Seven Days .... Seven More Days & She'll be .... another year older. She left without saying good bye and when I called her on it she said that she would touch base after she got settled in. But she isn't good at intimacy. No, she is one of the last vestiges of my need to hang on, come hell or high water, to broken women. It is part of my core script dysfunction ; I couldn't stop Dick from beating up on my mom & as a result I have a bad habit of failing to protect the broken women from their own chaos. They of course are always willing to accept the assistance of a white-knight until such a time as the rescuer fails to resolve the chaos & becomes part of the problem ... And while this one was much healthier on the surface ... than the addicts, sexual abuse survivors & other hapless victims of years gone by ... she was still very broken. And the healing was something that I would never be able to give her. But in seven days it will be the anniversary of the day that she came into this world. And I never forget her birthday.
But the difference is that this year, between the last one and today, I said goodbye. That is to say that I sent an email that I do not know if she ever read or even received it, but I said goodbye. The point of that email was for me .... I Said Goodbye. I told her that I was no longer willing to abuse myself waiting for her to treat me with the dignity & respect that I deserve from my friends. I release her into the care of the universe - not that she ever really needed my care. But she would have benefited from my experience in moving past whatever it was that taught a person to build walls. In her world that was far too risky ... no intimacy was too threatening. Sex without love and the pursuit of the trappings of material success would keep those pesky feelings at bay. Except for those moments of weakness when they would bleed through - and I did catch glimpses of those moments from time to time over the years ... Her emotional rivers were intense when they managed to escape their prison; her rage, her love .... oh and the intensity of her remorse ... so wonderful and honest, albeit short-lived. She always kept them on a short leash.
So this year I needed to do something different. This year I decided to begin a different tradition and sent a card to a friend that does participate in my world on a regular basis. You see, I remember your birthday even if I do not sen you a greeting. Because the day that you were born was the culmination of a series of miraculous coincidences "a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection" that ultimately resulted in creating the beginning of you. All the circumstances and random decisions along the way also contributed to making you the you that I met and befriended. Think of the millions or perhaps even hundreds of billions of possible alternate outcomes that may have been .... but yet there were you & there was I and we connected. And what is important is what WE DO to make our connection meaningful.
She decided to walk away without saying goodbye. This year, I choose to let her go. A parting blessing from the television show The 100 says it best,
"In peace may you leave the shore.
In love may you find the next.
Safe passage on your travels until our final journey on the ground...
May we meet again".
Allons Y ...