luceat lux vestra

Today is December 11, 2009.  My first date with DJ was December 11, 2003.  We went to the Student Activity Center on Temple's main campus and got the bangin', but totally unauthentic, General Tso's chicken. Does it count as a date if we each used a meal off of our meal plans using our student IDs? Either way, it was the first dinner we shared together. Afterwards, we took a walk around campus. I was cold because I was wearing just a light jacket over a totally boss Mighty Mouse shirt with Gap flare jeans and Doc Martens, so we went to sit in the common area of his dorm room. He was wearing a baby blue sweater with RL Polo khakis and Adidas shell toed sneakers. It's interesting how creepily accurate my memory can be...some intricate details, without any real rhyme or reason, are just burned into my mind. It was a nice night. Unfortunately, a student had died the day before and there had just been a candlelight vigil for her; I didn't know that until the following day, so in the space of those couple hours, DJ and I just enjoyed the candles illuminating Berks Mall and Liacouras Walk on a quiet winter evening.

My, how time flies.  My, how some things change.  My, how some things stay the same.

I took a few minutes to try to analyze my thoughts, feelings, and moderate angst on this six year benchmark and I think that I have successfully identified what's going on with me. I'm actually having a breakthrough right now: for the first time since well before our breakup in May, I feel more nostalgic than sad when recalling happy times; happy times that one-by-one were stuffed back into the farthest, dustiest, most neglected corner of my recollection since the decline started happening 2+ years ago. I believe that I compartmentalized them to preserve them - for safekeeping, or something to draw upon and justify my efforts when times were especially painful and I wondered why I didn't cut and run. Maybe both.

I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure both of my parents think that my sadness comes from being unsure of my decision and quite frankly, think I'm mourning the loss of my relationship. I realize that I'm not, but I am frustrated that my actual feelings are so hard to articulate, and it seems that very few things I say are either expressed or interpreted accurately when I converse with my mom, so whatever. I think my dad might feel awkward if I talk about it with him and leave Mom out (mostly the "leaving Mom out" part). At the same time though, I can see their point of view: like most kids, I would withhold the really bad details beyond "oh, we had a fight but we talked it out and it's ok now!" and just tell them the cute, fuzzy details. When there were no more cute, fuzzy details, or when they were few and far between, I would either lie or say "we're both SUPER busy but really good!" That said, the extent of my gradual heartbreak was news to them. I should have been more honest with the people who love me and support me, but most importantly, I should have been honest with myself. Oh well - hindsight is 20/20 or whatever. All of that aside, even if my mom and I were on the same page during an interaction as complicated as this one, I doubt she would believe me because it seems like she often thinks she knows me better than I know myself because she's "an eye person." When I was sad after reading DJ's letter at Thanksgiving, she saw my sadness, but interpreted it in her own way. She is indeed an "eye person," but there are a myriad of things, and combination of things, I could be sad about following a 5 to 5.5 year relationship, so without asking, which she didn't, it's impossible to pinpoint the exact cocktail of grief. But...that's ok. I feel good writing all of this. Really good. I'm brand-new at letting myself be ok with maintaining my own position that differs from hers, but...I am ok with the contentment I have with my continual self-awareness and offering it into the void without criticism or judgment as often as I need a reprieve.

I'm sad because the person DJ has become is vastly different from the person he was six years ago, I changed, and we didn't grow together in our relationship. I didn't realize it until relatively recently, so the acknowledgment of the entire time during which we were sliding down a steep muddy slope just burst in and sucker punched me me all at once. That was hard, and is something with which I'm still coping, but I'm slowly but surely healing (with help). A significant source of my suffering stems from remembering, with the clarity of my memory of my little boy's large Mighty Mouse shirt with peeling screenprint and the cracked part on the instep sole of his sneakers, the way things could have been if they took a different direction, and the disappearance of the person with whom I fell in love and with whom I had imagined spending my foreseeable future. I'm also mourning the last two and a half years, during which I spent most of the time unhappy and with very little self confidence. However, even this can be seen as very tragic, it was not in vain because I know I learned a lot about myself and about what I want out of life, got wiser, and one hell of a lot stronger when I finally summoned the courage to do what was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life, but was best for ME and the only way to get myself out of a situation that was causing me devastating pain. It also brought me to where I am today.

I enjoy my own company and have spent a lot of time, by choice, over the past couple years in silent solitude. I like myself, but it's nice to be happy with someone else. However, I'm not used to it, so allowing myself be happy with someone is the next hurdle...but I'm ready to squeeze my eyes shut and leap.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

[A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles", Harper Collins, 1992. From Chapter 7, Section 3]


I'm not going to reread this...it's too much. So just throw a [sic] after all the mistakes kthx.


[EDIT]


Marianne Williamson wrote the passage I quoted above (not Nelson Mandela - contrary to popular belief).