"What is life but a night like tonight?”(part 2) finding a way in (part 2)
Whoa. I re-entered the portal that was 2019. Before the pandemic’s losses took me to my knees with grief and longing. I was so young. It’s scary to think about what it would’ve taken to grow me up this much like the pandemic’s isolation did. I’ve been trying to get inside the grief of you and me. I’m finally weeping now yet not for us, but for the woman I was then, stranded in the lonely hypomanic hubris of codependency. No wonder I didn’t want to come back here and stay a while. That was before people kept dying, one after the next. I couldn’t keep up. And before my body experienced chronic pain for several years.
The truth here is that you broke my heart. You reeled me in and then spit me back out again. I’d rather tell the story of my heroic ability to playfully dominate a big powerful man than admit the heartbrokenness of it all.
My dad said it wasn’t love, it was lust, with my mother. So if there’s any lust, it’s hard for me to take it seriously. As if they can’t go together. As if every man on earth has a madonna-whore complex. As if every man has been conditioned as a white american male patriarch. As if we’re all just playing around in this mass cult psychosis.
You broke my heart! I think I broke yours, too, though. It’s funny how that goes. We were both so controlling and stubborn! Except when we let our defenses down. Oh, the way you’d whisper habibi low in my ear.
Three months after we broke up, maybe less, you got married. I told you from the beginning to not take us very seriously, it was all impractical. We were performing for one another. I said I wasn’t really that submissive, just for you, two hours a week. I told you to find your arranged marriage while we were seeing one another. And I guess you really did! Jesus!
But things changed for me, you wore me down. One night while eating basbousa, I told you that I couldn’t resist the desire for something more any longer. My legs went limp in surrender. And then, of course, you pulled away. All of that non-withholding, a positive shock to my system, turned into a vast distance. That tarot card I pulled before meeting you started rising. The Devil! That’s what you get when you’re always trying to find your shadow. You find it. I chalked it all up to sorting out attachment stuff. Yah. And there was something sinister, too, in all of this. But I can’t really let myself go there…I block it…because me, too. Right?
You asked me to come to Greece to meet your mom. I said it was too soon. I chose a retreat instead. On another day, I chose going to the protest instead of having brunch with you. You thought that was crazy! There was a lot of too good to be true between us. A lot I couldn’t let you all the way in. And I couldn’t get past the catfishing and the traditional gender roles you proselytized. I mean, it was kind of intense to sit in the sinner section of the Orthodox Church on Easter!
My dad always said if it felt too good to be true, it probably was. On the other hand, a friend of mine said, “Why go to a Family Constellations retreat when you have so much love and life right here and now?” I remember something about my representative being starstruck looking up to the sky and come to think of it now, not being able to see what was right in front of her. I’m getting that now. We weren’t ready for one another. Almost, though.
For a damn good while, you taught me what it was like to be loved without withholding. Wow, that was profound for my system. Thank you. Alf mabrook lel-‘arousein!