“You know what a relationship is about to you. The other person has an entirely different set of reasons for being there.”

I’m on this committee (of course I am, one of a billion) with this guy I’ve known for forever.  We’ve worked together about 15 years, in various capacities, and the trajectory of our inner lives have been parallel in many ways.  I did yoga certs, he did Reiki.  We both have been quasi-Buddhist practitioners inside other belief systems, eclectic God+Energy theories self-invented systems of thinking, and failing, and rethinking. I took his head off this morning over something I don’t even care that much about.  Then he walked onto the elevator, the doors shut, he said “What’s up?” and I said “My husband left me….for starters…” and then he blew off his next meeting to kill lunch with me and listen.  Without judgment.  With discernment. 

I cannot fully express how grateful I felt for that.  So I won’t try.

He understands things about me that most of my other friends just don’t. Examples: when I brush my teeth for two minutes or not, that is a spiritual discipline that I am either failing (usually) or succeeding to hold myself to, and to that end, I brush my teeth in the shower, then feel guilty (I should be able to do it without the comfort of warm water), then fail anyway (always in a hurry, and I also just flat out forget in the lull of the warm water) and feel worse, then buy an egg timer and take into the shower, then it gets wet and it stops working and I think “serves me right”; when I fill up my car with gas, I am always irritated by the now missing holder thingy that all gas stations have removed from their pumps because of theft drive-offs and so I’m stuck outside holding the damn thing, and I admonish myself every time for my irritation at that, and I say a prayer for the world, since it wouldn’t be like that if there hadn’t been more and more theft of gas, which is a clusterfuck of class warfare and climate slaughter, so the least I can do is pump and pray; I could go on like this all day.  Every minute of every day has a spiritual choice in it (that I am usually failing), and I am aware of that always, and am trying not to be an energy-asshole.  The main ethical challenge for me is being energy-charitable with my spirit.  Because if I am not able to do what Tom did for me today, such as be at peace in the face of pain and thus spiritually generous, then I have failed.  That’s how my mind works. And, I am now an Almost Entirely Failed Spiritual State. 

So, what IS a relationship about to me?  To help me to not spiritually fail, to be able to give and expect nothing and thus to get by virtue only of the other person's capacity for what they can give or not regardless also.  But in that case, it’s a prayer/spell for strength.  And ya know what wanting more strength gets you from God?  A kick in the face, that’s what.  And I’m out of wanting to be Better.  I want the other person to want to be Better.  I want them to WANT that, the work of it.  And I’ll be the challenge now. Stop telling me what you need, what you’ve needed, how you didn’t get it, how I’ve failed.   I got that part.  You, you pick ME up.  Every time you think “Gina could have given me” or “I wanted such-n-such from Gina”, reverse it.  For a while.  For a spell.  I want to be your cross to bear for a change.  We can switch back later, when I’m not mother fucking everything into the ground deep down where my spirit is broken and I can’t pray the pain away any fucking more.  And as is obvious from the Sams Club post alone, I’m not just in pain over Aaron.  There is a mountain of shitty in me I’ve climbed weighted down, by others’ disappointments in me, real and projected and compounded and heavy. As have we all, I know.  But I cannot carry any more or climb any higher without help.  So unless you’re bringing help, you should probably write me off, I’m not salvageable nor can I manage sorry-more.

And while we’re at it, for the record, it pisses me off that I’m pissed off.  A lot.  Because I’m long sick of outrage.  I don’t care if it’s justified or not. And no I don’t understand it better if you scream/beat it into me. (Think: T-bone)  And now I am outraged.  And I hate that in anyone, including me.  Over Fucking Come It, I think.  At myself too.  And I don’t know how.  And you’re probably not going to help me, obviously, the pissed leading the pissed (hurt leading the hurt, whatever, choose your lame-o-phrasing). 

This is more than the loss of a lover, we’ve all had lovers and lost them, Tom says.  Yes.  It’s more than a husband, you’ve lost that before.  Yes.  It’s a friend too, someone who really saw all of you (and rejected it).  Yes.  And you’ve felt that before, too?  Yess. That’s a thing.  Yes.  And family.  Yes.  And on top of all that, a child too, the one thing you could always get solace from, but not this time. Yes.  It’s a complete pain.  Yes.  And you’d never invest this much again.  NO, hell no, it’s this or I’m OUT.  Wow.  Yea.  So what would he have to do?  (Sigh.) Not want us to be happy more than he wants me to be whole again (or himself whole for that matter); I want him to save me, or at least want to, truly, not just as a way to get something out of it but regardless, the way you would have to STOP and pick someone up off the road before you could drive on, no matter what, not because of the consequences or any ulterior extrinsic motivators, but out of some higher more compelling JUST BECAUSE the occasion calls for it; I mean, he has not made me happier than he has cost me effort, all along, and THAT made me Happy because it made me feel Good, “loving even when tried” typa deal, and I was passing the test for once (I thought, anyway, wrongly [she says bitterly]).  And you don’t want to be Good now, you want to be happy, or something?  Kinda, I mean, you made me unhappy this morning, so I bit your head off.  (hahahahahahahaha) Right. Right; and ultimately, I don’t want that, I don’t want to think like that, honestly (I don’t want have the brain I have currently whatsoever!), I don’t need to be happy all the time, I’m not in a relationship to be unhappy but I’m not in it to be happy either, and I am pretty content with difficulty occasioning personal growth and all that fucking shit, buuuut not at the moment (hahahahhahaha/cry).  Right :/ I don’t know what to do with this juncture of my spiritual journey, and if I can’t talk about it that way, I can’t talk about it all, and I can't translate it into another paradigm, either, and in fact I think that I will not.  Right :/

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