“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.”
― Pema Chodron
I don’t really have much to add at the moment. Frankly, what I experienced at the train depot was eye opening and has left me disgusted with myself and others. I’m just out of fucks for her and her feelings.
And exhausted.
I really thought her hiding at the art show was about my ex-wife showing up. I chose to believe, and she let me believe, it was about me. In reality, as I watched her crawl under a table recently, I realized it wasn’t about me at all.
This is how she adults.
Which is mature awareness for me because all I cared about in our relationship, and after, was her feelings and well-being…and I cared about her and her kids enough to never holding her emotionally or financially accountable in any way while we were together. And while I was drowning in shame I cared enough to sell my integrity to the shame in an attempt to prevent the possibility of hurting her…and me.
I was willing to die so she would never know. She was willing to let me.
However, after two years of intensive counseling and reading the stories of thousands of men and women confronting the fall-out of infidelity I realize just how opportunistic, transactional, and shallow our relationship really was.
That was a result of both our immaturities and unskillfulness, not just mine.
I know what shallow looks like now. There is nothing shallow about couples that dig into their own pain and own the truth of the experience whether they repair to re-pair or simply walk away.
Those people are my heroes.
And here is why despite everything I keep showing up: because when my relationship ended with C, I was annihilated, decimated, and destroyed but what has remained is indestructible. I can be hurt but whatever comes from that becomes even more real and indestructible. I am not perfect or woke or enlightened, but I am willing and vulnerable and authentic.
“If you want to change a relationship,” counsels Esther Perel, “you need to change yourself. Own what’s yours.” I can look C in the eyes now because I am willing to own what is mine and not what others imagine is true.
I have been marked by change and I will forever be open to Her.
I don’t need to hide under a table or behind someone’s coattails at a bar or run away and hide in someone else’s tent or behind someone else’s words or lie to make myself out to be a victim.
I am an adult and I can look anyone in the eyes because I am making friends with my Ugly and my pain and my grief. If I can look myself in the eyes, I can look any other in the eyes too. Including C.
I know I should have compassion and empathy for C but I don’t at this moment. Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe not. Maybe never.
But at this moment I have as little concern for her as she has demonstrated for me. It has taken a year, but the Queen is dead.
Good riddance.
I’d like to get to forgiveness but at the moment I’m fairly indifferent to both forgiveness and compassion.
I’m going to work on the book more while exploring more meaningful and authentic intimacies with myself and others. There will occasionally be new posts.
No schedule. No promises. No expectations.
