Life: It Moves On
24 November 2010 17:55![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amulI have a few thoughts that I want to get down here on LJ, but I'm having a greater-than-usual degree of difficulty ignoring the fourth wall. It is really important to me that I don't write on LJ as if I am writing TO someone specific, and so I become doubly paralyzed: all too aware of who might read this, unwilling to write things not yet said to someone specific, frustrated with myself for failing to live up to my ideals.
So fuck it. I know you're there, and I want to talk about things that I wish I could say to you in person, but I can't talk to you for all the reasons you know about. I know you don't need me to say it, but I can't get these other thoughts out until I say this, so...
I'm going to use my livejournal the way I have always meant to. This is about you. You can read it or not.
A few weeks ago, I was at dinner in Winnipeg with a bunch of other artists. One of them said to me, "So, wait, now you're not going? It's about a girl, isn't it? You know what, you don't even have to tell me. I can see it on your face. It's about a girl. That's stupid, Amul. This is your career, we're talking about."
A few weeks ago, I was driving Joyous Puppet home. We were talking about her job, her dreams, her future. "What about you?" she asked.
I just don't know anymore. Eighteen months ago, I could have started to tell you, although even then it would've been hard. I have a lot of fear and insecurity when it comes to that question. Now, it is even harder, and I'm even less sure, because what I want.....because even more than my desires for my future, what I really hunger for is someone to build that life with. Someone to stand by me, someone to support me and be supported by me.
There is a pause, weighty with all the things she and I are not saying. JP is smart, grounded. She and I know what is happening between us, and we've talked about it, and we both understand that we only connected this closely because we were both on the rebound.
The weight of her own sorrow and loss fills her next words, and I feel the connection, feel understood by her. Five simple words, so terribly dark and heavy with implication: "I know what you mean."
I turn to the ghost in my head and I say the words again, the stupid, stupid words that won't give me the thing they ask for, the idiot words that are full of bravado and indignation and misery, full of pride and hurt and aching desire.
Look, I say to the girl that once was My All, My Ever After. It is not as if I am lonely.
It is not as if I wasn't perfectly content with the life I had before I met you. It is not as if I don't have friends and lovers still, and a fucking line of girls waiting in the queue to feel my rope. I can easily fill the hours I once dedicated to learning you, to being with you.
It is not as if I am crying out that I cannot live without you. I know better than that now. I know that I will get over you. I know that my life will move on. In many ways, it already has.
I just don't want it to.
Robert Frost said it best, and the truth of it struck me then as hard as it strikes me now, and when I first heard it I thought yes, this is right, this is The Really Real Truth, and I carved it into my life. "In three words," Frost said, "I can tell you everything I've learned about life. It moves on."
I object to this. I protest it. She was more to me than just "a girl I fell for." The world should have come to a gorram screeching halt, and grieved with me. The pain should have been unbearable for one man to feel all by himself.
But the world didn't stop, and I did bear it all by mysef. Worse, that achingly beautiful thing we shared has transformed from a magic light on my life into just one more set of experiences to be drawn from.
Bitter tears fill my eyes as I write these next words: I am taking the lessons I learned from loving her and applying them to my next relationship.
It reminds me a lot of what happened with Formerly My Achingly Defiant: the magic, the transformative power of love, the way she took terrible parts of myself and turned them into a thing that unified us instead of keeping me apart from her. Once again, the magic has moved on and I am left with a greater acceptance of my Self, but no longer able to share that with the one who gave it to me.
Dammit. What we had was more than just another relationship to me. It was special. It was worth fighting for. I would fight for it still, except that there is something more important to me going on alongside this loss.
Joyous Puppet cups my face in her hand, and worries for me. "I just don't understand how that is not going to be awkward." Oh, I fully expect it to be awkward. I expect to hurt, to want her back at times and hate her at others. But she told me to keep it separate, and I now know that I did.
She told me that I didn't need to meet her kids, that if I was going to let them in, it needed to be a commitment separate from her. I took it seriously, more seriously than even I realized at the time.
So now we are playing nice, and trying to make peace, and I am not ready. I still want to fight, still want to win her back, still want to rekindle what we had. But I don't.
I won't.
