Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Pain yet Healing

I did it. I finally saw and talked to Bond. I’m having a hard time coming up with the words to assign to the feelings I’m feeling now that I’ve done it. I feel like I’m a much different person than I was when I was dating him. We used to fit together seamlessly: physically, mentally, and emotionally. Our every action was in synch. We flowed; we had that way of communicating without talking, being intimate without touching, a way of dancing without moving. This is no longer true. It is like those toys infants play with where you have to push the shape into its corresponding slot. I used to be a triangle but now I’m a square and that square won’t fit into the triangle slot.

Out of place.

We’re both great shapes with sides, angles and points, we just don’t share the same sides, angles and points. My shape is meant to enter a different corresponding slot, and I now realize and accept that.

We could still read each other. We have enough history and familiarity to still possess that. During a lull in the conversation my leg started to bounce, my mouth set firm and I looked over his shoulder, out the window, focusing on nothing in particular.

“What are you thinking? You look like you’re thinking.” he says to me.

“I-I don’t know. It’s like umm like…I don’t know. I feel….different. I don’t feel awkward. I don’t feel like I expected to feel. I don’t know…. It’s weird.” My words stumble out of my mouth like Amy Winehouse exiting a pub at 2 in the afternoon. I couldn’t believe I finally had him there in front of me. The opportunity to pick his brain and ask all my burning questions was there, but all I wanted to do was sit in a familiar silence.

We joked, we caught up, we laughed and there was silence. Strange silence. Welcome silence. Understanding silence. Comfortable silence.

Healing took place, and I hope it was mutual. I can’t speak for him, and I honestly don’t know what his true emotions are regarding all of this. But, as for me, I feel a lot better. I feel like I can be me 100% independent of him and the ideas I’ve formed of him. It has been a long and strange journey as witnessed by the posts littered throughout this blog, but I’m really feeling like I have some tangible closure to the journey. Am I glad I went to dinner with him? Yes. Are my feelings mixed? Yes. Do I still love him? Yes, but not the same. Maybe I love the memory of him. Do I fear alienating him? Yes. Was I genuine in everything I said? Yes.

Strange is the only way I can think of to describe it. Familiar yet unfamiliar. Attractive yet unattractive. Weird yet normal. Pain yet healing. Wrong yet right.

1 comment:

Rob said...

This is one of the paradoxes of being human. We are constantly evolving and changing yet some things about us stay the same. We have to expect both of ourselves and everyone else in our lives. Sounds like things went well with Bond and at the same time you both recognized and felt that you'd both changed in some ways, not in others. And it sounds like you're still trying to figure out just how. That's normal. Stay kind and charitable, primarily in listening mode, supportive and tolerant, and though the relationship may morph over time, you'll improve the chances that he'll always be there.