Relating with emotions

I've been experiencing my emotional life with more awareness lately, as a result of moving through some buried feelings, meditating a half hour every day including some emotional meditations, and doing stepwork in CoDA. I think, also, going to meetings and talking with other people has loosened up a lot. 

Painted on the side of an ice cream shop in Todos Santos, BCS

I'm a lot more aware of behaviors I go to in order to numb, and I'm beginning to learn the difference between numbing and self soothing. I have never been very good at self soothing- I think alcoholics in general aren't, and that's where a lot of the desire for alcohol comes from, at least for me. A misguided attempt to just calm down and be reassured- which always turned into being a weird combination of numb and sad and anxious af. 

I think some of these choices are on a spectrum- between self care connected to self soothing, stress relief, relaxtion- and numbing out. The emotion work through meditation and recovery has me thinking about catharsis versus being stuck in emotional expression also. I have long thought catharsis was an unequivocal good, but now I am a bit more skeptical, and, while I still see it's value, I think redirecting the mind, leaving the house and going to a meeting, self soothing and de-escalating all have real value as well. 

Connected with these meanderings regarding how I relate to my feelings, I've been experiencing a lot of self acceptance. In my family, having a feeling was a problem- feelings were problems to be solved, unless they were pleasant, and even then it was important to stay in control. The work I've been doing lately has been accepting all of the feelings as they come and go, even when I dread some of them or when they feel invasive and uninvited at first, and to forget about trying to solve them or being otherwise reactive. It's definitely an active, action oriented form of self love. 

A friend in CoDA and I were talking the other night about how little wisdom and compassion we lived with for many years- lots of smarts and good ideas about how to "solve problems." I recall the compassion meditation from Refuge: May I learn to care about suffering and confusion. May I respond with mercy and compassion to suffering. May I be filled with compassion and understanding. This applies as much to myself as to anyone else. Do I care about my own suffering and confusion or am I trying to kill it, solve it, end it, fix it? I care more now than I used to. What caring about my own suffering and confusion looks like is simply sitting with what I am feeling, without judgment. and without a desire to fix anything- listening to myself. Just listening. 

Feeling heard. 

working with betrayal and abandonment

"Our survival skills have served us well. They have gotten us through difficult times—as children and adults. Our ability to freeze feelings, deny problems, deprive ourselves, and cope with stress has helped get us where we are today. But we're safe now. We're learning to do more than survive. We can let go of unhealthy survival behaviors. We're learning new, better ways to protect and care for ourselves. We're free to feel our feelings, identify and solve problems, and give ourselves the best. We're free to open up and come alive." - Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go

I wish I trusted all of that more. I do not feel safe, and rarely have, my entire life.

 I still feel like this is life most of the time

In Beattie's Codependent No More, she mentions Nathaniel Branden's formulation of what lies at the core of all recovering people: "a nameless sense of being unfit for reality." You hear it all the time at meetings. "I never felt at home. I always felt like I didn't belong, I didn't fit in. I could never function the way other people did." These and hundreds of other formulations of anomic alienation—it's an archetypal theme.

I feel this, hard. I don't think I have ever felt like I really had a place in the world. I have usually felt like a guest. Passing through. Trying not to take up space. Sometimes even creating that exact dynamic in the pre-existing homes of women. They would try to "make space" for me when I would move in, but it was always their house and I was always a guest. Even when we moved into a new house together, I always felt like I got one corner of the place, and the rest was hers. I have heard this is common for men. 

But this is how I feel about the world, too, unless I am out in the wilds, where I do in fact begin to feel at home. 

But even more than the physical ways I manifest being out of place, I feel characteristically unfit for most human company. It's interesting how many people have said I was "weird," or that they had "never met anyone like me," or thought I was just bizarre. I have had several experiences of just talking about stuff I love and having people react—sometimes in a mean way, sometimes in a bemused way—as if I am incredibly eccentric. I guess I am, but I have always just thought I was interested in what everyone should be interested in, enthused about things that are worth being enthused about. 

When I do connect with someone else, I think this is why it is so powerful. It is a plain fact that I spend the vast majority of my life lonely. Loneliness has been a constant...companion? since I was about five years old. Sometimes I feel safe enough to enter into pleasant solitude that is peaceful. Often, I am simply alone, and I know it. I have frequently felt this way in relationship. 

