I Will Not Lose Her

I Will Not Lose Her

(Written August 25, 2016, edited in 2024)

When a cataclysmic storm rages between friends, we often look at the relationship itself.  What went wrong?  That is what I did with her.  I examined the relationship.  I am sure she did as well.  However, I think a deeper part of me had a better, though unclear, understanding.

It was not the relationship.  It was me.  I was changing.  I had changed.  I had begun to yell.  I hate yelling and confrontation.  I had become rude and aggressive.  I made her uncomfortable, and made her feel embarrassed around her friends.  I would commiserate over events for days.  I had become particular and fixed.  Meaningless things stuck in my craw.  That was not the me I had been before.

What happened to the person who bought her a flower every payday?  What happened to the person who played with her like a puppy, right in front of her family?  Where was the person who left little notes of affection?  Where was the young adult who sat and listened to music for hours?  What happened to the person who cherished the differences between peoples?  The person I always thought I was, the person I had been was gone, buried under spite and burden, and mostly confusion.

We often point our fingers at familiarity.  Routine steps in, and things get dull.  Certainly, this played a role, but simple commonness would not turn playfulness into argument.  Moreover, I had lost the ability to communicate with others, of greatest note my daughter.  Something else was at work, though I could not see the condition while being consumed by it.  I had changed.  I was changing.  The me I enjoyed had been lost, left behind like a forgotten piece of luggage.

I did not know it at the time, but andropause was eating away at the younger me.  The symptoms, as I read them, did not apply, but every physiology is different.  Moreover, severe Social Anxiety was also setting in, almost to the point of phobia.  I have always been introverted, socially anxious, and awkward, but I was sinking into a much deeper abyss.  Did changing hormones fuel the anxiety, or did the anxiety alter the andropause symptoms?  Who knows?  I can only see it now because it is all done and past.

I did not leave her.  Oh, I started the separation, but it was not her I was fleeing.  I was not abandoning the relationship.  I dragged myself away from her like a dying animal sulking away from the group for the group’s protection.  I pulled the yelling, particular, touchy lunatic I had become to a safe distance.  During a mid-life crisis, most men think of fast cars and young women.  However, I sought solitude.  I hated hurting her.  I detest myself for doing so.  I needed to reclaim the original me and kill the monster I had become.  I needed to punish myself and protect the world from my beast.

The love and affection has not faded.  It has always been there, though it had to be concealed.  I needed to find music again.  I needed to learn to communicate again.  I needed to understand parts of me I had never known, and rekindle parts that had been long gone.  I have learned I am emotionally broken and immature in so many ways.  I cannot reconcile love and sex.  Introversion and Social Anxiety have always been parts of me.  I am a dweeb, a dork, unable to be adult about the emotional and social qualities of life.  I can write a book, talk sciences, teach a class, and solve problems with the best of them, but I cannot properly handle human interactions.  The human equations, the personal qualities, are knots I cannot untie.  Autism, Asperger’s, perhaps there is a sprinkle of these in my matrix.  Looking in someone’s eyes is more frightening than revealing.

I miss her.  I always will.  I dream about her more than any other person or thing.  I wake up crying several times a year, and I do not see that changing.  My hormones have settled.  I have crossed the mid-life crisis, and understand myself.  I listen to music again, and play.  I let things go.  The tensions are gone.  Life’s difficult challenges are faced straightforward.  The love is there and always will be.  I will die with her name on my lips.

I have lost her presence, though I will not lose her.

“It hurts every day, the absence of someone who was once there.”

— Marie Lu, Champion

You Still Reach Into My Dreams

(Written 2014/06/04, not previously posted, edited 2024)

To: Elizabeth

You are the only one . . .

My dream, filled with strange imagery, shifts into a home.  The house is a muted combination of the two places where we had lived.  Like so many dreams about you, there is a hint of Christmas.  We are in this house out of some odd occurrence.  Our real lives are still true, both of us independent.  As always, your warmth and cheer reach out, letting me know this momentary encounter is not an inconvenience.  We are figuring out where I can temporarily store my things, when we enter into conversation…

You are the right person for me.  Our years were perhaps my most joyous.  Alone in my hermit hole I have learned a lot about myself.  I was not the right person for you, and I lament any pains I cause.

