The space between is midnight and dawn is a hushed one. Dark, yet luminous. Isolated, yet intimate. Welcomed, at times, yet dreaded at others. Much of my time is spent in this space where I think and cry and some parts of me die and others grow.

Just this morning, as I tossed and sought a still space in my bed, I kept coming back to an awareness of how fleeting it all is - this life here. How despite knowing that, in relationships, over and over again we make choices based on some elusive principle or relentless fear or ill-perceived notion of our own limitations. Choices that leave us distracted, unconnected, abandoned. Choices that abandon others.

I've always thought I didn't like pain, yet I often beckon it into my world. And I know the moments when I've truly felt alive were ecstatically charged with joy but equally burdened with pain. There was the birth of my daughter when the physical pain of induced labor paired with the emotional pain of saying goodbye to the woman I had been were crippling. Yet, the indissoluble joy that settled in my heart immediately upon touching her more than balanced the grief. And there are those moments of discovery in the classroom that are overflowing with wonder but rooted in topics deep with sadness and inequity. Those moments when muddling through the darkness together might hurt each other but might ultimately liberate, too.

And it is with these examples in mind that I twisted and turned and tucked and untucked my sheets to get comfortable all the while asking myself why I willingly embrace the ratio of joy and pain in those aspects of my life, but discard it in my relationships. Bell Hooks, an author and social activist, says "that from childhood into adulthood we are often taught misguided and false assumptions about the nature of love. Perhaps the most common false assumption about love is that love means we will not be challenged or changed." I wonder if that is what I have been assuming? And if so, perhaps I'm full of shit when I think I have it figured out -when I demand an end to something because it hurts "too much" or allow someone to walk away without fighting for someone - fighting with someone - to stay in my life because it's too hard and I have this notion it isn't supposed to be that hard. Who am I to say it isn't supposed to be that hard? Who am I to say choosing to nurture another through the entrenched fears of intimacy and exposure and trust, even if sometimes at my expense, instead of letting him/her go can't also liberate? Especially if the other moments outside of the "hard" are filled with a certain kind of easiness, of joy, of understanding each other in an elemental and maybe even unparalleled way. Who am I to say that? To live that?

And yet, I do. I say goodbye by assuring myself I deserve better, by listening to my friends tell me I deserve better - even though I'm not sure what better means. After all, I spent a decade with someone who didn't cause me pain, and I felt dead inside for much of it. Is that "better"? I know instinctively that this space inside of me isn't supposed to be empty. It's not. Yet, still I let my doubts or anger or discomfort from hurt make the choice for me.

And at the end of the day, instead of empowered, I just feel abandoned. I feel like I've abandoned. And that's not really "better" after all, is it?

 

Cross-posted at Notions of Identity