It’s not often that we get to experience a moment that connects the all of the dots in our lives into a picture we’ve been trying to see almost as long as we can remember. I had one of those very recently, and the clarity, (and the hits,) just keep on coming.
What I’m talking about is those shifts, those sudden ‘aha’ moments, where the fog lifts and “I can see clearly now…” (Yes, please read that to the tune of the song.) On something that you’ve tried to figure out, make sense of, or just flat out change for a very, very long time… and suddenly, you don’t understand how you’ve could’ve missed it, how you could’ve seen it any other way. Like those optical illusion posters. You know the ones… you see one picture, until you are somehow able to relax or adjust the focus of your eyes to see the other picture. And maybe then you can no longer see the picture that you first saw? Or maybe you can switch back and forth between them? Or, when it gets really weird… you can see them both simultaneously? (Just me?) It’s just like that, except for instead of a poster it’s your life. And it’s not about adjusting your eyes, it’s about adjusting your… well, I’m not quite sure exactly… but something has surely changed.
If you’ve been reading along lately, you know that I am going through a @#$%^& load of changes lately. In just about every single area of my life. (More on these to come.) One of the most difficult being the change in my relationship status… or shall we say, the lack thereof. And the moment of clarity that the Universe had decided to thrust upon me left me standing, dumbstruck, between my very own personal Alpha and Omega… between my very first real love and my very last real love. Quite a mind-blowing place to be…
It’s been a few weeks since the “incident” and I am still reeling a bit, with more questions than I will possibly ever have answers. But bit, by little bit, awareness comes… some good and easily, some not-so-good and painfully. (And yes, the “not-so-good” rather than “bad” is done with great intention. For me, all awareness is progress; an opportunity to grow, to have a view of my blind spots, more freedom, closer to the truth of me, a flashlight into those dark little crevices of me where the gunk builds up… and although none of these things may seem easy, fun, or comfortable its reward has always been what has led me to amazing places of absolute joy… so it’s a journey and risk I’m always willing to take.)
Now, on to that crystallized moment…
Many weeks ago, that first love called to apologize for our last conversation (a year or so ago) and inquire as to my “status” as he was in the throes of ending a turbulent situation himself…??? (Some version of this has occurred numerous times over the past 30 years… yes, seriously. And no, it has never resulted in us getting back together.) At the time I was still very much in love and involved in a challenging, but workable, and worth it relationship. But maybe he knew something that I didn’t?
About a week after my current bf decided to become my ex-bf I got a call, once again, from that first love. (What is that disturbance in the Universe that they always seem to pick up on?) And after inquiring about any potential status updates he proceeded to chat me up for the rest of the evening in a series of phone calls and texts.
The following day I had the first conversation with my now ex-bf since he left… and like all of our conversations in recent history, it went south rather quickly. (Astoundingly quickly actually…) That evening, still stinging from the encounter, I was almost pleased to see the first love’s name appear as my phone rang. Or so I thought…
We talked about old times, our past love, all the years and happenings since… talked about what went wrong, getting together for dinner, coffee, or something… commiserated about current break-up wounds… and that’s when it happened. He said, word-for-actual-freaking-word, the exact same sentence that my newly minted ex-bf had said to me on that same phone just a few short hours before.
The record scratched, my brain shifted on its axis, my mind’s eye went into that whole “Stephen King scary, never ending, long hallway” thing, 
my eyes became spinning kaleidoscopes like out of an old Scooby Doo cartoon, my whole mechanism and machinery went “TILT” like a pinball game… I was utterly stunned. I watched as the dominoes lined up from present day life, back to 30 years ago. I tried to pick my chin up off my chest… but all I could do was listen and watch the picture that the dominoes made as they began to fall…
Admittedly, the words that were said were no where nearly as important as the stars that they lined up for me. The pattern that I saw in that moment changed everything for me… in an instant. I suddenly saw why every relationship I’d had, or attempted to have, failed. I saw clearly that almost every man I’d ever known romantically had communicated the same thing to me, in either words or deeds. I’d just never believed them, or heard them, or something… I just stayed in there, on my little donkey, tilting at those windmills, getting my own heart broken over and over again.
So now I am left with my questions… the how’s, the whys, the wherefores of it all. No, I don’t have all of those answers yet. And I don’t know where the truth, or the bottom of all of this lies. But I do absolutely know this… if I ever hear the words “I’m not sure I’m really capable of a relationship”, I will listen. I will hear it. And I will do something very very different than what I have done before.