People frighten me.  In my desire to please and keep the peace, I push down, push away, and hide bits of myself, little by little.  I lose myself.  There is a person in me who wants to sing out, but holds it in for fear of upsetting or unsettling or changing the perspective of others about me.  I need time alone, not to be merely in another room, but to be truly alone.  I need that time every day.  I need time to bang on the piano mindlessly, like a little child who enjoys the cacophony, with no fear of ridicule or rejection, not that you would, but the fear that anyone would is an every present pressure.  I cannot stay with anyone for more then a few hours, and then I must run to my hole of solitude, where I can expand.

I think of how we met.  We were at our mutual friend’s party.  And where was I?  There I sat, alone in the den.  Party goers came and went through the kitchen with fleeting greetings.  But then you came in.  You came in, and your warmth filled the room.  You more than spoke, you came over to me, and sat beside me, and beamed your cheer right at me.

You, and only you, full with your warmth and bubble, were able to reach down into the abyss of my solitude and pull me up, and out.

The dream brakes and restarts, a Christmas tree in the mingled composite of our dwellings.  Then suddenly I am old and feeble, and small.  As if a Benjamin Button, I had shriveled into a tiny old man in a hospital bed.  Alex comes in and says there is a visitor.  It is you, age making you more angelic, rather than the raisin it had turned me into.  All I can do is weep.  You are the right person for me, providing the most joyous human connection I ever had.  It is so sad that I was not the right person for you.

What does it mean when, behind all the vignettes my mind created last night, were the lyrics;

“There's a light

Over at the Frankenstein place

There's a light

Burning in the fireplace

There's a light, a light

In the darkness of everybody's life”

?

Some would say I should let it all go.  Let go of the love.  Forget the memories.  I’m only hurting myself by hanging on.

Then I realize, it is never wrong to love someone, even if they do not return it.

2024/02/23

No Undo, No Do Overs

2024/02/18

Life is not like a software program, it also is not a game.  There is no Undo button, and Do Overs.

I have fought my way through andropause, the midlife crisis.  I am now on the downhill slope, the inevitability of mortality squarely in front of me.  They say you should not have any regrets.  I cannot help feeling that I do have one major regret, though I also know I do not.

On one hand, I regret leaving her.  I have returned to my former self.  Life is calmer.  I understand I need space to recharge my social batteries.  I now know what it would take to live with someone and keep peace with her, and myself.  I have not found a companion, perhaps because everyone is gauged against my ex, but mostly because my introversion makes meeting people extremely difficult.  The chance that another Elizabeth, full of cheer and exuberance, will plunk herself down beside me is very unlikely.  Lightening does strike more than once in the same place but only at the highest points, not in the lowest valleys.

I regret that I let go of that love.  I have learned what we had was indeed love, the way we all think it should be.  Feelings so deep they cling to you with an unshakeable static.

On the other hand, in a frightfully human and dissonant way, I also do not regret leaving her.  I left for the right reason.  I have calmed down, my hormones settled and my former self lives anew, but I am still not the right person for her.  I am still that cowboy in jeans who enjoys box lunches, and she is still that princess in flowing gowns who enjoys high tea.

Some would argue, ‘Learn new things.  Take a chance.  Go get you some.’  Though I must recognize, it has been many years.  While I have surfed the rough waters of my own self, she has also climbed her own mountain.  My love for her has not faded, but what of her love?  Though she has sent small kindnesses my way, she has every right to be bitter.  If not bitter, totally void.  Early on, she asked me to respect boundaries, which I have.  That is why Santa is a bit secret.  I have learned that many people survive breakups by executing clean cuts – no hatred, no malice; the other person simply becomes all but nonexistent.

It would be rude and inappropriate for me to ‘take a chance’, as I respect the boundaries, and I am still the wrong person for her.  But I will never let go of the love.