GREYEYEDSKY

“There is nothing I can learn from winning, it is losing that has yielded all the unforgettable lessons.” -Derrick Brown

Get better at losing

Sit with your disapointment

Don’t let it break you but hold it tight

Like when she gave back the rose

Now clenched in your fist

Exploring that pain

How it moves

Where it sits

I’ve been learning to let go for a year now, trying different methods and getting good at failing.  Finding other women, hobbies, escaping the city, writing, reading, meditation, therapy, friends, eating, drinking, drugs, music. It all helps momentarily, but these external pieces only cover up or distract. Giving up on letting go, accepting it, is the only option left. Surrendering to my own reality has shown me what was hidden in all of the temporary reprieves. I’m not ready to let go, it still hurts to much, and there is still so much I have to learn. Four years spent in a relationship concentrating all efforts on keeping  my partner happy taught me less than the last three months of working to understand my own feelings ambitions and values. The unfortunate consequence of this learning is a renewed desire, faith even, that I lost the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.

I learned more in losing her, than any life event before it. It woke me up and made me see that emotions can’t be suppressed, ignored or distracted from, at least not in the long term. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know how to express my feelings, I had no knowledge of how to feel them, or that it was ok, and right to.

The connection of brain to heart is hard to bare at first, it’s using atrophied muscles after a lifetime of indolence. Shooting pain of new pathways opened, of a wound swaddled to keep everything out  finally allowed to breathe. A first breeze of emotion across tender new flesh, sends shocks that vibrate to the core.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this Venn diagram, and fighting the reflex to crawl into my comfort zone when I see adversity rising. Surfing in a rough sea, with fierce waves is scary, and humbling. It is easy to give up and call it a day, harder to stay out and be tossed in the waves, waiting for one that is just the right size at the right time. Catching the biggest wave of your life is terrifying, but it has to happen over and over and over again for you to get better. It almost never ends with a smooth ride into shore either. You are tossed, and rolled, more scared than maybe you’ve ever been, but now that same wave isn’t the biggest wave you’ve ever caught.

Opening up to a new world of feeling doesn’t happen in the calm swells of the warm shallows. The connection occurs when there is a strong enough emotion that your body can’t help but be rattled. Your mind wraps around the tightness in your chest, feels the hug around your shoulders and your neck pushing your throat closed. Panic sets in as the realization that what is wrong is coming from inside, in that deepest place that hasn’t been seen or touched in longer than memory. Pain seers your insides and there is no where to run because it burns you up from the middle. You know everything you have tried from the outside to extinguish the fire of anguish will have no effect. It’s too deep down to be quelled by drink. There is no other woman that can extract it from you, and you’ve tried. The only way to put it out, is to follow it to its source. Sink, dive, dig, claw your way down into yourself and find it there, at the center of your being. Sit by the fire and watch the flames wrap around the delicate tendons of your heart. You are suffering, but now you can see it’s source. It’s so close, you could beat it out, smother it, but now you see that it is one with you. The fire of your emotions has always been burning, but now it is so bright and so hot that you cant ignore it anymore. You are face to face with it, and have the opportunity to accept it, and befriend it.

Facing the world of raw and vulnerable feelings alone is hard, but things that are easy are rarely worth it. I know I can never find authentic love, the one I lost, or some, yet unimaginable one, until I can navigate these trials alone. I’ll sail out on this boat alone, and brave the waves and weather, not looking for another shore, just enjoying the journey full of lessons.

Climbing mountains requires fitness, skill, determination, realistic expectations, careful planning and a willingness to fail in order to fight another day. Every minute spent in the alpine environment increases the chance of injury and death. As a result goals, milestones, efficiency and honest evaluation of progress are all of paramount importance. Chief among these is the  overarching theme, a hope to reach the top. As climbers reaching the summit is the ever-present pull, although oft discounted or skirted by experienced climbers who feign piety upon witnessing a storm roll in, realizing a route is impassible due to high avalanche risk, unexpected ice shelves or crevasses. One may act fulfilled as they trudge downhill without reaching climax, but there is deceit, in not acknowledging the disappointment of not reaching the only real, tangible goal. Not conquering the monument that so much money, time, energy and fear was expended to attempt. With time it is easier to accept the heartbreak of failure, and the journey is always a wondrous experience that leaves one feeling fully alive and with a sense of accomplishment. It does not fully sate, until you stand at the highest point, the full expression of achievement. Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying to you, them-self or both.

