counting backwards

“how good it feels to finally forgive you...”

i apologize in advance for using an alanis morisette line to open this entry.

okay. so. for my counselling program we have to do all these practice session thingies. for one semester we were hooked up with another student and we had to counsel each other (on video tape) for an hour each week. it was intense to play back the tapes and watch ourselves “in action”.

when i was being a counsellee, i got onto the topic of my exboyfriend that i was engaged to. i talked about the magic of that relationship. the otherworldliness of being with him. of how being with him stopped time. i told the woman that was counselling me that even though i have no idea where he is, whether or not he is alive, or if i will ever see him again - - - that he is often still the first thing that i think about when i get up in the morning.

my love for him doesn’t hurt any more. i don’t “miss” him. but i hold him close. i let him live inside me. and i think that i let him take up that space in my heart that is reserved for deep/intimate/sexual love. i have left plenty of room in the rest of my heart for friends and lovers and family and exciting strangers.

the woman who was counselling me asked me what it would take for me to open that space up. and if i could still cherish the relationship i had with him - without using it to block new people out.

i have been pondering that ever since. i don’t think that i want him to take up that space any more. he has inspired me in countless ways (most of which he has not been here to see). i value who he has been in my life. but one day i need to wake up and realize that he really. is. gone.

maybe part of that is forgiving him for leaving. forgiving myself for telling him to leave. i am not sure how to do that yet.... but it is time that i figured it out.

it’s hard to want to remove him from the place that i have put him in my heart. i have never met someone as intense, surreal, sensual, overwhelming, capable, creative, raw, romantic, silly, adorable, and connected as he was. it’s hard to give that up and let something else happen.

i know. it’s time to get over it.

amor omnia vincit.