Sometimes it doesn’t sync up again.  Sometimes you tell someone you can’t do it anymore and they don’t try to change anything and it doesn’t get any better.  Sometimes the road that curved to lead you together is now drifting you apart.  And you see signs of it everywhere.  And there’s nothing you can do about it.

“After five months of us saying we didn’t know what we were going to do with the house we bought – flip it, live in it, rent it – it’s become apparent that living together in it is not an option.”  I tell her.

“Does he know that?” she asks me.

“Know which, that I can’t live with him or that he can’t live with me?”

“Both” I guess

“I’m pretty sure he does.”

It’s not easy buying a house with someone you’ve been on and off with for nine years, then going to his mother’s funeral on the other side of the world and realizing that it’s probably not going to work out for you two.  Then trying to fix up the house and trying to hold out hope that maybe somehow it will bring you closer, but all it does is show you how different you really are.  But then there’s a glimmer, you feel heard and things change.  So you don’t renew your lease and you move in with him until the house is livable – a shower at least – and he’s great at that.  He’s great at those big moments of needing to get your shit out and into the garage waiting to make the house a home.  Practical stuff.  But all the emotional stuff, forget it.  Can’t share it, can’t understand it, and doesn’t really have time for it.  So when it’s time to put some things from your packed bag into his dresser drawer, you end up taking them back out again because it just doesn’t feel right.

It’s not easy deciding to sleep on an air mattress on the floor surrounded by dust and drops of texture from the ceiling but it feels a little bit easier than that.

And I can diffuse the intensity.  I’m learning that if I don’t participate in conflict then I don’t have to spend so much time complaining about it afterwards.  I’m learning to handle this with some gentleness and grace.  And that even though you’re in it as a partner with someone else, you’re actually still 100% responsible for it all.  If you find yourself looking out there, look within.

The only thing missing in any situation is what you have failed to bring to it, A Course in Miracles says.  It also says that you can’t be asked to give anything that you don’t already have.  Help me to rise to the occasion.  Help me to find and provide whatever it is I seek.

As I was unpacking today, I came across my box of Ketodol.  Ahhh, that brings up a great memory.  It was my third day in Italy, it was drizzling rain, and I was in pain.  My neck and shoulder were locked up and I could barely turn my head.  I went out for a pizza at the Piazza Navona (one of my favorite places) and walked around for a few hours.  On my way back to the hotel I popped into a pharmacy.  They tried to give me something like ibuprofen and I just shook my head no.  I had already tried that.  I asked for the next step up.  They told me to take it with food.  I said I had just eaten some gelato and did that count.

1. I love gelato.
2. This pistachio gelato was so homemade that sometimes, you bit into a little bit of shell.

No, gelato did not count.

So I went back to the hotel, which I was in alone now that my travel companion had abandoned me and flown home (the second one to do that), and took two.  I spent the afternoon drifting deeply into sleep and feeling the healing.  In the night, the drizzle turned into a storm and woke me as it fiercely blew open the shutters (the hotel had shutters, it was Rome) and the long, sheer curtains flew freely and wild.  It was a dramatic emphasis to what was occurring for me.

I awoke the next morning refreshed, renewed and without pain.  It was a new day, a new outlook on Rome and a new me.  I embraced that I was alone and I gave up my idea of needing to flee to Vienna to be with a friend because I had felt like I had somehow failed because I was now alone.

I thought that I had missed a day in this beautiful city by being in bed but I felt like I had gained something even more….and I couldn’t wait to explore!

I’ve been really stressed lately, which is unusual for me.  I feel thin skinned and easily disturbed.  On the way to Madison to have an early vegan Thanksgiving dinner I was helping a friend sort through his latest vehicle dilemma.  After brainstorming and weighing options I just had to finally say, “maybe you’ll be inspired if you just keep it open”.  This was reminding me to pray and that that hadn’t been my go-to option lately.  I usually am a big prayer, but not so much lately….hmmmm, maybe that correlates with the recent anxiety.  So I began.  Nothing big, just connecting.  I started to feel calm.  I felt a gentleness come over me; and as I began doing my various things in Madison, I was gentle with others.  And grateful for more than I had been before.

On the ride home I did some more.  The moon was full and lighting up my car and it lent itself well to reflection.

I had been reacting to things.  And I heard a Voice say, “turn to me whenever you are upset, and we can create instead”.  Oooo, that felt nice.  React vs. create – what two very different roads and results.

I don’t do so well when I act on my own.  I know the beauty and the power of surrender.  And when I react, I’m playing a victim.

Forgiveness is letting the ideas that trigger me in an uncomfortable situation go.  It’s always some fear.  It can be replaced.  It has already been replaced, with love.  If I wait, do nothing, and let something else appear.  Give reality a chance.  That’s forgiveness.  Not that I did anything bad but that my thinking was just wrong.

