After a couple failed relationships, and becoming a single mother, I sort of dreamt of meeting a guy that would love me for the quirky, fun, stubborn, idealist, simple woman I am, but while I dreamt I never really thought that such a person excited. I would often say that while I am loveable, no man has really showed that much interest, and the ones that have, have soon managed to figure out quickly enough that it isn’t me who they want. No problem, I suppose, that is just what it is suppose to happen? You don’t want a person in your life you don’t truly like, or feel like enhances your life as much as you enhance his. This is true! You want a partner whom you love, and whose presence in your life is enriching for both. So I understood then, that I was not enriching for them. While it didn’t make the experiences easier, or less painful, getting over the situation was something I understood, and could work through it clearly, and move on. And so I did. Loneliness is real as a single parent. Loneliness is tough often times because you want to share your life, your thoughts, your dreams, your ideas, your joys and frustrations, your bed, to know that even if there is silence, there is a hand to hold. Even if you are apart that there is a way home. Even if you disagree, you can work it through. Even if an unwelcomed unexpected shows up, there is one other person to hold you up, or you can hold him up, or you can hold each other up. To cry together, to laugh together, to sing together, to be alone together… Loneliness is tough, but is part of who I am, and have been. So I plow along.
In knowing that I was probably never going to find a man who could truly love me, it didn’t prevent me from having millisecond dreams about it, that were usually slapped into nonexistence once reality hit me in the face, and it often hit me right away, no long dreams allowed.
I have always believed that you would know when you have found your life partner, perhaps not right away, although I know it is possible, but in time. I believed that if it was from God that you would feel the love not only in your heart, but in your mind, and in your bones and pores. And no, not a silly idealistic love, but real. The kind that tells you that you have in front of you an imperfect being, that you don’t always see eye to eye, that you may not always understand, but that there is a deeper understanding, a deeper connection that is born out of the imperfect, out of the flawed, and the beautiful, and kind, and brave, and strong, and sweet, and tender too.
For a year and some months I have known in my every bit that I had met the man that was made for me. I felt it in my gut, in my bones, in my pores, in my mind, in my fears even! Even in my fears I knew that he, this man, who when I met him I felt I was over my head, was the man that was going to watch me grow old, and share with me the greatest of adventures. I knew it! I was not doubtful of how incredible our life stories have been, and how we were then in front of each other, loving, living, sharing… oh his pain was mine, his joys were mine, and his love was mine! I was loved for all the quirky, and all the other attributes that made me, the pretty and the ugly and the undefined. And I knew in my bones that there was a man for me, and I felt full, and complete, and happy, and scared as hell. I still know it, as much as I knew it then, if not more, but there is not telling… Perhaps I am a stupid delusional woman, who believes in empty nothingness.
So here I am. In sadness so deep I have to fight it everyday. The man I believe to be my co-journeyer is no longer at my side. Fine! Call me stupid, I know it must look that way, and perhaps I am, but I do believe in his love for me. He loves me, and he is more vulnerable in his silence than I am in my outspokenness. Pushing it aside does not make it hurt less, it just cuts deeper, and it frightens me. I am here without the man that I believe to be my soul mate. Here I am dealing with the loss of a man who is different from me, but not fully. Here I have to confront what I believe and what I am living – so contradicting, so stupid, so painful, so unfair. It is unfair to feel the dagger of his past pain into my heart.
If I question my believes the thing that comes from my gut, then what do I have left to believe in? And yet, I have to question…
Then if I do question, all I have left with is this: I am not loved. I never was, and there isn’t such a man that loves me, and sees the value in me, and even if he thinks he isn’t worthy of me, that he would try to make himself worthy of me, even if I already believed he is. There is nothing I can do or say that can change this. If I question my gut feeling, my heart, my mind, my experiences, then all I am left with is nothing. I was never loved, I will never be, and I should just accept loneliness, I know loneliness anyways… it has been a faithful emptiness in my life and God granted me a year and a half of glory, as a mercy fuck, per say! I am disposable, and no man will ever see me, and love me, and find me worthy. You see, if a man loves you, he will work hard for you.
So do I believe my gut, or do I believe the questioning?
I was told to always trust my gut; it is my soul speaking… Can a soul lie to you like this?
Even in questioning there are two truths. 1. I love him, and I have never loved like this before. 2. I am deep in sadness and confusion.
