Tag Archives: relationships

relationshipping

I say, Give me the real

The other day

so it’s only fair that I give back said real.

And currently, this is the real:
We each found love post (visa)marriage and it has been the hardest thing.

I’m not friends with my exes.  With one, we aren’t not friends but we certainly aren’t a presence in each other’s lives.  And to get to true peace of the end of what was basically a common-law marriage, I had to exercise a total break.

With my ex-GF/wife (whom I will refer to as S from here on out):
I choose to break up.
And it is the most difficult thing.

As S transitions, there is no less love but the rapid-heartbeat, make-me-melt love gives way to a more protective, almost maternal love.  It isn’t the end of a honeymoon phase as this is 1.8 years into our relationship.  Romantic love turns agape love.

I move on, emotionally, while she is still in love with me.
This then becomes the most difficult thing.

I feel guilty for moving on, I wish I could ignore my stupid heart.  I don’t break up unless it is undeniably time because that look- when I look into her beautiful eyes that read only such deep heartbreak…well, that breaks my heart every time.  And knowing that I’m the cause of an agonizing heartbreak makes me feel pretty damn rotten.  There’s just no getting out of any meaningful relationship without hurt.  The deeper the love, the more fucking massive the hurt.

She finds love, which confronts me with a slew of unexpected feelings.
And this makes me a most difficult person.

It’s not fair.  It being the inevitable grief that comes with a significant ending to an incomparably more significant relationship.  It’s not fair for either of us because grieving is just plain hard.  When I chose to break up with S, I knew I was shutting the door on unconditional love.  I could have someone who would love and cherish me no matter what, who wanted nothing more but a permanent future with me because that equaled a bright hope and happiness.  Stupid, stupid heart.

I am no longer her person.
Her face lights up so brightly, voice softens, mood transforms and her heart visibly melts when she receives a text or call from her love.
Before this incredible, new love, my loss wasn’t so palpable; as I moved on, she’s been working through one hell of a terrific heartbreak until her new beautiful person.

This isn’t jealousy.
S is a beautiful person through and through and I want love to do right by her, in a way that I could not.

This is the realness of feeling the loss of the love I gave up.

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relationshipping

Should I delete him?

Should I delete him

Asks my friend.
Me: Do you really want to get over him?

pause

Her: Yes.
Me: Then yes, delete.

I take one course of action to get over someone and thus far it has been 100% effective.
But I need to qualify that I have not been married with children.

The Rumi, aka Don’t Look Back, method:
1) Delete from contacts
2) Delete all text history
3) Delete or hide them from FB (and all other social media you share)
4) DO NOT respond to non-essential, emotional bullshit solicitations (i.e. requisite conversations about unjoining finances are an unfortunate necessity but responding to explanatory emails about his/her feelings blah, blah, absolutely not).

Too harsh?  What, like love-hurt isn’t?

Because this is what I know when it’s over but I’m not over them:
It fucking hurts.
The sorrow, the anger, the goddamn grief.

For instance, after a long-term relationship ended, my ex of not even a week was already dating someone, a specific someone they started talking to prior to our breakup.  That felt awesome: decade long relationship, one-week turnaround.  And a few weeks later, when their new someone came to our still-shared house to spend a lovely weekend with ex (because that new burgeoning love period is brimming over with so much damn infatuation), as my dumb luck would have it, I got to hear new someone be given a fat fucking orgasm by ex…goddammit y’all.

I thought I was doing so well.  I processed through writing as decade-long memories flooded me, Dylan on repeat in the background, and spent priceless time with invaluable friends who listened to me, quietly sat with me or simply joined me for a whiskey, give or take an occasional cry.

I thought I was getting a handle on the can’t-hardly-breathe stage and moving towards taking it week by week.

A few more weeks pass, my ex has left the state to live with said someone and I am told that they plan on getting married within a month.

Wow.

There’s an annoying last step that completes my method:
5) Time.

Sweet, slow, tortuous, curious thing, time passing.

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relationshipping

The brink

This is not love

is not a fun place to be.

I’ve been there and made it back.
I’ve also been the final straw that made a most important person in my life lose their shit.

This was my most disgraceful hour.

Sometimes life deals a truly shit hand, one that bypasses asking why and heads straight to anger, shock and a loss of faith.  This particular hand included an extremely vicious and unrelenting cancer.  When My Person’s mother was diagnosed, everything progressed so rapidly, I have no recollection of those years.  Many years later, it’s still a blur.  I remember specific mundane and major occurrences in extreme detail but it’s amazing how fast five years can whiplash you.

My Person was 868.3 km/539.5 mi. away.  This inter-state commute had paved a familiar course in our lives.  Cancer was a familiar occupant in our household; fucking cancer held all of our attention hostage all the time.  So while MP was trying to keep cancer and its toxic treatment’s effects at bay, what am I doing?