Because my fucking goddamn motherfucking shit fuck ethics have somehow become more important to me than the love I have for her. Because I do not want to be kept from loving these children. Because friendship is better than nothing, especially if it means I can keep watching that little boy and girl grow up.
I am afraid to even express all of that out loud, for fear that Clever Tool Using Monkey will never ask me to read him a bedtime story again. For fear of never holding Peaches' hand again as I walk them to a park.
Lacuna Diving Bunny questions my motives carefully, familiar with men who have used this as an excuse to stay in contact with an ex-lover. Her eyes are dark with concern, her voice mirroring my own doubts about my motivations. In this, too, I am taking lessons from my gorram past and try to use it here, try to move beyond my pride, let her see the whole of me, let her judge all of me.
Life is moving on. I don't want it to, but then, it has never really listened to what I want.
Life moves on. I can either flow with it, and take on the things I don't feel ready for, or I can drown in the laughter and joy that is surrounding me, urging me to let go, move forward.
It is not as if I am lonely. It is not as if there are no joys left for me to find. It is not as if I will never love again.
I just don't want to.
So fuck it. I know you're there, and I want to talk about things that I wish I could say to you in person, but I can't talk to you for all the reasons you know about. I know you don't need me to say it, but I can't get these other thoughts out until I say this, so...
I'm going to use my livejournal the way I have always meant to. This is about you. You can read it or not.
A few weeks ago, I was at dinner in Winnipeg with a bunch of other artists. One of them said to me, "So, wait, now you're not going? It's about a girl, isn't it? You know what, you don't even have to tell me. I can see it on your face. It's about a girl. That's stupid, Amul. This is your career, we're talking about."
A few weeks ago, I was driving Joyous Puppet home. We were talking about her job, her dreams, her future. "What about you?" she asked.
I just don't know anymore. Eighteen months ago, I could have started to tell you, although even then it would've been hard. I have a lot of fear and insecurity when it comes to that question. Now, it is even harder, and I'm even less sure, because what I want.....because even more than my desires for my future, what I really hunger for is someone to build that life with. Someone to stand by me, someone to support me and be supported by me.
There is a pause, weighty with all the things she and I are not saying. JP is smart, grounded. She and I know what is happening between us, and we've talked about it, and we both understand that we only connected this closely because we were both on the rebound.
The weight of her own sorrow and loss fills her next words, and I feel the connection, feel understood by her. Five simple words, so terribly dark and heavy with implication: "I know what you mean."
I turn to the ghost in my head and I say the words again, the stupid, stupid words that won't give me the thing they ask for, the idiot words that are full of bravado and indignation and misery, full of pride and hurt and aching desire.
Look, I say to the girl that once was My All, My Ever After. It is not as if I am lonely.
It is not as if I wasn't perfectly content with the life I had before I met you. It is not as if I don't have friends and lovers still, and a fucking line of girls waiting in the queue to feel my rope. I can easily fill the hours I once dedicated to learning you, to being with you.
It is not as if I am crying out that I cannot live without you. I know better than that now. I know that I will get over you. I know that my life will move on. In many ways, it already has.
I just don't want it to.
Robert Frost said it best, and the truth of it struck me then as hard as it strikes me now, and when I first heard it I thought yes, this is right, this is The Really Real Truth, and I carved it into my life. "In three words," Frost said, "I can tell you everything I've learned about life. It moves on."
I object to this. I protest it. She was more to me than just "a girl I fell for." The world should have come to a gorram screeching halt, and grieved with me. The pain should have been unbearable for one man to feel all by himself.
But the world didn't stop, and I did bear it all by mysef. Worse, that achingly beautiful thing we shared has transformed from a magic light on my life into just one more set of experiences to be drawn from.
Bitter tears fill my eyes as I write these next words: I am taking the lessons I learned from loving her and applying them to my next relationship.
It reminds me a lot of what happened with Formerly My Achingly Defiant: the magic, the transformative power of love, the way she took terrible parts of myself and turned them into a thing that unified us instead of keeping me apart from her. Once again, the magic has moved on and I am left with a greater acceptance of my Self, but no longer able to share that with the one who gave it to me.
