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.