Getting drunk at a bar with someone I should NOT be getting drunk with.  He and I know what’s going to happen.  We are both someone’s boyfriend/girlfriend.  This was not a spontaneous meet, nor an “I got so wasted [fill in the blank]” situation.

Does it even matter that sex didn’t happen?  Not really.  With every passing second after leaving the bar together, I was smashing through years of trust, sometimes wavering but mostly solid and built with love.  How rapidly I  knowingly destroyed said trust was shocking.  I didn’t know I was capable of inflicting hurt like this.  I wouldn’t know the full extent until MP got back.

Why…?

I could say that MP and I had gone through too much at that point in our relationship, that our intense life experiences combined with getting together at such a young age was about to strike us out.

Life experiences included: being rendered homeless, car wrecks, discrimination, almost death, hospitals, hate, death, chronic illness, psych ward, drugs, birth, unemployment, death, therapy, terminal illness, hospitals, mental illness, grief, rehab, alcoholism, motherfucking hospitals.

But really, I was a coward.  

I hinted at wanting out, we had many a fight and breaking up was articulated by us both at various points, but I cheated to force a confrontation that I couldn’t otherwise broach.

I cheated on MP whose mother was suffering from a horrific cancer because I was too weak to have The Talk for real.

No wonder I got the call from the bridge.

It was and will be my one and only cheat.

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relationshipping

I gave it up.

I gave it up

It took love and a beautiful transsexual-in-transition woman to make it happen.

I’m talking control.
This control thing is a strange bird.  I liked having it but releasing it is infinitely better for me.
And that’s not been the easiest thing.

Looking back, all of our shared experiences were actively growing baby steps that ultimately enabled me to simply let go, a realization revealed many, many months after the fact and only upon sober reflection.

I now understand that our adventures, though seemingly 100% spontaneous, had a deliberate quality to them.  She purposely led me on a sometimes dark and mysterious path that forced me to let the fuck go of rigidly held expectations and change my mental processing.  Of course we got absolutely shit-up-a-creek lost at moments but always managed to find our way back.

Control was lost, trust gained.

That trust proved absolutely priceless when we were completely devastated by unexpected death, freshly flown too many damn miles to get back to grieve on-site.  So we quietly sat, side-by-side on bar stools in a strange city, shattered on the inside and shed silent tears in our drinks, absolutely heartbroken.

Shared grief strengthened trust and the presence of control was significantly diminishing from my life, which led to what has been my ultimate letting go experience…of him.

I decided to just be so he could as well.

Relief.

I stopped fighting her transition, freaking out, questioning an ‘us’ and…
acceptance happened.  

Quietude.
It’s not overrated.

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relationshipping

How we met.

How we met

Izzy and I are walking in the park.  She has just finished gutting the crap out of some pinecones and freshly sated from her daily dose of vegan cannibalism, we head home.

Him: Rumi?
I turn around, wondering who the hell is calling me because I never run into people I know in the park at this hour.
Me: Nic?  Wow…what are you doing here?  You’re back in Memphis?  I’m startled by his eyes, so clear and beautifully light hazel-green, playfully sparkling but staring into my soul.  Yikes, attraction just hit.  I might be in trouble.
Him: I saw Izzy and even though I haven’t seen her in years, I knew it had to be her.  And I knew where there’s an Izzy, a Rumi isn’t far away.

our first meeting

our first meeting

This little creature had been my permanent sidekick for nine years at that point.
It wasn’t lost on me that if she was enabling this reconnect, something significant might happen.

Shit.

They say it happens when you’re not looking.
I wasn’t looking.  I was gloriously single, grateful to be free of the work and energy relationships require as I was planning my next destination move.  Izzy and I were busy making plans, thinking seriously about returning to NYC.  There was no desire, space or time for boy-like crap to be happening.  But he’d just moved from Brooklyn and friends are always good to have so yeah, let’s drink some beer sometime.

But.

He pronounced my name Japanese-correctly, which hadn’t happened in years.
He knew things I didn’t.  So many things.
He was remarkably unpretentious for someone so smart.
And goofy, which makes me laugh.  And if you can make me laugh hard, my heart eases.

Then he started to like Izzy.
Damn it.

In the beginning, she irritated the crap out of him and this relieved me because as long as she annoyed him, there would be distance between us.  But little Izzy liked him back and they started to fucking hang out together and bike around town like this:

IMG_1392

I find myself asking him to stay with her while I’m in Chicago.

And it dawns on me.

I trust him completely with her life.
Which means he possesses my heart.

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random love

My first unlove.

