I mentioned being lied to by my ex. Wow, that fucked me up. I didn’t sleep the whole of that night. Words like “devious” and “bitch” and “betrayal” swarming around in my brain. Thoughts of her and this other guy. But mainly just the breaking open of my heart. I guess I hadn’t felt much about since we’d separated back in the summer – and I realise now that’s because our separation hadn’t really registered. We still saw each other, still hung out and talked on the phone, shared our joys and woes, hugged and kissed and made love. I guess in my mind, in some way, we were still together. And I still thought lots about whether or not to make a real go of it with her. Sure, I’d been sleeping with other people, and I figured she had too and didn’t really mind that – but when the reality of it hit me – when I realised that she had maybe moved on – when I decided in my body that I had lost her – despite reasoning over and over that I didn’t really want her anyway – man, it hurt.
And more than any sense of her being with someone else, but the fact that there were lies, dishonesty. That threw me through a loop. I didn’t know what to do with that: as far as I was concerned she was like the most honest and trustworthy person I’d ever met. It’s not easy to trust women. I was screwed up for a few days after that.
Still, I’ll doubt there’s a person alive who’s been seeing more than one person at a time who’s never had to resort to some little fib now and again. It’s the price you pay for keeping that kind of thing going. Having your cake and eating it.
I include myself in that.
I suppose that was the other big thing that hit me when the hurt finally came home: karma, baby. Some people say karma is a bitch, but that’s only because it sometimes hurts so much. Karma is pretty neutral really – you reap what you sow – you get what you give – and the only reason it hurts is because we’ve put that hurt on another. I didn’t know it at the time but I do now. And so in amongst all that misery and heartbreak and suffering there was also the terrible realisation that this is most likely exactly what I’ve caused another to feel. The wrongdoing I’ve done. The careless ways I’ve handled another’s heart. I truly am a jackass.
And yet, even as I type this and remember what I thought to be the folly of my experiments in polyamory and free lovin’ – well, now that I’ve swallowed all my hurt feelings and made it up with my ex and come to a new place of freedom and expansion wherein I accept her brief stumbles into deceit and her other loves, isn’t it all just fine again once and for all? Man, I was suffering – but the question is: was I really suffering for the boomerang effects of the wrongs I’d done, or was it for the smallness of my ego, which believed in possessiveness and jealousy and fear?
The next time I saw her I could barely look at her. I felt anger and even some small measure of hate and I didn’t know what to do with that. Part of me figured the best thing would be to wipe my hands clean and move on, put her out of my mind. Somewhere in the midsts of that I passed a group of people talking and I overheard the words “you’ll forget about her” and I knew it was right, even in the middle of my pain. But after a while I reasoned the greater pain I was suffering was from not having her in my life anymore. She’s been probably my best friend for a long time. And I longed to have a text or call from her, or to text or call her myself. And the resistance of that hurt too.
The...
[1545 words I don't feel like sharing here]
...and to where it will all lead. Or if it just the way it’s supposed to be? The world right all along? Man and woman compelled to each other and one day joined in holy matrimony (a human invention, not holy) all for the making of children and the continuation of the species and me really all this time despite my million thinkings just a slave to that, to the will of life to continue, like Schopenhauer said?
Whatever. This is the other. I felt really frickin’ terrible for quite a long time but now I feel okay. “You’ll forget her,” they’d said – and they were right. Or, rather, “you’ll forget the pain that you feel around her.” All things must pass. You feel a pain like that and it feels like a pain that will be there forever. Impossible to imagine it moving. But move it does. I suppose a week’s a fairly long time to be in agony but I guess it ain’t so bad. Nice to feel nice again. Not quite 98% joy – but perhaps an increase in my percentage of wisdom.
Who knows? I might even be into double figures soon. ;-)
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