Morning After

The people at my former work decided they didn't need my help, so I am returning the broken computer and this iPad. Goodbye!

A tiny step toward breaking from this place. It's a real pity I must leave with sorrow. No, not sorrow from parting the equipment. The usual sorrow I can't seem to extricate myself from for too long. I may not be attached to this city, but the sorrow now, the past sorrows it reminds me, are not the best way to remember the city by, to remember this ending chapter by. Most people leave a place with a lot of sentimentality. But everyone I know leave with good feeling. Missing the place.

Like I've said several times, I get over seemingly impassible anguish and then I don't remember the pain, just the feeling that I'd not pass the pain. I don't know if that's good or bad for getting over present and future sadness. I remember feeling hopeless after the previous episode, some one and a half years ago. After she left my house I felt the world had collapsed. I associated my house with this sense of abandonment. I couldn't understand a lot of things at the time. I couldn't understand why she left. Or rather, why she couldn't give us another try. Why throw away all that we had. It's funny how remembering these things makes me realize now how trite the drama is. Everyone goes through these feelings. Psychologists long ago had written down patterns of people breaking up. I don't know what they wrote down, exactly, but perhaps to the effect of false hopes, refuse to accept reality, needing to understanding, hatred, and finally accepting at the end. Something like that. I remember sitting down with an older man and I don't know what I said, something I thought was very unique to me, that I was special, and he smiled and asked if I didn't bleed if I was cut, if I didn't feel pain if I was hurt. The point, he added, was I was no different, I was human, I would have the same reaction as everyone else if the same stimulus had applied to me. He is a doctor. He had his own challenges with women. But he was also the first man who told me any woman who didn't want me was the real loser. It was one of those rare moments in my life where I didn't know what to say, do, or feel.

That made me feel, eventually, better. What I was going through was normal. And like normal things, I would get over it, get through the last stage and move on.

Or not. I still don't want to know anything about that woman. I avoid her on facebook, and that one time I found myself standing behind her by coincidence, I felt the world had fallen apart.

I also know it's not about her. A lot remains unresolved. I still can't understand why we threw away all that.

That's only the foolish heart speaking. My mind knows the answers. When I am not emotional, I know the explanations, I know what the rit things to do are. And that's where I need to really understand, not the details of an unhealthy relationship, but the barriers within me that keep me from moving on, from truly not caring. From truly feeling lucky I have friends to support me, to have a new life to move into, to be alive. From feeling relieved that a bad relationship is over, that I could finally breathe, stop arguing, being angry all the time, becoming some demon that isn't me. These barriers, I see them this time, after tearing away the self-pity, the anger, I see the barriers that stop me from moving on. I need to resolve them. I think they are about ego, about pride. It was especially difficult last time because the woman got the strength to break with me when she found another man. A hurt ego no one, no family, no friend, can help mend. But at least now I know the barriers have something to do with it. When I feel better, I will look into it.

For now, I will just let time heal me. Let my clever brain limit my exposure to reopening wounds.

It was hard to say goodbye last night, but at least it was the last one with this woman. I again felt the house collapsing. It was dark, I was still in my jacket. Every time the house collapses on me, gets dark on me, I remember being a teenager in my parents home, especially when my sisters weren't around; it was the first period in my life where I felt lonely. Where were my parents? My sisters? My ego?

I have a month before leaving this town. Hopefully, something beautiful, the opposite of sorrow, happens, and I can leave without such bitter taste in my mouth.