A Wedding & a Funeral

Somebody once told me that nobody reads my blog anyway, and I guess for that I am grateful because it gives me an outlet to express my wounds without fear of retribution. The same person also insulted my smile, the way I write, my insistence on sharing my story, and the way I generally move through life. 

It’s taken me a long time to heal from the heartbreaks of my life, but I did the work and can say that – though healing is a very much a spiral with new perspectives emerging like summit vantage points along my ascent – I have indeed healed my heart. It is open, receptive, even soft and supplicant. 

Which is why these hurts penetrate so deeply, squeeze my soul so completely. Even as I welcome new beauty into my life like voluntary sobriety and celibacy, an inspiring & blossoming career, powerful new friends, mountains and dancing and art, oh, my! — even as I say yes to this depth … the things I need to feel secure continue to elude me. 

I lost a friend this week. A best friend, a sister-friend, of more than ten years. I lost her because she hated my self-expression and indeed was so morally opposed to my healed and healthy sexuality-via-art that she used it as a threat against my livelihood and very worth as a woman. It was not a hard choice to protect myself, my career, the tiny family I support … but that choice ripped away a sense of security I needed. I depended on. A love I thought would last forever. So here I am in mourning once again.

Even as my former life partner moves on to marry a younger version of me, in some ways more and in many ways less — but gone from my life as completely as though he almost never existed at all. So I mourn the man I so admired, and the friendship and stability we shared long past our romantic separation. The chasm of his shadow is vast and aching. Even though I have worked through and fully let go, welcoming new foundations to fill the hole of his departure … it feels like a wedding and a funeral.

I can feel the Wheel turning, I can feel myself at the precipice of what was and what will be. But as I watch the world around me fill up with new possibilities and happy endings for everyone else, I do stand with silent tears wondering what did I do wrong? Why not me?

I wish I wanted less. I do not wish to BE less, just to genuinely be full and “happy enough for now.” 

But I know myself. The wounds are big, and so is the light. I cannot dim my muchness, nor quiet my loud, nor clothe my wild. So I stand at the top of this mountain with wind screaming through my untamed hair and arms held wide to embrace the sun, and I wait. Even with tears all down my face.