Love story

Last year, I received a Valentine's Day gift from someone I cared about a great deal. Someone I would come to love in the early part of the year. I was so excited about this new relationship that I shared with my sister the thought, albeit later in the year, that connecting with this person made me believe that God did indeed love me.

But alas, the romance was not to be. That phrase could be its own book. That book is probably already written in my gmail inbox.

And over the course of 2010, after much agony, I came to believe that God did still love me, for in this relationship, a romantic spark that grew into a deep friendship, I learned some truths about the nature of life and suffering and even about myself that changed me. Interesting side note - I had to completely fall apart for the learning to take place.

The falling apart had actually started earlier. I have now traced it back, using strict scientific methods, to the summer of 2009. That's when I finally realized I wasn't married anymore. The hilarious part of my realization was that I had been separated since summer 2008, living on my own with the kids, no longer in the home we had owned, riding a killer schedule of full-time work, time as YW president at church, and round the clock emotional roller coasters. I already received the divorce papers ... months earlier, and still, I couldn't seem to let go. That summer, I let go.

Not before running myself into the ground. That first year on my own gave me gray hair, I know, and it broke something in my health. Still, my intense church service in that particular role - hours and hours in that calling - buoyed me up considerably through the community it provided. And my delusional hopefulness carried me through a demanding schedule. But it also delayed an inevitable realization, that I had to let the facade go.

Every lesson in its time, right?

By summer of 2009, I had a new calling at church, a year of full-time teaching under my belt, and new expectations for my relationship life. I wouldn't classify them as healthy, however. And I myself wasn't too healthy - I found out I had anemia, which helped explain the constant exhaustion. I made a connection with a potential date-ee and almost immediately changed gears from sparkling and witty to desperate and needy. Great first impression, but then Glenn Close arrived. Well, not that bad. No rabbits were harmed in my emails. Still, some of my friends will attest that put a little too much worry into my friendship with this fellow, someone who turned out to be perfectly nice friend, but who was someone I had not yet actually met in person. Turns out I was jonesing for an escape from my life.

As my friend Elizabeth so brilliantly pointed out, there is a catch. Her words were, "Whenever I try to escape, I always end up bringing myself along."

A-ha!

By the end of 2009, I was ready for a more thorough breakthrough.

First came the breakdown.

Well, really, first came the breakdancing.

No, not really.

But in order to descend the roller coaster slopes, a person has to ascend in the rickety car. And so I did. Although it didn't seem rickety. Hmmm. It's more difficult to write about a relationship in a completely non-detail-revealing way than I thought when I started this post. Metaphors can only take ya so far.

Suffice it to say, I fell in love. It's like this - I could have lived on a remote farm, like Australian bush country or Wyoming ranch land, with this person and been happy.

It was very painful to have that hope of happiness and remote location farming taken away.

One college friend shared with me that he took solace in his break-ups by remembering all of the other people who had experienced such heartbreak as well. Nah, that didn't help one bit. I didn't care about other people's pain. I was struggling to wrap my head around this big misunderstanding I'd just had with the universe. Or at least with Cupid.

It must be noted here that if I had some kind of cosmic choosing ability, I'd repeat the whole process. In a heartbeat. I wouldn't give up the highs or the lows of 2010 for anything. I wouldn't give up what I was about to learn. Two little words, yet two enormous and still-in-the-process lessons:

attachment

aversion

Let's add ego to that list.

These concepts dovetailed nicely into the life lesson I was able to walk out of my marriage with (yep, going to end that sentence with a preposition): expectations are the enemy of happiness. I shared that lesson in an earlier blog post.

I was the queen of expectations.

Expectations beget judgment. Expectations beget insecurity. Expectations beget control. Expectations beget frantic clinging. But I didn't know how to rid myself of unrealistic expectations until I met him, not to be confused with the him of fall 2009 mentioned earlier who was really only a 7.5 font size lower case "h" him, although, again, a very kind person who actually helped me a great deal, even offering wise counsel during my 2010 breakdown.

It was only because of the trauma of the end of the romantic relationship fallout that I HAD to work on ridding myself of expectations. I'm still working on it. And I don't recommend viewers attempt the process at home without consulting a doctor first. You know that saying, Only when the pain of the problem is worse than the pain of the solution will we change? I resemble that statement. (<---- Insert smiley face emoticon.) And for me, the pain of the problem was excruciating.

So I spent much of 2010 trying to scrape my psyche free of that stuff. Turns out, it grows back. But like a weeded garden, I think it's a bit easier to stay on top of the unwanted growth after a big clearing.

So ... to recap: at the end of 2009, I had written a long list of expectations for the new year to come. (Yeah, I hadn't scraped my soul yet.) Just another long list in the history of my long lists. I hope I can find the list I made back in high school of the person I wanted to marry. It'll knock your socks off. I wanted someone so multitalented ("skilled carpenter", "multilingual", "musical") and amazing ("tall", "handsome", "creative", "well-traveled") and just like me ("a good reader", "sensitive") that not even a young Albus Dumbledore with his magical powers could have delivered. But I thought I was doing myself a favor by writing such lists. I suppose in a roundabout way, I was.

In January 2010, a clear impression came to me, perhaps as I was pondering the most recent list. It was so clear that I immediately wrote it down: Forget finding a relationship. Focus on writing your book. This will be a year of great love. I thought the prompting would be accompanied by a certain Prince Charming, white horse, fairy godmother, happily ever after, preferably wrapped in a decorative bow. I told the universe I was ready. The universe answered me via a certain social network. Then came February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December and January. I spent so much time in my head last year that I can probably tell you where my thoughts were in each of those months.

Sigh.

Smile.

The lesson I walked out of 2010 with was: When I desire things to be different than they are, I suffer. And suffer I did. Lucky for me, suffering is instructive.

And from this vantage point of one year later, I feel grateful to have shed another layer of expectations and to have opened my eyes. It's like the message from this anecdote about Buddha's enlightenment (borrowed from this site):

I Am Awake 
When the Buddha started to wander around India shortly after his enlightenment, he encountered several men who recognized him to be a very extraordinary being.
They asked him, "Are you a god?"
"No," he replied.
"Are you a reincarnation of god?"
"No," he replied.
"Are you a wizard, then?"
"No."
"Well, are you a man?"
"No."
"So what are you?" they asked, being very perplexed.
"I am awake." 


My hope in 2011 is to stay awake.