only because I had that part criticized most by the people who love me so much and watched me, terrified, through all of these changes. I rejected any actual advice he ever provided me as arrogant prattle coming from a trainer's mouth. Every decision I made to change my life at that time came from inside. I took the energy I got get from him and worked with it to inspire a life plan - or lack thereof - that I had dreamed of for years. And I'm living that life now. And isn't it great? I love the moment I am in now. He was, as my dear friend described him, a catalyst for the changes that needed to be made.
He was passionate; he loved life; I brought great joy into his; he gave me a list of reasons to love myself more with; and then he left. To be fair, I had left first, but his leave was more permanent. There was no "goodbye;" there was no guidance on how we could make this work; there was no effort on his part to actual try to make it work...
I thought I had failed. I thought it was all my fault. I believed all those dating books I had ever read and figured I had pushed too much, or exposed my feelings too quickly, or scared him away with the pressure of being exactly who I am... But that's a load of bullocks! He was the one who talked about the "future." He brought up the fact that his grandparents were married three weeks after they met one another. He even admitted to thinking about me all day when we barely knew one another. I had this feeling that he would be in my life for a few months, and this talk terrified me a bit...as did me feelings...
He is in my life for only a few months. This is it. Tonight I cut all ties to him - figuratively and mentally. (This weekend, I came across a video on meditation that I will follow through with tonight. I'll include the link to it in this post, in case any readers need to get rid of bad energy as well. ) Tonight I confirmed that he has moved on - engaged to somebody again, already - and thinks of me as nothing more than a pearl on the "string of women" he once described the people he had dated. It was fun. It was crazy. It was passion. And he was a good person. Sadly, we share too much of the same music as favourites. Time and experience, though, have taught me that that's all he is. I'll hear Buble's hit from last summer and now always think of him...and cry, maybe, but that's ok. Why stay stuck in the past if it only makes you cry out in pain? I'll change my iPod instead...
Marjorie took him away. The day he told me of his "great opportunity," I knew we needed to slow things down. I knew I needed to regain some sense of myself. Marj saw this, too, and she gave me an out. It would have been worse if it had lasted longer. These things always are. If it had piddled out and died from over-watering, I would have wasted more time in recovery, I'm sure. As it is, I feel I've spent too long in this place. I've wasted my energy mourning something that I've been bigger than this entire time. Waiting to get the closure from him that would have meant something more than the silence I heard over the phone, I know it doesn't work that way. It was over the moment I got that call on the lrt. The moment I made the choice to be myself - spending time with my BFF instead - was the moment Marjorie began to cut the cord. Now it's my turn to finish snipping...
He was "a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. ...probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful..."
The link to the vlog on cord-cutting:
http://gabbyb.tv/vlogging/vlog-cord-cutting
1 comment:
Beautiful. Love can be written in so many ways. I'll have to agree that Elizabeth Gilbert does so quite poeticaly (and profoundly). I too had a cherished relationship with that book.
As for your own breakup, thanx for sharing. There's a difference between moving on by embracing all that was, and moving on by shuting off all that was; stuffing it down and "forgetting about it".
like you said, it's okay if a song makes you cry. I do believe that after a breakup, love can continue, because we can embrace the truth that existed in that relationship. We can thank it for putting us on a certain path. And maybe this is more productive than "forgetting about it".
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