Dammit. What we had was more than just another relationship to me. It was special. It was worth fighting for. I would fight for it still, except that there is something more important to me going on alongside this loss.
Joyous Puppet cups my face in her hand, and worries for me. "I just don't understand how that is not going to be awkward." Oh, I fully expect it to be awkward. I expect to hurt, to want her back at times and hate her at others. But she told me to keep it separate, and I now know that I did.
She told me that I didn't need to meet her kids, that if I was going to let them in, it needed to be a commitment separate from her. I took it seriously, more seriously than even I realized at the time.
So now we are playing nice, and trying to make peace, and I am not ready. I still want to fight, still want to win her back, still want to rekindle what we had. But I don't.
I won't.
Because my fucking goddamn motherfucking shit fuck ethics have somehow become more important to me than the love I have for her. Because I do not want to be kept from loving these children. Because friendship is better than nothing, especially if it means I can keep watching that little boy and girl grow up.
I am afraid to even express all of that out loud, for fear that Clever Tool Using Monkey will never ask me to read him a bedtime story again. For fear of never holding Peaches' hand again as I walk them to a park.
Lacuna Diving Bunny questions my motives carefully, familiar with men who have used this as an excuse to stay in contact with an ex-lover. Her eyes are dark with concern, her voice mirroring my own doubts about my motivations. In this, too, I am taking lessons from my gorram past and try to use it here, try to move beyond my pride, let her see the whole of me, let her judge all of me.
Life is moving on. I don't want it to, but then, it has never really listened to what I want.
Life moves on. I can either flow with it, and take on the things I don't feel ready for, or I can drown in the laughter and joy that is surrounding me, urging me to let go, move forward.
It is not as if I am lonely. It is not as if there are no joys left for me to find. It is not as if I will never love again.
I just don't want to.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 25 Nov 2010 00:21 (UTC)~loves you sadly from far away~
no subject
Date: 25 Nov 2010 02:58 (UTC)Oh Gods, Abbi. Won't you ask me for something?
no subject
Date: 25 Nov 2010 03:51 (UTC)ETA: or is that an inappropriate request?
~sigh~ so confusing, navigating these waters
no subject
Date: 25 Nov 2010 04:46 (UTC)I'm pretty sure I just told you where I was at. Where are you?
no subject
Date: 25 Nov 2010 06:30 (UTC)I kept reaching out to him trying to get him to see how special what we had was and realize what he was throwing away. He refused to speak to me because he was afraid I'd convince him we really could work things out. The hard truth was, he was right.
We were terrible together, and I could not see it. What I saw in our relationship was completely different from what he saw in it. I saw what I wanted to see. I wanted to believe I made good choices and it was all worth it. I made excuses and tried to put stuff in the best possible light. I eventually had to realize I was wrong, because had I been right this wouldn't be happening.
Now I think I'm in a really good relationship that's been going through a rough patch due to outside pressure, but I second guess myself. I think only time will tell.
no subject
Date: 25 Nov 2010 07:42 (UTC)It's like I said. It's not as if I think I will never love again. I just think that what Mirage and I had was worth fighting for harder than we did.
no subject
Date: 25 Nov 2010 07:43 (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 Nov 2010 14:03 (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 Nov 2010 15:33 (UTC)I'd say that you could use that time apart, the "life goes on" part of your life (which I know is sometimes separate from the life we all live in our heads), to enjoy what else you have and take stock (not worry at it or pick at scabs; there is a difference). Enjoy the friendship and nurture it. Reach deep and cultivate a patience you may have never known. I think through that is your best chance to remain in touch with the kids and be there for their mother if you can't have anything else.
From someone who's been through a divorce and through other rocky relationships that I didn't want to let go, for whatever reason: it's what we have available to us. Yeah, it hurts like a motherfucker. Yeah, it's embittering. But the singular truth is something you've touched on: it does become part of our experiences. All the good and bad goes into making the people we are, the people we want to be. We don't have to like it, but if we don't truly learn from it, we just fuck things up again and again, and as life goes on we contribute to the tenor of it. Figure out what you want that tenor to be, learn to make peace with doing the difficult and right thing. It won't happen overnight and it won't be magical; it's always a process. But through that you may find peace with yourself, which is the most important thing, I think.