Having someone get it is rare and sends me. 

I feel less alone with my recovery community. We understand each other. We laugh about the same shit that a lot of people would not find funny at all. To some degree, we have the same language. 

But there are huge swaths of myself that I do not share with recovery people at all- the music I love, my radical Left politics, my cactus life, my PhD. There's no truly simpatico recovery buddy here in AZ for me. And none of my friends outside recovery really get what recovery is about, either. I think "all the God stuff" scares a lot of them, even though I'm an atheist. 

Anyway, a major portion of accepting sober life, and going through love and romance withdrawals, sex withdrawals, food and sugar withdrawals is simply accepting loneliness. Easing myself into solitude. 

There was a newcomer at a CoDA meeting last week who was talking about the weird tension between loving living alone and being sad and lonely. I was talking with her after the meeting and it was clear to me again that the hardest times are the transitions. I leave a good AA meeting and it's just me- and the bottom falls out, sometimes. I get hardcore cravings for a woman, company, sugar, anything, anything at all. But if I just let that wave of existential nothingness and aloneness wash over me, and allow it to rise and naturally fall, I'm usually basically okay on the other side. I have been watching this very closely lately. 

Last night I almost set out for a nice dinner somewhere, late, after the LGBTQ CoDA meeting. I sat in my car a second and realized I was just trying to avoid a wave of deep, dark grief that was passing over me. A kind, compassionate voice in my head- a new-ish thing for me- said, "why not just go inside and make dinner and meditate and go to bed? You'll be okay."

And I did, and I was. I meditated for a half hour and went straight to bed, turned off all electronics, and slept straight through from 8:30 to 4:30, which I hardly ever do. 

Betrayal, abandonment and loneliness were regular experiences for me, just the plain fabric of my childhood. And I internalized those dynamics, and became good at picking people to betray and abandon me, or who I could betray and abandon, or I chose to betray and abandon myself. Repeatedly, many, many times. 

It's weird how a seemingly small thing like not going out for dinner but just going inside and encountering whatever I'm feeling is what growth looks like. So much of my life has been spent avoiding myself, and the most efficient ways for that have all been addictive. 

nothing to be afraid of in the dark, when it matches what's inside. 

To Thine Own Self Be True

and it must follow, as the night to day, thou cannot then be false to any man. (Polonius, Hamlet, Act I, scene 3). 

On many AA medallions that mark sobriety anniversaries, "To Thine Own Self Be True" is printed. Apparently, the history of the adoption of this saying by AA and its inscription on medallions is not known. (it's not in the Big Book). 

But I've been thinking about the puzzle of my not letting go of U and the thinking recently that it must be that I do not want to- and wondering why that would be. But I have arrived at nothing convincing, other than inherited likely stories and guesses. I am feeling more like it's just the way I am right now, and I don't need to know why, and I may not be able to determine why, and I am not sure I would even benefit from knowing why. It's become much more important to accept myself the way I am right now. By this, I am reminded of Mary Oliver's line from Wild Geese: "let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." 

Along these lines, I'm also regularly impressed by this passage from the CoDA welcome:

"We attempted to use others - our mates, friends, and even our children, as our sole source of identity, value and well being, and as a way of trying to restore within us the emotional losses from our childhoods."

Yes, indeed- that is one of the compulsive tendencies present in my codependent behavior. Of course, it's a futile enterprise- the way to restore the emotional losses from our childhoods, to whatever degree such restoration is even possible, is to delve into them, respect the pain and work with the story, re-parent ourselves and change our behavior from the present forward (for me, with the "help" of a higher power, on a spiritual basis). There is no person (or drug, or behavior) on the planet who can be a suitable substitute for that work. For me, if I don't do the work, I am left with compulsively seeking to restore those losses yet again from external sources, and, when it comes to others, usually women. 

On the one hand, of course, it's important to keep moving through the work at a reasonable pace. "If you're going through hell, keep going." On the other hand- what's the hurry? In our emotional climate, it feels like we are generally urged to "get over" things as quickly as possible. I understand the need when our grief and brokenness is interfering with our legitimate responsibilities and our ability to show up for commitments we have made. But what if we tended, instead, a garden of brokenness- while "functioning" reasonably well at the same time?