I took to mountaineering easily, as achieving has always been a part of me. Accomplishing ever greater goals is what has driven me all through my life, into college, and now in my career. Climbing bigger, higher, more dangerous, challenging and beautiful peaks was a logical way to keep achieving after checking off most of my life goals to-do list from adolescence. I had a job designing incredible world renown transportation systems, I earned my engineering licensure(which took 8 years of commitment and study), I was supporting myself in a vibrant city with many wonderful friends. Every time I pictured an outcome, I worked for it until I got it, luckily dodging crevasses, route-finding efficiently, and having the favorable weather of white male privilege allowed all of this. I grew accustomed to having my hopes coalesce into desired outcomes. It always took work, there were always challenges, delays and disappointments, but the strength of my will in concert with a nurturing environment full of supporting friends and family produced the outcomes I wanted. I was the master of my own fate.

My approach to love and relationships has followed suit. I have had opportunity to explore relationships with some incredible women, all of which have challenged me and taught me about life and myself. All of which I attempted to conquer. I strived to reach the full expression of love, a total integration of two people together. I found the most worthwhile, whole, loving, beautiful women and tried to be everything I thought they wanted. I hoped that my efforts, the force of my will, and my love would bring me to the mountain top. Once we both worked through being perfect for each other, that would be it. We would sit atop our self built mountain and look down on everyone who hadn’t earned the perfect love we had.

Every time, with in site of that top, or so I thought, I stumbled. I made choices to tear apart the pair I had devoted so much time and energy to stitching together. I let go of the rope, let myself fall off the side of the mountain. Sometimes I would be saved. My partner would arrest, before I fell too far, or carefully down climb to my broken body, help me patch myself up, and insist that I continue on, fulfilling my side of the bargain. Time after I would reach an elevation, higher than I had ever been, and let go. Weather out of fear, confusion, exhaustion or self destructive tendencies the result was the same. I could never reach the peak. I couldn’t achieve the goal.

It took losing the woman who meant most to me, the love of my life, to understand that it wasn’t a failure of will, effort, strength or resolve that was holding me back, it was hope that I could summit the mountain. I lost myself in fear and exhaustion trying to figure out all the ways to keep her happy for the rest of her life. I saw I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t keep it up forever, so I gave up on her and on myself. I let myself fall again, deeper into a chasm than I have ever been. To her credit, after all the other times she scooped me up and helped me back on the path to the top, she knew I would never make it unless I pulled myself out.

I spent the last year, mending my self inflicted wounds, strengthening my body and bones, hoping to get another chance at this summit. I have plans and back up plans, more will than ever, because I know she is the one worth giving everything I have to conquer. If I could give her everything she needed, being with her forever would complete me, would be the greatest achievement of my life.

Only I’m wrong. I’ve been wrong the whole time. Love is no mountain. No effort is great enough to reach the apex, there is none. There is only you, and me, and the whole world for us to explore, we can exert ourselves on the side of a mountain, struggling, learning, growing stronger. It is dangerous, but the view is incredible. When we are weary we can rest, there is no alpine urgency. Love won’t blow us off a serac, or cast us into a hidden crevasse. Only we can do that, by choice or surrender, as I am intimately aware.

I learned this year that the hope for an outcome in mind is in itself a defeat. There can be no goal, especially an individual one in love. There is no achievement, only the joy in the every day struggle. Being content battling every day, no matter the environment or weather is the only way to live in love. Loving the journey, the process, and the pain of putting one foot in front of the other is the only way we can see the beauty all around us. We cant just concentrate on pushing to the summit, because it will never come.

Perhaps I will meet you on wind battered slope. We will show each other things about the world that we never noticed alone, we’ll wander the earth, every day together will be our greatest achievement.