It takes my breath, the way the world has conspired to pull me bodily from my latest heartbreak and shake me awake. Old friends I thought lost materialize from nowhere, old boyfriends try to reconnect, music winds tendrils through everything. Long-forgotten wishes come true. There are handmade gypsy wagons parked in friends' driveways. There are mountain cabins to live in.
I was so lost. I don't know why I do this, but I tend to fold myself into the ones I love. I lose my equilibrium; it is so easy to become the girl I think my lover wants that I slip dangerously and inevitably into someone else, an imagined someone, and then wonder why it is that I no longer feel authentic, or happy. If the relationship ends (and of course it does, how could I stay in a relationship of which I am no part? How could anyone want to stay with someone who isn't there?) I feel a double loss, the loss of my beloved and the loss of the person I was when I was with him--the person that came alive only for him, and will never live again.
strange how I can learn this, and learn this, and yet the cycle repeats, new twists each time:
repeal, revisit, these things repeat
she's coming alive!--here we go, plant your feet
there's always one change to reel you in--
genius. joy. (took the bait, pull her in!)
change takes a second after years of resolve
and it's often the saddest moment in the world
I know I must be getting something out of it to continue such a pattern in the face of so many obvious drawbacks. Is it the intensity? The chance to try out new personalities, new lifestyles? My very wise friend suggested that I might be externalizing, using relationships to befriend part of myself I could never acknowledge otherwise. It is true that this last heartbreaking encounter left me with a whole album's worth of songs and a renewed commitment to my music. Goodbye, careworn single mom, hello, freewheeling rockstar! I mean, it's better, right?
But I have got to learn to do this on my own. I cannot be putting myself and my children in danger on the constant quest for novelty and adventure. There must be love out there that is steady without being dull, all-consuming without being...ummm.....all-consuming. Well, obviously I need to redefine a few things. Right now I would just like to say how very, very grateful I am. For strong friends and serendipity. For resolution from within. For a body strong enough to climb mountains, when that is necessary. For enough space, and time, to work things out in writing and song. For possibility. For transformation.
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