What if we honored the truth of our experience enough to take it seriously, and, consequently, take our suffering seriously? When I first started practicing the compassion meditation in Refuge Recovery, I didn't understand the phrase: "May I learn to care about suffering and confusion." But as I've practiced more and gotten to know myself more, of course it makes perfect sense. The core of compassion and respecting oneself is learning to care about suffering and confusion- one's own, to begin with. We pretend to care, a lot- and then behave quite contrary to that pretense. I can say I care about my own suffering and confusion all I want, but if I am ripping myself off by denying my suffering, trying spiritual bypass, looking for numbing and distraction, shutting down, diminishing my experience, mocking myself or judging myself, then I am not walking that talk. 

This is the bare skeleton of the narrative: I fell in love with someone, allowed myself to experience a sense of destiny with it, wanted to spend life with that person, chose to allow mutual expressions of "it-ness" and profound compatibility, and allowed myself to imagine a future. Chose to continue as that diminished, chose to stay open and vulnerable with an unavailable person, in an impossible situation. Reveled in it, and felt a deep, lasting soul connection. Then for necessary and fitting reasons, it ended. 

What is the proportional response? What constitutes emotional sobriety and emotional intelligence as a response? It seems to me that the proportional response to the loss of a profoundly important connection is a profound experience of loss. And it was a life changing experience- so it feels fitting that it will have very real, very persistent effects over time. I feel like accepting the way I have been with all of it. I feel like the pressures (real or imagined) to "let go and move on and protect yourself" are all external, all of them. My soft animal knows exactly how to heal (I just got the image of an injured cat, hiding under a porch- the way animals often do, when they are healing- is the cat in a hurry?)- 

One of the lessons here is that I allow other people's opinions to hit me pretty hard. "You have to get over this thing quickly. There are great experiences waiting for you. Move on. Protect yourself. You deserve better." Etc. The plain fact is that I don't need anyone's permission to be having the experience I am having. I don't need anyone's approval, or the opposite. I know the impulse from friends is a loving one- the intention is for me to take care of myself. But I'm realizing that the best way to take care of myself is to be true to myself. Exactly how deep should the sense of loss be and how long should letting go take? That, my friends, is a rhetorical question. It is as deep as it is. It takes the amount of time it takes. 

I am reminded that I just recently opened up the box that contained the Lovejoy- 40 years after the events- and discovered love, anger, resentment, self hatred, pity, rattled sexual confidence, grief. So you tell me- how deep was the loss? How long should it take? 

The truth is, I am in no hurry. I am not skilled at forgetting. I am having the experience I am having for however long I am having it.

I am having the experience I am having for however long I am having it. 

Another meditation we did last week in Refuge contained the phrase: "May you be at ease with whatever your experience is at this time." Instead of struggling with a sense of grief "taking too long" or judging myself as being emotionally unskilled and "too sensitive," or some other rather harsh self-judgments rooted in shame, I'm going to practice simply accepting the experience I am having. 

Probably the hardest part of meditation is the very beginning- because in those few minutes, the experience is one of entering back into my authentic feelings. Going back into the suffering and welcoming it home. All the distractions disappear- the sense is that my heart is closed and wooden, at first. There's a feeling of fear of opening it up again, "Ugh, not this again." But then the petals of it slowly unfold, so to speak, and it's okay. It's not okay and that's okay, as they say. 

I do things the way I do things. At the rate I do them. And to myself, that's the truth. 

Not letting go, not wanting to

A few insights from CoDA lately- out of a great many- that's what happens when you go to five meetings a week, read Melody Beattie, meditate a half hour every day and otherwise spend your time writing your dissertation. 

1). I do not want to let go of U. If I did, I would have already let go. I was judging myself as being terrible at letting go in general and of her in particular, but realized that I am fairly skilled at loss, grief, realizing the truth of things, and moving on. I have done this many, many times in my life, and I get more and more graceful at it with more practice. So, being good at it, and still feeling attached to U, my guess is that I just don't want to let go. I'm not entirely sure why I do not want to let go of her and move on, but it seems more likely than my not being capable of it. 

Instead of having judgment about "not being able" to let go, of course, I have judgment about not wanting to. What kind of a foolish and unrealistic person would want to hang on, given the circumstances? My only answer to this critical voice is to say, well, this kind. I think it frustrates friends of mine. "What are you thinking?" they are thinking. Maybe. I have no good answer. 

