Free, With a History

Ryan Adams wrote a beautiful song called "Harder Now that it's Over," which I listened to perhaps a dozen times a day when Paul first broke off our relationship. Feeling mellow tonight, I put on the playlist I created when our relationship ended, and let myself look through some of the old GMails I found while double-checking that my 2007 tax returns were definitely submitted and received (and they were).

Love is so funny, is all I can come up with. My GMail account is the story of my life in Washington, and in particular is the story of my many loves. Not all true loves, not by a long shot, but loves in the way that I was filled with love by the experience.

I scanned past the early history of my and Paul's relationship - there was so much love and silliness throughout, that it still sometimes takes my breath away that it's over. Even in my emails, you can tell that I never saw it coming.

Before Paul was BB, the crazy one, the one no one (least of all me) understood. Charming yet demeaning, he didn't last long.

And prior to BB was PP (love those alliterative boys, don't I?), the college boyfriend who set me free to do what I already knew was right by cheating on me my very first weekend here in DC, when I didn't even know enough people to mourn with. I had briefly written that he broke my heart in the previous sentence, but that is untrue. He set me free. And when I doubted my freedom six months later, and contemplated reuniting with him, I broke his heart.

How revealing, though, to read those exchanges, and to mull over the little elements of truth that emerged over the years, and how those elements became molded into something bigger, and stronger, and unavoidably integral to my person as I worked harder and harder to face my own truths, in love, work, and otherwise. I feel like I owe GMail one for still being able to be a witness to that.

I am amazed to realize that it has taken me three months of mourning everyday to be able to resign myself to Paul's having left. Had I been told before that I would be so deeply effected, I may have believed it, but I could never have imagined what that would mean. I feel like I spent the last three months living in a very dark cave, and struggle to remember feeling joy at all throughout that time. It makes me feel stuck in the dark even to try to recall how I passed the days.

I still feel sad about Paul several days a week, now, but the change from the all-encompassing sadness of late winter is so drastic that I feel light, and...joyous, even while I am sad, these last few weeks.

And yet today was a sadder day than has been my norm, of late, because yesterday my housemate Judith and I went for a long, unutterably hair-brained bike ride (my idea), which ended in cold defeat, on the side of a small highway, in the dark. And somewhere in there, I thought of Paul, and what he might think of me were he to see me, and I carried that curiosity into today. I still think about whether he would be proud of me, although I know he is no longer thinking anywhere along the same lines. I still wish for him to be proud of me.

And yet there was a bit of happiness in that, too. My other housemate, Ben, came to pick us up in his car (hence our static presence on the side of the parkway), good-naturedly coming out after nine to rescue his outlandish housemates. And when I saw his profile lit up by a passing car as he pulled up next to us, I felt this little stir of something. A crush, perhaps? Excitement and fondness, and perhaps a small amount of pleasure or - better put - desire.

I was glad to see him in part to get out of the cold, but there was more to it than that, so I stepped up to give him a hug and it turned out to be warmer and longer than I might have imagined or intended. When we parted to grab the bicycles, I found I instinctively wanted to reach for his face with my hands and very tenderly kiss it, very differently than I might have wanted to in the past. The feeling of it warmed me up, so perhaps that may bring something worthy of a good look forward.

And, hence, the title. I find myself free, but with a history.