i’ve been on a journey. one of the most important of my life. and a journey that is entirely invisible to everyone else in my life.

a year and a half ago, one of the closest partners i’d had in my life left me, suddenly. of course there is more to the story, but as i experienced it emotionally, one day we were partners, he had my back; and the next, he was gone, emotionally and physically completely unavailable to me, where he had been one of my primary people for over nine months.

it was one of the most severing experiences of my life, and sent me into a deep depression. i have been ping-ponging in and out of depression since then, having better weeks, better days… and worse weeks, days, months… losing him exploded my life, my concept of myself, my concept of trust in myself and my intuition, and many other things. i have been through many break-ups, and even a divorce… and none of them touched the pain i felt from this loss.

and yet, as it turns out, i needed those things to explode. to find healing, i needed to blow up some illusions i had still been grasping. i needed to see in even deeper ways the way i gave myself away in relationship, the way i set things up to explode. lately, i can find it in my heart to start to feel (rather than just think) gratitude for this experience. i am grateful i found out sooner than later that he didn’t have the emotional capacity to meet my needs in the long-term, that he wasn’t willing to work on the issues we had, to his less-balanced reactions. i know rationally it would have been much more painful, the more i had invested…

and yet other parts of me still grieve no longer being able to feel his touch, his energy… to hear his voice. i have been humbled by this break-up. never have i been so destroyed by a loss of a partner; it has made me empathize in new and deeper ways. the difficulty i have had viscerally in letting go of him has given me new appreciation for folks who have a difficult time letting go.