Phoenix Rising from the Ashes

Over two weeks have passed since my life got turned upside down (see previous post for details). I’ve almost stopped crying now, although tears will well up unexpectedly at odd times. The next week will be hard to get through, because that is the week that my love and I would finally have come together – all the miles between us gone, face-to-face for the first time. Now instead, I will be getting ready to leave for a Florida vacation with a dear girlfriend, who is hauling me off to the sunshine, warmth, and sandy gulf beach to heal. I am very thankful that I have that to look forward to and concentrate on, because without it, the next week would be unbearable.

In the past two weeks, I have moved from despair back to someone who appears (to the casual observer) to be nearly back to normal. I joke with friends, smile, talk to people on Twitter, and post to my Facebook page. I put up a Christmas tree, shopped for Christmas dinner, and wrapped a present for a friend. What they don’t know is that, inside, I feel empty and sadly melancholy. Nothing touches me as deeply as it should, even when I hear about tragedies in my friend’s lives – I care, but my ability to feel their pain is greatly diminished. I am still guarding my heart carefully and trying to keep the pain at bay. I can’t help it – I just don’t have the capacity right now to open my heart and bleed for them.

I have been incredibly blessed with wonderful friends who have supported me during this time. They have tweeted, called, texted, left messages on Facebook, and emailed. Several offered to come and sit with me – one did. They told me over and over again that I would survive – that things would get better – that the pain would diminish. Slowly and surely, it has done that. I have leaned on their love to help me through this. I’m not sure how I would have gotten through it without them.

About a week ago, my love and I began to talk again – by email only, but sharing feelings as well as the events that affect our lives. We started to explore what kind of a relationship we might still be able to have now, if any. His decision about what he needed to do did not change the love and friendship we had during our relationship. He hurt me badly, but in spite of that, I still love him and want him in my life. I know it can’t be the kind of relationship that we had planned – a life together, and everything that comes with that. Because I am who I am, I have to support him, even though that means my dreams have been shattered. His decision, however, does not mean that he doesn’t still love me, or that he doesn’t miss me terribly, as I do him. We are the love of each other’s life – but we simply can’t be together.

It may be some time before he and I can strike the balance we need to, to preserve our relationship in whatever form it can now take. In truth, I’m still not sure that it is possible, although I fervently hope that it is. Our love relationship was very intense, and it is bound to be difficult to establish a friendship without that. But we are in agreement that we have to try, because we mean too much to each other to just let it go. And so we will give it our best shot.

One thing that has been very encouraging during this time is that I have not resorted to eating as a way to ease my pain, as I have with every other traumatic occurrence in my life. I’ve gone back to my warm water exercise, surprisingly able to pick up right where I left off when my knee broke down again and I had to get another series of injections, requiring me to stay out of the pool. I’ve been able to stick to my eating plan, and have continued to lose weight – I have now lost 77 pounds since April, when I began, and that’s 146 pound lost from my top weight, in 2005. I am hoping that this means that I have broken a life-long bad habit, numbing pain with food. Only time will tell if it is really gone, or if this is the exception rather than the rule. But I am grateful for it this time, anyway.