My friend Ally gave me her latest spell:  “no more decisions”                          I get that.  Let it show.  Step back and be led.  Now something new can happen.  I like it to be new.

 

I was having dinner at my friends’ Luke and Sara’s house tonight.  Sara and I made soup and talked about relationships – we’ve been doing this for years (the talk, not necessarily the soup) – theories and our own observations and experiences; the latest that we’ve read,  experienced, thought about, and tried.  Families, friends, work, romance, we let it all hang out as we chop, saute, simmer and figure.  And I’m at a place that I’m often at, I’m somewhere in the middle.  Although at the moment I feel more in common with our friend Abby who has recently gone through a break-up so I’m leaning more towards the single side; I have also been on the brink of marrying an Italian, moving to Italy, and having his babies.  I slide along this continuum like it’s a well greased pole.  I try to find a place to land on it but I never really do.  Sara is in a partnership: married with children and I see myself, once again, not.  Not that I would change that, but it gives us different viewpoints; and yet we come to much of the same conclusions.

People really do be how the want to be.  And they tell us how that is all the time.  Behavior justified is behavior maintained.  If someone is defending their position then know that that position is important to them, maybe even more important than you.  I have been in this crazy relationship for years hoping that something will change while the person continues to show me how he will fight to keep it.  It’s been eye opening to observe rather than invest.  It’s much clearer to me know.  We value each characteristic that we have – that’s why we have it.  Don’t try to take someone’s away and also, don’t play.  You can’t win.  Trust when you feel crazy.  Believe it when it feels like too much work.  People that don’t want to get close will find reasons not to.  Maybe this is all obvious, but I’m really coming to it.  I’m an observer rather than an investor now.  It’s much clearer.

I’m in more of a letting go than a going toward.  I just know that I’m sounding the same way about leaving as I did about coming here and that’s interesting for me to hear.  I’ve been leaving for awhile now, on the inside.  No boxes were packed, no addresses were changed, but on the inside there’s been a lot of sorting out.

I remember listening to my friend Crystal last Fall.  She was saying how she loves it getting colder.  She loves turning on her heat and cuddling up in fuzzy pajamas and sipping hot cocoa.  She loves the hibernation that winter allows with shorter days and longer nights.  And as I’m listening to her I’m thinking, “I used to say these things, I used to feel this way….but I don’t anymore.”

And that’s where it all began to crumble.  And to other people who are now this Fall starting to say, “I like turning on the heater, it feels so warm and cozy” I say, “So does the sun!”

And now here I am, at a bonfire, turning myself to the flames like a rotisserie chicken, trying to warm myself evenly so I can be in my favorite place in the world:  OUTSIDE.  In nature.  Under the protective arms of the trees and the sparkling light of the sky, with the wind caressing my face and playing stylist with my hair.  As soon as I have to close my windows, I can’t breathe as well.  And, like Louis CK says, “putting on socks is the worst part of my day.”  Just because I was born here doesn’t mean I have to stay; and I haven’t….I’ve taken lots of breaks.  Over lunch I told a  friend a few years ago that my 4 seasons were going to be “Spring, summer, fall, and travel someplace warm.”  And it has happened.  Warm has been and currently is my main material request, and it has served me well.  Only now it has taken on a permanent relocation slant – that maybe, for the first time in my life, Wisconsin wouldn’t be home base – and that’s what Toad and I are talking about around the fire tonight.

“In Hawaii the rain is so light and warm and brief that no one really even thinks to shield themselves from it.  And after it’s done, the sun just warms and dries everything again.”  Ahhhh, sounds pretty good to me.  He’s not the first person to tell me that Hawaii is probably my perfect place.  The combination of island, climate and spirituality all speaks to who I am.  Not that your shit doesn’t come up anywhere, I just prefer mine to come up on surf and sand.  Let the water wash it away and let the sun burn it off.

This starts me talking about the rain when I was in the Amazon Rainforest staying with shamans.  The second day I was out on a carved out, one piece canoe and having a bit of a culture shock meltdown.  I felt alone.  I wondered if I’d made a mistake.  I began to pray.  It begins to rain. And I start to have this incredible experience of being spirit; no longer contained in this body and bigger than the situation I was in.  I was looking at my friend Milo (an Italian turned Colombian shaman – now that’s a story that needs telling!) and I am now in love with the situation that I was just miserable in a minute ago.  And I’m loving this soft, warm rain.  I let it caress and cleanse me.   I feel beautiful.  I feel pure.  Perfect even.  Milo sees it too, and his wide smile from the other end of the canoe says he’s having an experience of it.  He says softly (Milo says everything softly) “Wow, Jenny, you look…..amazing.”  I feel our minds explode into light.