This is not love

This is what qualified as almost love:
He comes to meet my drunk ass and takes me to the forgotten housewarming party I’m cohosting with my roommates. Halfway there, I’m too fucked up to stand, collapse on a street corner and attempt to make snow angels in the rain. He waits as I try to drift out of consciousness and I hear him say to a random guy passing, “Hey man, do you have a pixie? Everyone should have a pixie.” I think he’s trying to offer me to the guy because he can be an asshole like that. But antagonizing me (intentional or not) gets me on my feet and we head to my new home.

We have a series of debauch adventures, mostly revolving around his trying to get me to like a girl enough for a threesome.

I know this isn’t love.

And yet, we’ve just had sex and made out in every room of an empty apartment, which feels romantic.  I’m 19, feeling vulnerable in front of him and my eyes are pleading him to say he loves me.
If he says it, I’ll say it back because I think I need a secure something in my life.

And he’s mostly been there for me.

My hopeful eyes wait for him to say something.

He meets my gaze.

And then:

I’ll pay for your AIDS test.

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relationshipping, trans talk

Everyone feels guilty

Everyone's feels guilty

at some point.  Well, unless they’re a sociopath but I’m not going there today.

Today, I’m thinking about my parents.
Here’s the thing: nothing makes them happier than hearing I’m dating a guy.

They stopped expecting marriage or children from me since I’ve been adamantly anti both since I was eight.  But they really want me to be straight.

When I exited my lesbian relationship, not only were they suddenly really interested and present in my life, they became sincerely loving and supportive parents.  And I tried to ignore the reason for their sudden 180°, but that was difficult because by the time they decided to reconnect with me, their marked absence during those relationship years had turned them into strangers.  The inarguable bottom line was that they were thrilled they didn’t have to consider a newly single me a lesbian because there was hope that maybe, just maybe, I’d date a guy again.

They really like a certain idea of me rather than the real deal.
What can I say, most of us are guilty of this at some point in our lives.

So you can imagine their absolute joy when my BF turned out to be a transsexual.

Considering historical evidence, the anti-conformist egalitarian in me really doesn’t want to tell my parents about my breakup because it would make my mom, especially, so stupidly happy.  And I think it’s good for them to try to love me in spite of my relationship choices.

I mean it’s not going to hurt them to be in the dark about my recent relationship status, right?  It’s good to expand prejudicial spheres until they (hopefully) disappear into acceptance, no?  I’m usually of a live and let live mindset; I’m not out to push an agenda on people but if there are two people in the world I don’t feel bad about making actively uncomfortable for their prejudices, it’s my parents.

Then I remember that my dad has fucking cancer and what if it would bring him such great relief to hear that I’m not dating a transsexual?  What if knowing that makes him so happy it gives him renewed hope or vigor or whatever it is that helps people beat cancer?  Which then makes me wonder if I don’t tell him about my breakup am I depriving him ammunition to fight his cancer?

Crap.
This is when I start to feel guilty, which is so messed up on so many levels.

But then I think about my next person and judging from my relationship history, that someone could be anyone.
Which means that my parents’ relief rooted in prejudice could be very short-lived.
And that makes me smile.  Guiltlessly.

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relationshipping

Tact or truth?

Truth or tact

asks my date the other night.

Truth.
Always truth, I say.
Duh.
I want to know where I stand; judge me openly.  Yeah, it fucking smarts at times (actually always) but truth enables me to move on after the hurtful thing is said.
And I can trust you if you’re honest.

Then I hear his reasons for tact via a three-year relationship break-up story.

Tact goes like this:
I told her it felt like we were friends more than anything else.  

Truth:
The sex wasn’t good enough.
For three years not good enough.

He explains:
I figured if she read between the lines, she’d get what I was really talking about but I wouldn’t have to spell it out for her and hurt her in the process.  I’d already accidentally given her body issues.  She was fishing for it though!  She wouldn’t let up, wanting me to name a physical imperfection; so I was honest about the only part of her body that was less than fairly perfect.  And she never got over it.

In his defense, he was a professional athlete at the time; I sure as hell wouldn’t have probed hard for his opinion unless I wanted harsh motivation to tone some shit.

So when it was time for The Talk he chose tact.

It makes me see him and tact in a different light.
Wow, he’s actually a nice guy and he really cared about her feelings.

And my choosing haughty truth makes me feel like a less thoughtful, not-as-kind person.  In the realm of relationships I always thought that I wanted to be told exactly what’s up and why because then I’d know where I stand, which leads to ultimate trust.  But sometimes it takes processing time to get at the why so in the meantime, how about don’t not tell me something just to spare my feelings.

They say it’s not what you say but how you say it, which like so many clichés is so annoyingly true.  Historically, I’ve cloaked the damn truth with so many rusted daggers that, fuck communication, all I accomplish is deeply infected hurt.  So my current goal is successfully marrying tact and truth, which means I lied.

Okay, ask me again- truth or tact?
I say yes.
Because I have turned into fucking Switzerland.

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