Deliverance

Over and over and over

Did you think I was done talking about this? I am never going to be done talking about this.

These days I’ve been doing a lot of traveling and also a lot of nothing and while I’m traveling and doing nothing I’m thinking about everything that has ever happened in my life. Why did it happen, what is it all for, what does it all mean? What else are you supposed to do while you stare out the window of an airplane in the sky or a train in the country?

Where does it all start? When did you first know love, and when did you first lose it? What happened to you? Why you? Or rather, why not you? Why did you think you were so special that nothing could touch you? Did you think it wouldn’t happen to you?

When I was much younger I thought I knew all about love. I remember adults telling me that I couldn’t possibly understand what it meant to love someone, and I also remember thinking why not? Who were they to tell me that I didn’t know love when it was right in front of me? Love was in the stars in my eyes and coming out of the tips of my fingers.

Do you remember what your first heartbreak was like? What about the one after that? Did you forget that the love was still there? Your heart is going to break over and over and over again. And you are going to remember that the love is all around you even when you think it’s not.

When I entered my twenties, I started to really learn what it meant to love and be loved, and I owe it all to my friends. I remember thinking, no, I don’t suppose I really did know all about love back when I thought I did. Now, surely, I know it all. And I was so happy. And then my friends started meeting people, and I felt this overwhelming disappointment. I wasn’t happy for them, honestly, and it made me feel like a monster—it still does—but I am finding freedom in being able to admit that, both to myself and to whoever will read this. I was not happy for them because love betrayed me and left me behind.

It wasn’t until very recently I found a deeper appreciation for the love I have for my friends. It took all this time to understand that your friends can love others and still love you too. Just because they met someone does not mean they are taking the love they have for you and giving it to someone else. I mean, really, it’s a crazy thing to think—that there is a finite amount of love within you reserved for a limited amount of people. What a prison loving would be if that were true? There are infinite intricacies of love to be discovered within yourself, your relationships, and the world around you. I don’t know it all, but I do know where it is and I certainly know where it isn’t.

It is with a sigh of relief that I can finally say, thank goodness he left me. All of them, really. You don’t think of it as freedom when you’re in the throes of it but one day you realize that you’ve been saved from wasting any more of your time loving someone who didn’t want it.

Does it show that I’ve only ever been dumped? Completely out of nowhere, by the way. (Both times after they woke up from a nap, which is a weird detail I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to shake.) I wonder if they’d agree with that—that it was out of nowhere. But it doesn’t matter. The moment the words left their lips they weren’t even the same person anymore—you’re strangers to each other now.

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Almost everything I’ve written about in the last eight months is a different shade of the same color. Heartbreak. Healing. Longing. Loving. Learning. Growing. Giving in. Getting over it. Alliterations of the human experience. There is a lot of hurt and there is a lot of relief. Over and over and over. The cycle repeats, the carousel keeps spinning.

If a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, would it cause a tornado in Texas? I don’t believe in fate and I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason, but I do believe that everything that happens is connected by a thread. If I hadn’t gotten a job at x then I never would have met y and z never would have come to be. You know what I mean?

I’ve always been stuck on the what ifs of my life. My therapists have always said it holds me back, and it has. But what if the what ifs (ha) propel you forward? What if you learn to appreciate that nothing would be the way it is now if something else had never been, instead of resenting it?

If I hadn’t moved to Greenville I never would have gotten a job at the butcher shop up the street and I never would have met him, and if I never would have met him I never would have fallen in love with him and if he hadn’t left me I would still be loving the wrong person.

I miss what once was but I do not miss him. He is not him anymore but I am not her anymore, either. Both are good things. Back then, when it happened, I didn’t—couldn’t—understand that. I had all this love for him and I didn’t know what to do with it anymore. Where are you supposed to put it?

It took me a long time to clearly see the answer. You put it in the seeds you sow, the hands you hold, and the food you cook. You put it in the letters you write, the texts to say “I miss you, I can’t wait to see you.” You put it into the beds you make and the songs you sing together. Every moment you spend with your friends is a lesson on love and being loved. Start paying attention.

When I think about it, I have known about love the whole time. It’s been there, and so I’ve known it. When I was a child and especially now—even after it has walked out the door and hung up the phone for the last time. You were right. It’s been in the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet. Right in front of you.

The love is all around me.

“One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.” Stephen Hawking