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.

Protracted Feelings of Loss

Happy Easter to any who may stumble upon my little forays into blogging.

I spent this weekend visiting my first college roommate in New Hampshire, spending a night at her apartment, a night at her parents' (wonderful, cozy, homey) farmhouse, and then returned to my native NJ, to join my mother's side of the family for Easter dinner.

I am not, generally, so much a fan of Easter as I am a fan of family. I am a true, confirmed, comfortable atheist. I have now come through loss and death in the family, and remain atheist, and so feel comfortable that it will stick. I only wish Atheist didn't sound so dark, so hopeless. I find it honest, not untruthful.

To the point, however - today was a different kind of Easter. We, the 20-30 something generation, have birthed two babies this last year, and this was the first holiday that my little second cousin (and her cousin - my third cousin??) were old enough to do more than burp. Which is to say, they wiggled and kicked, and in one case, did so quite vigorously

The afternoon's entertainment are 8 and 5 months, respectively, and it was...weird. There was almost no adult conversation (whatsoever), with the exception of a quick insertion by my uncle about his finding Bear Stearns to be a sleazy company in his professional experience, and even that was aborted when one of the babies did something exciting...like raising a leg. Or burping. Or drooling. Or all three.

I, who don't want a baby, and finally just told my mother that the subject of children was a defining point in Paul's decision to terminate our relationship, was handed a baby by my wonderful cousin-in-law, the proud (ridiculously, sweetly proud) father. I haven't held a baby (before theirs at Thanksgiving and then Christmas) since my less-fearful youth, when I babysat. So not for about...8 years.

My cousin-in-law wanted to help his wife clean up and set up (they were hosting - I have no idea why we let the new parents host), and turned, smiled, held out his child, and deposited her in my arms while I sat at the dinner table.

I'm not sure how to describe what happened next. It moved me. This beautiful (crying) little baby wiggled around and looked up at me, then out the window, then at my father (who was making old-man-gaga-for-a-baby faces - you know the type), and then back at me. And I started to bounce her gently, and smooth her hair while leaning her head on the soft part of my shoulder...and she stopped crying.

I am not an instant convert. A fairly consistent, even, and logical person, I am not someone who will be instantaneously smitten by a sweet-faced child, although I think my cousins' daughter is beautiful. It's what comes after the baby (the toddler, the child, the preteen, the teenager) that I am wary of, and it is the concessions that all of the women I know have made, that make me dread motherhood. I don't want to lose myself in the mix of childbirth, of motherhood. I don't want a husband that goes to work while I stay home, and I don't want the grass is greener resentment I've seen such bifurcation of responsibilities yield. I don't want to live a life that ends up looking like that.

But while I held the baby today I had such a moment - I was really deeply moved. And with a sudden jerk she swung her head back, and then forward, and planted her little mouth firmly on the small amount of breast showing above the line of my shirt. And that moved me too. It wasn't strange, or confusing, or peculiar - I felt as though, were she my child, I would be capable of fluidly, effortlessly feeding her, that I knew the steps without ever having practiced them, without ever having thought about how it's done. I don't know how better to express it - I was moved.

But then came the loss. Paul loved babies, and I had looked forward to the day we would be able to visit my cousins, and he could play with them. I wanted to show him that maybe I wasn't missing some piece of what he thought was important in a woman, that I too can make silly faces at children, can love them, even if I don't want them. I think I had secretly hoped that Paul and I would visit my cousins and their baby, and I would be moved, and I would discover something in myself that was deeper and more primal than my politics, my goals.

And so when I was moved, although it was not towards a desire for motherhood, I reached my head around to show him, to share the moment and the pride of connectedness - and he was not there. Was not there and won't be, and I am alone.

Even now, hours later, in the last moments of Easter, I wish I could reach out to him and share. I miss him.