Eventually Everyone Leaves

It seemed so normal sitting in the shade sipping iced tea. I largely just enjoyed the time in the shade on a perfect summer day. For a brief moment I allowed my mind to process how right this all seemed and agreed it felt good not to be so distant and brooding. To allow her in. It didn't really occur to me to remember all of the times she's hurt me and let me down. It's funny, just like anything that is painful, in order to protect ourself from it we forget just how much it hurts.

Of course if I let myself, I could have done what I normally do and just closed down. Kept her at a distance and not let her in. Protecting my heart from the next time she leaves. But the truth is whether I kept myself closed or not, it hurts all the same when she disappears. And she did. Less than a week later, one day, life was just too much and she did what she always does which is to shut off the outside world until she deemed it safe for her again. And there I was left to take care of canceling our plans and rearranging life - left to wait it out until the storm in her world passed.

I am struggling with this lately as I have also just watched two of my very best friends both leave, and a third teetering on the brink of going away. Most of this is geographical, but also emotionally I've had to say good bye for reasons beyond just a change in their physical location.

This got me thinking about a lot of the relationships I have had in my life over the years: they have all ended. I can't think of one relationship that I have maintained over the course of my life. At one point or another, sometimes for good reasons, and sometimes it has been just circumstantial, but they have all gone away. And unlike my Mother who pops back in after weeks on no contact, just as if nothing is or has been wrong, people who go away, tend to stay away.

It has not gone unnoticed by me that there is something here that I must need to learn. Beyond why it seems I can't maintain lifetime relationships, and that like shoes they just seem to wear out or go out of fashion and get replaced. No, more like how to not be like my Mother and go away when life is hard. How to gracefully deal with difficulties without shutting out the world. But when you learn to be scared that eventually everyone leaves... how do you trust and not hold everyone at arms length?

Good-Bye

I keep trying to think of a good reason to do anything other than what was requested. As if somehow I could choose to have this all be different. The truth is the time for making another choice was long ago and I'm so sorry..... I leapt in with reckless abandon one too many times, having too much trust in what is meant to be will be, and now the consequence is just what it is. I'm not sorry I made the choices I made, just sorry that the consequences are what they are. It is sad, but I believe it is right to just let go. I will miss you but I'm not sure my selfish desire to keep you as my friend supersedes his wish to have me just go away.

I wish it were different in so many ways....

Healing

I got out a saucepan to heat water for tea - I hadn't found the kettle yet; I suppose it was in one of the few kitchen boxes I had yet to empty. I'd drink a mug of Sleepytime, and then, when I was sure I could no longer keep my eyes open, I'd go upstairs to lie down. In the morning, I could cross off another day. I put my hands to my lower back, stretched, allowed myself an oh God. "Healing hurts," someone at John's service had told me. "But hurting heals."

-excerpt from The Year of Pleasure by Elizabeth Berg