Brainstorming possible reasons without censoring: I want to be with her again, I feel like if I hang on she'll come back, I am still holding out hope we will be together, I want to communicate with her more, I am afraid she will forget me if I move on, I am afraid that the whole thing was meaningless and a delusion and I'm afraid of the pain that a realization like that would cause, I am so lonely, grinding away at the dissertation, that my feelings of attachment are one way to feel connected to the human race, I don't know though- none of those hit the mark completely, even after I write them down. I guess the one that stands out the most is the magical thinking that, if I just hold on, a relationship will materialize. As if I can manipulate that outcome unilaterally, which is definitely something I have tried in past relationships (and failed at). 

Maybe it's a mix of not wanting to let go and not being able to. Not sure. One thing I think happens is that U adjusts her behavior after I disclose my feelings, especially any indication of attachment or desire. I think she might go silent and create distance in an effort to protect me or make it more likely that my feelings will go away, or at least diminish. It could be that she just gets rattled by my attachment and creates distance to protect herself, or I guess both could be true. All I know is that now, whenever I say even just "I miss you," for example, things seem to shut down. I wrote here, maybe a month ago, how I was madly in love with her still, and that led to a huge reduction in our communication. I guess I feel like that pattern of her withdrawal from my expressions of affection or attachment is punitive. It's not a desire on her part to punish me for my emotions, but it's how my raw inner self reacts- that was definitely how I was raised- punished for having feelings.  

The thing is, my complex emotional life is not contingent on her behavior one way or the other. Being out of touch doesn't change how I feel and neither does being in touch. It seems like my deal right now is just...my deal. 

And it's not linear- I have days where I am loose and free. Then I have days where I can't stop remembering visits to see her, the connection we had, the sense of the rightness of being together, for however long we could. I'm grateful for all of these experiences, of course, but there's a part of me that must get a thrill from delving back, ruminating and recalling. Meditation helps me take refuge in the present, but there are a lot of unmanageable and unconscious things going on for me, and many of the memories and feelings just flood in- unbidden, sudden and raw. I am variously able to "handle" them- some days, I watch them arise and pass away, give thanks and feel amazement at an incredible experience. Others, they are like a rusty dagger in the heart. 

I had a dream the other night that I reached out and grabbed a knife blade and held on to it as incredible pain washed over me and blood poured to the floor. A voice connected to this disembodied dagger said "what are you doing, let go, let go," and I said "I have to take it from you first, in order to throw it away." That's the only thing I recall from that dream. But it feels like a plain enough message for how I feel I have to process things that hurt me- to let them hurt me fully, "take it," and only then be able to throw it away. It occurs to me that there are a lot of other ways to interact with that disembodied knife. 

My Buddhist friends are always talking about how all of my suffering is due to my thoughts. "If thoughts arise that cause you suffering, train your mind, redirect your thoughts, and create space where there would have been pain." I'm skeptical about this process, as it feels like spiritual bypass to me. But I am also practicing this very thing, especially in meditation. When I remember that *nothing is happening right now* between U and me, there's great freedom in that presence. I am growing out of my old mythology that pain, in and of itself, has healing powers. 

2). Someone shared at last night's CoDA meeting, which I love because it is at the LGBTQ recovery center in the city, and I find many LGBTQ people are authentic, connected, aware and interesting, that one of her big blocks in her recovery is fear of freedom. 

It seems odd to be afraid of freedom. We habitually think of freedom as something to be greatly desired. But I started reflecting on it and realized I am driven by that fear a lot. I think my procrastination (which thankfully is at a low level right now) on the dissertation is quite simply fear of being done. As much as I long to be fucking done, it amazes me to realize that I am afraid of being done at the same time. 

Maybe my wanting to hang on to U is fear of freedom also. It doesn't feel like it is, but one never knows. I never know until I sit with something for a while. 

I do know that some of the longer stretches I spent in high school teaching were due to a fear of the freedom to do things that felt more connected to who I am. I think also that my narrative impulse via social media is a fear of being completely free and un-witnessed, so to speak. I used to go on long trips and hardly document them at all, and not even report much about them afterwards. It seems I have developed a feeling of need around documentation. A feeling of everything not being real unless it's reported somehow. And this impulse keeps me less than free- tied to media and to my camera, and, more importantly, to that weird feeling of being lonely as fuck but never completely alone. 

