Heroine

I've been housing a profound sadness. I don't really want to talk about it; I did last night with Annie but I do believe that is the last I'll ever specifically discuss it. What I am learning from it is that there is a great need sometimes to be your own heroine and save yourself. I do not mean that in a isolationist, severed from the world type of way. I mean that sometimes you have to give yourself the comfort, the compliment, the reprieve, the reassurance, the patience, and the love.  MP is going through a hard time right now and in talking with her its brought up a lot of the emotions I've felt and feel about P2AD, which is never easy. I am not sure the echo of that break does not still reverberate within me. Actually, I know that it does. Knowing someone so intimately...I can hear his reaction to every story I tell, and conjure the smell of his cologne if I allow myself. And when I consider what happened and how, it always moves me to tears.

I try to not let the things that happen in my life that sadden me or disappoint me to craft any meaning about who I am. I would be lying if I said I was any good at it, though. I allowed P2AD's treatment towards me to define me as a person who spent the next 18 months looking for redemption through self-sabotage.  Who I became was not his fault, it was my own...and I have no regrets about her. That version of me was in response to believing the worst in me was all of me. I don't feel that way anymore. But it is likely that I needed to meet all those facets of myself to truly be able to love and appreciate all of me. All of her is not gone, she too is a knot in my wood. Ted often says I am on the hero's journey. Trial after trial testing my grit and my fabric; will I make it to the other side?

Before we parted I believed the very best in me. Perhaps this was why his leaving was such a blow to my heart and my ego. After our end I have believed the worst in myself, and now I am quite content to believe in both. It is difficult when it feels others around you are not so willing to do the same. I'm frustrated and disappointed when friends claim to not know how to comfort me, when my should served as their pillow more times than one can count. As if I can only be if I am always happy smiling and put together.

It is even more difficult when they do affirm both your light and your darkness and you still can't feel it. I have allowed my heart to scab over a bit too much. With a general inclination to take care and comfort, I've found myself hardened and more selfish. Is this a bad thing? Not entirely. But I have to remind myself that it is okay to be both. In fact, the belief that I am ever one and not the other is simply a lie

I want to take the trip we planned together, only by myself. Thinking of it brings a flood of emotions, but I just let them pour over me. It is likely that I'll think of him in Italy because I think of him everyday. I may fI'll empty silences with his breath, but maybe only until I realize what I am doing and then I will listen for my own rhythm.

There comes a moment when you stop holding your breath around corners hoping he's there. That is when you give up the fairy tale and the hope of prince charming coming to rescue you from your pain and you realize his absence has given you the opportunity to know yourself better. And then you grab your shit and walk down the tower steps and out into the woods looking for your own new adventure.