a free man in Phoenix

I was born without a conscience
Full of freedom, full of nonsense
From the mountains to the beaches
Eat the apples, steal the peaches
Will you be this wild child's lady?
Will you carry me to safety?

Lock me up & take me home
I don't want to be free
Goin' crazy - on my own
It's not where I want to be

-David Byrne, The Moment of Conception

A Black River, photo copyright Davorin Mance

On last night's steps along the river Styx, that outward bound of the underworld that is very cleverly disguised as the Western Canal, I was really struggling. Filled with feelings of remorse, regret, self-loathing, anger, jealousy, sexual possessiveness, sadness. All of it roiling along as I walked east toward some passageway of Hell, also cleverly disguised, this time as 24th street.

But somewhere along the way it coalesced for me through an odd chain of thought that there is an entirely other perspective for me in the dark.

I am the winner in this situation. The two of them now have to deal with the reality of having formed an actual relationship and neither one of them, obviously, has the requisite skills to handle it. That they successfully get: each other. Hooray for them. What do I get? Freedom.

I am a free man. I have decided to repeat this to myself whenever some of the stabbing pain of loss, anger, betrayal and resentment arises. I am a free man. It helped at 4 this morning when I woke up feeling angry and abandoned and resentful. "Yes, you feel those things. But you're free. You are a free man."

I didn't ask to be free, I didn't want to be free, it has been extremely painful being freed-- but all of that is irrelevant. In fact, I am free, whether I like it or not. It dawned on me that I had been acting as if I were not free-- as if I were bound to a situation where my partner of more than 5 years left me for my first year college roommate-- that tale that keeps going around and around. Circling the toilet bowl. I have been acting as if I have some continued obligation in this sick, toxic, ugly triangulation characterized by betrayal and bad boundaries.

But I do not. I was forcefully cast out of the sickness into freedom. Of course, inner freedom and effective, sustainable letting go-- well, let's just say that's a work in progress. But the factual reality of my situation is I'm out. I am out of a toxic, painful, eroding, depressing, embarrassing, humiliating situation. I'm out of it. I thought the train cars were still crashing but that catastrophe ended a long time ago.

One of the most meta-painful of all states along this way has been the stuckness. The sense of being chained to unkind, selfish, rejecting people. Of having my destiny painfully interwoven with that of people who were treating me like shit. Of having suddenly had my story interleaved with the stories of manipulative, dishonest, exploitative, indifferent, cruel, abusive people acting out their own loneliness, insecurity, toxicity and unprocessed shit.

But that is not the truth of the situation. I am only chained there to the degree that my thoughts and feelings are chained there and I can choose to begin to experience, right now, the liberation that comes through the resentment work, the work of self care and the natural healing and separation that arises from enforced freedom. It's highly instructive to me that, if I had been given a choice, I definitely would have stayed in the situation and "tried to work it out." I think that says a lot about the work I will benefit from doing. It's hilarious how we deeply resent when a duplicitous, dishonest, uncaring, critical and emotionally unavailable person asks us to leave. We ought to be overjoyed, right? I mean, wouldn't that be the sane response?

It has felt like painful exile and exclusion. I have been reading the ex's silence in all the negative and rejecting ways. But I can turn the silence around and bask in it. It's just as much freedom, peace and quiet, separation from toxicity and the open space the universe is providing me to get clear and to cleanse myself of having gotten entangled in a bad faith nightmare.

Reading my way through When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön has been helpful.

"Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us."

She pinned a sign that said this to her wall after her husband left her because he was having an affair.

"I remember so vividly a day in early spring when my whole reality gave out on me. Although it was before I had heard any Buddhist teachings, it was what some would call a genuine spiritual experience. It happened when my husband told me he was having an affair. We lived in Northern New Mexico. I was standing in front of our adobe house drinking a cup of tea. I heard the car drive up and the door bang shut. Then he walked around the corner, and without warning he told me he was having an affair and he wanted a divorce.

I remember the sky and how huge it was. I remember the sound of the river and the steam rising up from my tea. There was no time, no thought, there was nothing-- just the light and a profound, limitless stillness. Then I regrouped and picked up a stone and threw it at him.

When anyone asks me how I got involved in Buddhism, I always say it was because I was so angry with my husband. The truth is that he saved my life. When that marriage fell apart, I tried hard-- very, very hard-- to go back to some kind of comfort, some kind of security, some kind of familiar resting place. Fortunately for me, I could never pull it off. Instinctively I knew that annihilation of my old dependent, clinging self was the only way to go. That's when I pinned that sign up on my wall."

Of course, this kind of existential risk can be overdone, definitely-- and it may be that we do not discover a single goddamned thing that is indestructible in ourselves-- it may be that we just suffer and are demoralized and want to die. That's why it's a risk. It's also necessary to have guides. No one just jauntily goes wandering around the underworld alone, looking for lessons.

But it occurs to me that, when things fall apart so suddenly and spectacularly, doesn't that necessarily mean that things were being held together-- that great forces and efforts were being applied to hold things together?

Molecular structure of cyanoacrylate, a.k.a. super glue

More Pema:

"Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don't get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It's a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs."