Heartbroken

What do you do when someone you love and have loved for a long time and/or with great intensity is totally absent from your life? And, what if that absence is about their choice, not because of death or mutual agreement?

I can tell you what I have done. I rationalized, justified, made excuses for, ignored warnings and proofs, tried to see things from the other’s perspective. I went through denial, anger and all the other steps. And, in the end, the reality is the reality. Someone I love, who’s been an important part of your life, someone I’ve grown with and celebrated victories with and cried about defeats with isn’t there. They’re not there because they choose not to be. There’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve already tried everything I could think of, everything friends and family have suggested and everything countless self-help, spiritual, psychological, philosophical and other books have in them. And, still, my love is not here – because they choose not to be.

How about taking it further. What do you do when, IF you have occasion to connect with the person, and the once warm, fun, passionate behaviors that demonstrate love and concern have now been dummied down to polite exchanges, forced smiles and pregnant pauses signaling the inner conflict of, “What do I do and say now?” And perhaps worse, “Get me the hell out of here!” What do you do when you sense they are experiencing slow death in your presence – when you believe they’re dying for you to go away?

One of our many blessings is to be able to choose who we will be with, who we will love. And, while I’ve found that sometimes who we love is beyond our control, certainly demonstrating it is within our control – at least most of the time.

So, here I am today, following a wonderful weekend, squarely looking at an emptiness in my life, caused by an important relationship – at least to me – that’s missing. In fact, this isn’t just now happening, it’s been happening over years and years. It’s just that now, today, I’ve accepted at a deeper, heart level that my love is really gone. Our relationship is totally dead. It will never return, cannot be revived.

Now I have a choice. I can truly accept it, step away and pray that some miracle will happen (as I’ve done for years), I can continue to deny it. This last is the equivalent to drugging myself to avoid the reality. The fact is, all actions to bridge the gap and restore the relationship to its once full glory have always come from me – never from my love. They have been met with varying degrees of tolerance, but only that. And, on a couple of occasions when my love has reached out to me for help, it has been for just that, help that’s fueled by my love, not for my love. Most of the time the resulting actions were accepted and then unacknowledged by the one I love. That hurts.

Letting go, really letting go is painful for me. REALLY letting go involves looking at my broken heart, feeling it, holding myself because the one I love surely isn’t going to, and striving slowly ahead through the muck of allowing the one I love to be out of my life – because I love them, because I love myself.

I get to say all the stuff I want to myself, to the Divine, to my absent love – in absentia. I get to cry and wail and bitch and moan and wail some more.

Then, I get to pray to the Divine, sipping air through love that is ever present and unending, learning to breath again as I’m given righteous CPR. This is when the “breath of life” is really blown into my lungs and entire being. What would I do, O God, if you weren’t there? The pain would be unbearable.

It is now that I realize that my broken heart is being massaged with holiness and wholeness is possible again. Oh yes, stitches are there. But I can feel the hole being mended. And the fact that I am loved unceasingly by the Creator sustains me and breathes for me until I can sustain and breathe for myself.

Lifework today:
1. Tell God about the things that hurt and trouble you.
2. Repeat step #1 until you’ve exhausted everything. Believe me; the One who created everything can take your moaning, groaning, crying and complaining.
3. Allow yourself to feel everything – without censorship or judgment.
4. Tell The Divine about all those feelings too.
5. Repeat Step #4.
6. Notice the ache in your heart and the lump in your throat is slowly dissolving.
7. Give thanks and praise for lessons learned, for the opportunity to experience love at such a depth that you could feel the same intensity of pain when it is gone.
8. Just give thanks and be grateful for whatever comes to your mind.
9. Repeat all these steps until your broken heart is truly mended.

I love you.