Stopped pretending.
Happy ending.
Everything I ever wanted stands in front of me.
I have lost my dreams.
I have lost my dreams.
Now they say I told the truth.
Life beyond the burden of proof:
Paper thin blue skies and windless fields.
I have lost my dreams.
I have lost my dreams.
Traffic crawling,
Life is moving,
Up through stately trees into their green leaves.
Find a new dream.
Find a new dream.
I have lost my dreams.
I have lost my dreams.
(I Have Lost My Dreams, Dar Williams)
52. Everything I’ve known for the past thirty years is changed. A year and a bit ago I blurted out in couples therapy that I wanted out. Actually, the phrase I used was that “we needed to rip the band aid off of this thing.” Externally, we’d been “Facebook-ly” happy for years. My fantasy relationship: weirdly-named boy falls in love with weirdly-named girl–who’s best friend is his brother’s wife–they get married, get a couple of dogs, make two beautiful and perfect children and live out their days in a center-hall colonial on a cul-de-sac. What’s not to love? The loneliness? The dire lack of intimacy, nay, chemistry between them? Who cares about sex when you’ve got a red minivan and a black sedan in the two-car garage? Hmmm. Seems I did.
I’d journaled. Written poetry. Songs. I’d written about the wantingness of being alone, versus the desperation of being with someone and yet, incredibly lonely. I missed being talked to, not at. I missed being heard. I missed being touched.
And so, in a couple’s session with a new-to-us and in-over-his-head-therapist named Bruce that October day, I heard myself say I wanted out. It came from some unknown space deep inside me. I was as surprised to hear it as my husband and our therapist were.
It wasn’t a practical call. We’d already separated and I was living (and breathing) for the first time in years in a clean, uncluttered space to call my own. He was paying for it. We could’ve gone on like that indefinitely. But I guess my psyche(?) needed more. And just like that it was over. Or on the way to being over.
But divorce takes time, mediation, affidavits. Today, he wrote to me that some files were missing and our case was “held up at the courthouse.” Unsuspectingly, I read the email header and had the strangest visceral response. Relief. The divorce was stymied. It could be stopped. “What the fucking hell are you telling yourself? This is what *you* wanted. This is what all this pain has been for! You wanted out. And now, now that there’s a snag at the courthouse you want to shove this train into reverse? Jesus, woman, you really are crazy!!” These thoughts tumbling through my brain at an incredible speed. I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. And then the sadness, unbearable, make you quiver sadness at what I had lost. At what I had thrown away. For what? Conversation? Sexual intimacy.
Yes. That. And companionship and simple kindness. And a relationship with my worthy-of-love self. That woman I’d glimpsed in her 20s, who got buried underneath dishes and homework, hand-me-downs and holiday dinners was still there, crying out to be seen. Heard.
My prince charming preferred the History channel on the basement TV to spending time with me. My fairy tale romance looked great on paper and stunk like sewage in real life. We had nothing in common. Ever. We just fit one another’s expectations of what we were supposed to want. That’s not the same thing as getting what you need.
It’s time for a new dream. Where the Prince is a nice guy, but who doesn’t get to keep the girl, who is off on her own, discovering herself. At 52.
mindful musings 