Red Cedar

I have ended things with Greg and it’s a horrible, heartbreaking feeling. In turns I am convinced that it is the right thing to do, and then aghast at what I have done and wondering why. I am not sure whether this decision was triggered by my underlying depression and upheaval in my life – or if it was something I needed to resolve before I could move on to other places. All I know is at the moment, it feels as though this sadness will never pass through me and I would rather die than work through it. It’s an extreme reaction – yes – and it makes me wonder about the causes running beneath it.

If I am to be honest with myself about my emotions (very difficult and something perhaps denied myself for a long time) – I can acknowledge that the things I want most in my life involve other people. For a long time I have been living as though I can be completely self-sufficient emotionally and physically – have left the family home a long time ago and moved away and away and away – have developed a layer of distrust towards friends and family on an emotional level. I have tried as hard as I can to insulate myself from the pain of wanting what it seems I can never have.

And what is it that I want? This is the part I have continually lied to myself about in the last few years – but now I can hear it so clearly that it can’t be denied. What I want more than anything else is to love and be loved in return – to be a part of a community of mutual aid and support. It seems to me that the happiest times in my life – despite many hardships – was living in the house at Kitchener Street – having roomates and people who stopped by and were a regular part of my daily life. Weekly dinners and playing music in the park and being a part of making change together no matter how impossible that task.

I know that to glorify one’s youth or the past is a mistake – but when I see the point of departure from that house – I recognize it now as based in deep fear and frustrations that Darren and I both shared. I recognize too that my further self-isolation on the Sunshine Coast was rooted in similar, if not extended fears, the fear of continuing hurt. And now I am here, alone with myself and I am lonely for community and inter-connectedness. I am not sustained by only the trees and the ocean – I long for human love and interaction. I no longer value self-containment as my highest goal. I want to love and be loved and it’s just that simple.

And it’s the tremendous losses of the past several months that have made me realize this. I have been fighting the grief by building up my image of one woman alone – but it is a false picture – for this is not what I really want. It seems easier though to fake it than to admit that I am not really listening to what I have always wanted and never felt I had. The question then is, how do I go forward and make the changes in order to meet these long denied needs?

I am in the sun on my porch and it feels very good to me, with the sound of water and the birds flitting around – it makes me sad to think about leaving this place, but I am not commited to making community here nor do I have the time. I feel urgently the need to move to a place I know I have community already – even though it means giving up what I thought was the most important thing to me – owning a house. These are big and difficult realizations – and a part of me is angry with myself for not coming to them sooner in life. I feel like I have to undo everything – but of course it is not that at all because all of these past decisions are pushing me forward into a new place – and life can’t be undone in any case.

And so back to the situation with Greg – although I have felt the need to push that relationship away from me to a degree – I also know he will continue to be a part of my life if we can both work out the hurts of this immediate situation – and I know we can. I don’t think we have been able to fully realize or hear each other despite the fact we are both good and open people. I don’t know why that is entirely – but on my part I suspect that because I have not been honest with myself about my own needs – I have also not been honest with him. And so he is surprised by the needs surfacing that I want him to fulfill – like being tricked by the image of me as I have been. I don’t want him to be trapped in that place, as much as I don’t want to go around with these painful, unmet needs. And so we must change our relations to each other before the hurts become irreversible. I don’t think they are at that point, no matter how much pain I am in right now.

I don’t want to deal with the choices and work over the coming months. It all seems too difficult at this moment. But I have to do something to manifest what I really want in my life or I will be forever stuck here, trapped by the notions of a good job, or a good house. This is not what life is about when we measure true fulfillment. If I think about what I want the most – it is a small place in Victoria, weekly dinners with friends, more time to play music, a safe community, and possibly a child in the not so distant future. I want to go home essentially – for the first time in twelve years. I want to go home and make it mine again.