Oh, The Pain of It!
You might think I am speaking of the pain of grief. It is reasonable. Afterall, Dad died, my sister's father-in-law was taken off the respirator, my martial arts instructor/teacher died in the car accident and today I sat with one of our cats until he passed away. All of these losses do hurt. I have been crying and crying. But the pain I am speaking of is the pain of jumping to conclusions. It is the mental torment I endured for no good reason other than I created the turmoil by jumping to conclusions and making up stories. Then I played in my pain and probably made others suffer also by retelling my fantasies.
In fact I belabored the stories of my martial art instructions' abrupt ending a few posts back. Today I took a letter to his girlfriend. We passed each other on his back country road and stopped to hug and cry and share. When we did talk about what had happened to my lessons, I learned John was going through something with his girlfriend and withdrew from the world by pushing everyone else out. It had nothing to do with me.
My fear of abandonment kicked into storytelling until I made it mean something about me or about him. I withdrew. I can't second guess how things might have gone if I had done otherwise. I am relieved I didn't cause the rift. I am sad I didn't hang in there with another phone call or two, and that I didn't keep my heartstrings open a bit more. I am allowing myself to open again.
My lesson continues to be to treat the people I love as precious. Death lurks around any corner. He just went out with a friend to Wal-Mart to get supplies for canning. There is no evident reason why his car left the road. He wasn't speeding, he was wearing a seatbelt. The car slid on wet grass to a ditch and flipped. He hit his head, broke his neck and collarbone and died instantly. My choice now is to learn not to jump to conclusions, don't take on pain when none is intended and fulfill his belief in me. Loving my life demands that I take change of my mind least it run me into the ground yet again.
In fact I belabored the stories of my martial art instructions' abrupt ending a few posts back. Today I took a letter to his girlfriend. We passed each other on his back country road and stopped to hug and cry and share. When we did talk about what had happened to my lessons, I learned John was going through something with his girlfriend and withdrew from the world by pushing everyone else out. It had nothing to do with me.
My fear of abandonment kicked into storytelling until I made it mean something about me or about him. I withdrew. I can't second guess how things might have gone if I had done otherwise. I am relieved I didn't cause the rift. I am sad I didn't hang in there with another phone call or two, and that I didn't keep my heartstrings open a bit more. I am allowing myself to open again.
My lesson continues to be to treat the people I love as precious. Death lurks around any corner. He just went out with a friend to Wal-Mart to get supplies for canning. There is no evident reason why his car left the road. He wasn't speeding, he was wearing a seatbelt. The car slid on wet grass to a ditch and flipped. He hit his head, broke his neck and collarbone and died instantly. My choice now is to learn not to jump to conclusions, don't take on pain when none is intended and fulfill his belief in me. Loving my life demands that I take change of my mind least it run me into the ground yet again.
posted by Patricia @ 12:36 PM
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