There was a woman at the meeting last night I was attracted to and I started having those rescue thoughts toward her. She was sharing about how hard it is for her to be single. How lonely she is. How abusive her ex boyfriend was. These are multiple switches for me, seeing an opening to be a rescuer, make my life better by making hers better, be sure I am "not like that other guy."

I stepped back and something in me said "you know, if anyone in here needs rescuing, it's you buddy. You aren't going to rescue yourself by "helping" her. It doesn't work that way." As soon as I had a few clarifying thoughts along these lines, I looked at her again, and I was not attracted at all. In fact, I just saw trouble and heartache. Then, in the parking lot, I ran into an old friend who is reading a book called Attachment, and she started talking to me about avoidant, anxious and secure attachment styles. I realized that my rescuer impulse sets in motion all kinds of both avoidant and anxious dynamics. 

This is new for me. 

What I Want

From Amrit Brar's Marigold Tarot

Some days are better than others. It's definitely not linear. I mean, arriving at a place of equanimity- it's circuitous, and whatever equanimity is available is impermanent. But the key is to remember that nothing has to be a certain way. There's no requirement to be strong or reasonable. There's no requirement to be steady. I'm working away at the diss and at recovery no matter how I feel anyway, so all of the weather is just weather- along for the ride, in wild or calm. 

I've been hung up on being angry at myself lately. I'm most angry at myself for getting into situations where I am being used, and where, when I become inconvenient, I can be discarded. I have a difficult time standing back and making the realistic, clear-eyed assessment that something is not good for me, and changing my behavior to avoid it. In fact, sometimes there is a perverse streak in me that rushes into things that I know are not good for me. It's part of hating myself, I guess. Or just the delusion of my codependency. Convinced that a situation that is all kinds of red flags is actually not dangerous for me, at all. I'm different, and this time, it will be different. 

But I definitely know the work is coming home for me when I am reflecting on and feeling through the choices that I myself made, not the ways others behaved. Taking inventory of what I was willing to do and encountering the unpleasant truths connected with that. When I agree to be used, once I am used for what I was used for, of course, I'm useless, disposable. Used up. This is how agreeing to be or offering to be a means to an end works. Every intolerable situation that I try to make more tolerable for someone else is subject to resolution without my "help." Once that happens, I'm no longer needed. Every drug has a half life. Once the hit is gone, the drug is metabolized, and vanishes, no longer needed. 

The long, repeated story of my being used and using others is up for me every day now, in all of my meditations, in all of my reflections. How to love- how to stay open and real- in the face of a long history of contingencies. A precarious emotional life. I am still practicing the forgiveness meditation and tonglen meditation, but have balanced out with loving kindness, compassion, equanimity and appreciative joy, just to open up some space in all the heaviness. 

Choosing available people to be in intimacy with- trusting those who are trustworthy, as CoDA says- is how I can take responsibility for the kind of relationship I want. Real and reliable, safe and attentive, open and free, communicative and compassionate, inspiring and creative, passionate and wild but in a navigable wilderness, with kind, generous, present, available, evolving, curious and alive people. 

And relating with myself in al of those ways as well. 

It's strange to note my resistance to stating what I want. The feeling is one of shame- who do you think you are, asking for all that? You'l be lucky to have anything at all, let alone all that. I look forward to a time when that voice diminishes and is less strident. less prone to holding me back. I'm putting my intention out there regardless. 

Hope for a new day

One of the things I cherish about recovery is that storytelling is the lifeblood of the process. Not just telling, but also listening. "Speaker meetings" are great for this reason- simply sitting and listening to the authentic stories of what it was like, what happened, and what it is like now. There's no other arena I have found in contemporary existence where life stories are told as a core part of the experience, several times a week, in a group setting. 

 The Storyteller, by Evan Burk

Yesterday I went to a day long workshop on love addiction, love co-addiction, love avoidance/anorexia and relationship codependency in general. The room was overflowing- about 180 women and maybe 20 men, reflecting somewhat of the imbalance that still remains in relationship recovery, although the Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings are the other way around- usually about 90% men. I find this fascinating- I doubt the disparities actually reflect differences in compulsive behaviors, so much as cultural training. Women are trained to be caretakers and to think all of their "problems" are in relationship and emotions. Men are trained to sexually objectify, and to think that all or most of their "problems" are sexual. I bet there are a ton of sex addicts in CoDA and love addicts/codependents in SAA. In fact, when I realized I needed a deeper level of recovery than I was personally able to find in AA, the first thing I thought of was SAA. I went for a couple of years but slwoly realized that my sexual acting out was a symptom of an even deeper codependency, and the break up with A made that absolutely clear.

