Today is so long. And I keep brushing up against poetry about the endings of relationships. Not just romantic ones. Friend ones, too. Both are hard, but me thinks friendships strike me as harder. That’s probably because I never had a long-term romantic relationship before my husband. And I’ve had a billion friendships.
But anyway, the poem on The Slowdown yesterday that I listened to today blended endings with one brilliant new beginning. (The poem: “Out of Some Other Paradise” by Alex Dimitrov.) It reminded me of how I focus on the closed door so often, I miss out on all the windows that are opening. Whoosh.
Then I read Rosemerry’s daily poem; it’s about forgiveness. How she’s given the assignment to forgive someone. Read it. It’s perfect. She forgives in 5 days, yet I carry some old endings in my body still. I mean, I let them go, and then they sneak back in. Maybe this is because I can’t quite forgive myself for someone else leaving me. Even though I know by heart the quote from Brene Brown. I am sure I’ve already written it on the blog: “Just because someone isn’t willing to love us, it doesn’t mean we are unlovable.”
I like loving people. I like loving strangers, for goodness sake. Yesterday’s shift at the bookstore was a revolving door of short, amazing connective bursts of stranger-to-stranger relationships. Heck, I shook hands with a professor after we chatted. People asked my name as they left, tossing out their names over their right shoulders as they sauntered out the door. I couldn’t believe the good vibes felt during my 4-hour shift. What was it from, I wondered? I came in with a good mood to the bookstore. Maybe it was as simple as that. Goodness, it was glorious.
Today was harder. I wasn’t as good at loving the people closest to me. Funny how strangers are easier than family. It’s late and my blog threads are not making a cohesive collage. But that’s what I’ve got: as humans, we’ll experience many explainable and confusing relationships endings. They’ll hurt. And there will be newness after every ending, eventually or soon. Or short bursts of connection with people we will only know for 5 or 10 minutes. Connection: it’s my drug.