Chilled/Phoenix One More Time

It failed me yesterday - my will to prevail, the glass half full attitude, the grateful lens.  That's OK, right?  Some days we just feel beaten at the game of life.  So this blog entry today is going to be tough to read.  I have to write it - it can't be contained because right now it's sitting like a giant rock in my gut and I have to expel it.  So, if you read me each day and find my posts life affirming or entertaining and that's what you need today, then just skip me today.  If, on the other hand, you care and are OK "listening", that's really nice and I'm grateful for that.

I tried.  I really did but it all just converged on me like the climax in a Greek play and I was mostly powerless. Today I know what I have to do.  After I write this blog post, I will shake myself off and try my soaring wings yet again.  One of these days, I will take flight again.   I remember what it was like to fly.

Yesterday's list:

• Fallout from the conversation with Patrick.   I knew, even as I spoke with him the other night, that the downside of the call would be incredible sadness in the next days.  When we spoke our words tumbled over each other.  It was easy and wonderful and we had so much to say, so much to catch each other up on.  It was as if no time had elapsed.  It felt like coming home - finally.   And we talked and talked, knowing that when the conversation ended it would be the last for a very long time, maybe even forever.  And so we fought the end of the conversation, tried to wrap it up a couple of times only to keep it going because ending it was too hard.  But end it we did.  We said goodnight.  We said goodbye as if it wasn't a final goodbye, but it was.   And even if we end up friends down the road, it will be different.  It will be something new - there won't be the same love between us.  
• Valentine's Day - I hate the day - always have, even when I was married. I have always longed to be in mutual  loving relationship on Valentine's Day and it has always eluded me and made me very, very sad.  When I came home last night to an empty house, dreading an alone Valentine's evening, there were flowers on my kitchen counter - really lovely flowers.  I had no idea who they were from - one of the kids who knew I was suffering?  Before I crossed the threshold I started to weep in gratitude for whoever it was who knew what a hard day it was for me.  I was beyond grateful.  The flowers were from the new tenant Mario with a cute, handmade care.  He said "you deserve way more than flowers...You are an amazing person and I consider myself lucky to have met you.  Thank you for everything."  
• I was chilled.  It wasn't particularly cold yesterday but I was chilled, I think, chilled by my life. I trembled and ate a tiny amount of food and went upstairs to my warmer bedroom. It was only 5:30 but I put on bedclothes and climbed into bed, hoping for the day to end. I couldn't sleep - just lay there and then Madeleine came in all aglow but feeling worried for me when she saw me in bed.  She sat on the side of the bed and stroked my head and kissed me.  She loves me dearly - that's always been the case, even during the roughest of times between us.  She then left for dinner with her boyfriend.  
• Whitney - her passing.  Even that had a special significance to me that contributed to the perfect storm of sadness.   When Patrick and I broke up and he was miserable, he sent me an e-mail with a link to the YouTube of her singing, "I Will Always Love You". He said that he couldn't get the song out of his head.  It became our breakup song.  I told him I would learn it and sing it "to him" even in absentia.  I haven't been able to.  It's printed and in my songbook but there is absolutely no way I could learn that song and sing it in public without making a blubbering fool of myself.  And so, it stares at me from my songbook.   I leaf past it several times a week and wonder if I'm ready yet to learn it, wonder if I should even learn it, or if I should just remove the pages.  So last night, laying there looking at the ceiling for hours, wishing for the pain to go away, I scrolled through my phone and was again confronted by stories of her including a link to her singing that song and the final scenes from The Bodyguard.  Yup, I tortured myself and watched it, knew I shouldn't, but I did.  It made me so sad I was beyond tears.  I just curled up tighter, in a fetal ball, clutching my comforter tight around me and lay that way for another hour.
• What I didn't do last night was drown my sorrows or stuff my face with carbs.  These days I am ascetic.  I am denying myself any kind of comfort.  I decided a week ago not to drink any more (except a social glass of wine with friends) and I also decided to get serious about the rest of the weight loss.  These days I eat just enough to stop the grumbling and even then not enough to keep it at bay for very long.  My best friend these days has been the ache in my stomach from no food.  The ache in my stomach is a sister to the ache in my heart - it feels right.   And even though I am beautiful I am too fat to be loved.  No matter what anyone says, we all know that no one wants the fat girl.   I get it. So I will not eat and I will lay, looking at the ceiling and wait to be thin - and loved.
• Jealousy of your own child - now that's a Greek theme. Madeleine.  She and I are sometimes boundary-less.  I went into therapy because she and I were too entwined - told that she over identified with me and that for her to be better, I needed to be better. She and I have both been heartbroken, same deal - love lost.   But just this last weekend, her dreams came true.  The words she never thought she would hear from the boy she thought she had lost.  She has him back and she is in her bliss.  And she is young with her life ahead of her.  And she is thin.  I am truly, truly happy for her and yet I would lie to say there isn't some jealous bile in my mouth.  
• Friends - so worried.  Yesterday I wasn't alone.  In the AM I talked to Kaveh (we have just two more sessions).  Later, Nick in Germany, Victor and then in the evening Liza.  Mini interventions.  They are all but shaking me.  I swear if I had talked to them in person, one of them would have slapped me across my face to get me to snap out of it.  And I see all of this, understand and appreciate their wisdom, intellectualize it, embrace it, want it - and yet like a creme puff it leaves me as soon as the phone is hung up.

So today.  Really just two choices.  It's come down to this.  I either jump from a parapet (who the hell uses the word parapet?) or I choose to live again.  I need to finally accept that he is gone, that he didn't choose me, that no amount of loving him will bring him back to my arms.  He loves me but.....not enough.   I have tried to make sense of this.  How can you be loved but not wanted?  I may never make sense of it.  I have struggled, looking for an answer, a solution, acceptance.

Before the phoenix rose from the ashes, I'm thinking he spent a lot of time in the soot, like me, thrashing around, trying to find his bearings, trying his wings only to find they couldn't hold his weight with the heavy rock of sadness in his heart, trying again and again, being plucky despite the fact that each day he died a little bit, choking on the acid taste of defeat and the ever present ashes. But one day, he tried one last time.  Maybe he too felt almost defeated but he tried a final time - a last gasp effort.  He shook off the ashes and spread his weak wings and this time they held his weight. 

Today, I am going to try one more time.  I am going to close up this blog entry by saying thank-you for reading, grateful that I have a way to express myself, and commit myself to getting through this.   For the rest of the week I will write about interesting things that will be easy and fun for you to read.   I will not indulge this sadness again.  It's just that it was too much for me yesterday:  the talk, the joy of making him the perfect cake, the dreaded Valentine's Day, Madeleine's happiness, the songs, Whitney, the winter.

Watch this.   Not A Day Goes By - Bernadette Peters

Peace,

Sarah