“Eventually, we all do the things we need to do to move on. I hope you find the inner strength and courage you need to finally do so”

I was spun out yesterday when Reggie wrote in to my blog. The IP address shows he has stopped by from time to time since July of ’07 and the semi-vague comment was like a blindsided ambush. It somehow had not actually occurred to me that he was out there in the ether.

And so I had to stop and think about my response.  Why did I feel ambushed? Why was I so surprised?

I got home and had a long conversation with Indigo about the house then poured a shot of rum and went to my room to process and this is what I have uncovered.

I met Reggie when I was 15 and he was 22. Admittedly I was ahead of the curve for my development in body and maturity but I was very much a child still. We were children, both pretty damaged from out upbringings and the hurt we’d both endured but we found comfort in a dynamic that in retrospect was not healthy and yet totally understandable.

I believe that falling into that space when I was 15 and marrying him at 19 I had put myself in a box to be a child and not grow or evolve or emerge into my own destiny as a woman. A choice he unwittingly enabled, encouraged and supported – and I ultimately resented. But honesty decrees that I admit publicly that I had as much to do with my own oppression as he did. I was the accomplice to my own fate.

Would I change any of it if I could?

Not a single thing.

 The Reginald I fell in love with was a good person. He was sarcastic and funny.  He had that cocky arrogance that I often fall for and an easy charm that soothed most crowded gatherings. He was a guy of broad interests and heavy sensibility, and to be more honest – he looked great in knickers. He was an easy person to fall in love with.

It was easy to overlook the controlling parts, because I wanted him more than I wanted my freedom. It was easy to look past his lack of imaginative leaps or the inability to have a faith greater than reason. The more I loved him the less it bothered me that his personal code of honor had been compromised by his choices – perhaps in loving me in return.

Truth be told, I would have been a fool not to love him as much as I did because quite simple he was totally worth adoring.

Though I loved him –  I am honestly and sincerely grateful to my very soul – that he cut me loose. I disagree with his method, his lack of honesty.  I disagree with what he said to me that day and how he presented his reasons. But whilst I disagree with the surface goings on – I whole-heartedly agree that we needed to be free of one another. I never doubt that fact.

Because I also wanted so desperately to become a woman. Forged and tempered, shaped by my hands and not the hands of a man to the moldings of his impressions and history, but carved to my own design and let loose upon the world to be made a force of change.

All this, I could not be if I were with him still, and I did not yet have the wisdom to know that I would have held myself back indefinitely to love him in the way I knew how.

And so we are here, three and a half years later. Evidently, he has checked from time to time, I can only assume that as I process things when they come up or tidbits that emerge from our life together that I work to clean and file neatly in my storeroom of past adventures, I assume he does the same. I suspect that he is also hit with a doozey of a zinger now and again and he reaches out to the place on the web that he knows he can make contact albeit one sided to set his mind at ease.

I am certain that in the early days he was wracked with confusion and doubt, anger such as I had and a sense of betrayal. It is inevitable with the death of a relationship that such feelings surface. Just as it is inevitable that we, who once loved one another deeply, would wonder if the other is okay. Is he/she well? Are they happy? Did they make it to the other side of the chaos safely?

Such is the way of it.

I have spent my three and a half years wisely, I believe. Searching for Bliss and running directly at the face of things I fear. Two of those years spent in self-induced celibacy to clear my energetic body of all remembered touch and affection from a lover. Three and a half years in avoiding a relationship until I knew for certain, beyond any shadow of doubt that I will not repeat my patterns and I will not love a man to whom I will project my past relationships or baggage or even use as a transference of my love.

I want to be expunged, buffed of all my grooves and scratches of a bygone era so that I may love again, as a grown and fulfilled woman.

Reggie, since you have stopped by my tiny corner of the interweb to seemingly open a door, allow me this courtesy.

I do not need your cryptic and vague comments about things of which you have no true reference to my person. Stopping by to read a post every two months does not allow you a full picture of whence I’ve come and where I’m going. I do not need your guidance to “find courage to move on”. I am a woman now, and not in need of what advice you think necessary to impart however pleasantly you my try to articulate it. I’m savvy enough to follow my own route to strength and healing of all my histories and current losses. While I understand what you are getting at and can appreciate the courage it took you to reach – I am not so fragile or hurt by you that I need your blessing to follow my path.

It does raise the question though, that since you have reached, because you reveled yourself on this forum with my readers, why now? What is it that you were really aiming for? A door or window? A chance to open to friendship? A sincere and honest string-less wish?

I think I know.

You need forgiveness.  What you wrote was as much for your own need of it as you assumed it was mine.  If you had shuffled on as you bless me to do, you would not be stopping by to check on my blogs, shielded by the anonymity of the web.

Whether or not that is your true reason for being here I give this with clarity and honesty.

Reggie, I forgive you. And by my definition of forgive it is a process that some days feels right and other not so much. It is a spastic releasing of memory triggers and embedded sensory moments. But I forgave you a long time ago, and have spent my three plus years revisiting the forgiveness and letting it settle in my deepest self, like the scent of earth after a heavy rain. That does not mean I don’t have days when buried anger rises and I have to consciously unwire it and return to a place of peace with no small amount of effort – but the result is that I forgave and simply, my quest for bliss and my search for self, the becoming of my womanhood have all been set upon a foundation I made the week after we split – that I would not live my life hating you. I would not live my life in regret or victimization or self-pity or bitterness. Because I would not let my truth be built on such a foolish falsehood and waste of energy.
I forgive you and that means that some days I consciously have to face the triggers and disarm the power they have, which can be work. Work I am happy to do.
I forgive you, Reggie, and I wish to give you my thanks. It could not have been easy for you. You lost. I lost. But we have both gained immeasurably since. You have my gratitude. You have my blessing. You even have a great deal of my respect.
If you came here to find peace I hope you have gotten what you needed. I genuinely wish you well upon your own journey and adventures.
Be well. Love strong. Live in bliss.