Anyway, the woman who ran the workshop shared her story for about an hour, at the beginning. Recovery absolutely dissolves shame. She told of her pre-puberty experience of her dysfunctional family- her emotionally needy mother and her raging father, and how she was always deployed by her mom to "go help" her dad in the garage, as he tried to fix things. She was "the son he never had," and he got to be the expert and to be boosted by male expertise, as she pretended to be stupid and to not understand (even though she did). Then she told how, after she went through puberty, her father pursued an incestuous sexual interaction with her, and that all of her prepubescent context was actually years of grooming for that. And the incest was not the extent of the abuse- it was combined with her father brainwashing her by making it intensely romantic, convincing her they were "soulmates" and that God himself had put him with her mother so that, eventually, the "true love" that was "destined" for father/daughter could manifest. Combined also, of course, with the usual molester's brainwashing of "the world would never understand this. God has made it so. He alone can judge us, and He approves. You can never mention this to anyone else, but it's not a problem, because God already knows and is cheering us on." 

Now, I don't know about you, but I find this kind of incestuous, manipulative, sexual, physical, intellectual and spiritual global transgression to be almost unimaginable. I was molested by my oldest brother, so I have some sense of the damage that can do- and that was a single encounter, at least as far as I can recall it. The incestuous, toxically "spiritualized" and "romantic" interaction between this woman and her father went on for five years. 

She launched herself out of it by falling in love with a guy at the business she and her father ran, and they split in the middle of the night. They got married. She had an affair. They got divorced. She became a crystal meth addict. Her first bottom that led to recovery was with drugs. She then put together 10 years of sobriety in NA, before she hit her CoDA bottom and realized the depth of what had happened to her. 

I was especially struck by how she described the dynamic of her kind of love addiction. She sees her role both before puberty and after as that of being a drug. She herself was the drug her parents needed in order to feel okay. In return for trying to be their drug, trying to "make them feel better" and trying to bring meaning and fulfillment to their lives, she had the hope of being loved and not being abandoned. The rip off was of course that she still lived in excruciating fear of being abandoned, and felt unloved and worthless, no matter how she showed up as the drug her parents needed. She lived her entire childhood and young adult life as a means to the ends of others, and got nothing in return, yet was compulsively driven to keep trying. 

The role continued when she fell in love with men. She was their drug, the hit that made them feel good, that rescued them from their squalor or sadness. In return, she got the unreliable faux love and ultimately disposable role as an appendage to men who were not taking responsibility for their pain, and when they got bored, they discarded her and found a new drug, fell in love with a new person, and she became irrelevant or even contemptibly inconvenient. Everyone at all times was using everyone else, in a total lie of "true love" and intensity. None of the men she had ever been with knew that she had been in a molestation bind with her father- in fact, she thought no one at all knew.

Anyway, when I have betrayed supposedly monogamous partners of mine, it has always been about something similar to this pattern. I am no longer getting my fix from the partner. In fact, I have even helped create situations where I am contemptible, boring, and resented by the partner, usually more than I am feeling those things. (One of the avoidance patterns of codependency is "Codependents often act in ways that invite others to reject, shame, or express anger toward them.") Sex has become rote, repetitive and passionless, and usually infrequent, and I usually feel anxiety about it and try to avoid it altogether. But even more importantly, the two of us have unilaterally withdrawn our trust, communication and mutual interest, connection, curiosity and enjoyment of each other, in every way. Yet, we have not had any or at least not very many conversations about any of this- it is all operating below the surface. We often have become merely housemates in a domestic nightmare of friendliness, trying to avoid each other, sleeping separately, or one of us is staying up way later than the other and tiptoeing into bed in the middle of the night, rigid, a few feet away.  

Something clicks inside me when things get to this point. I have sometimes begun at that point to be a fantasy addict, with a mostly auto-erotic sexual experience, thinking about other women or compulsively relying on porn. Rather than mindfully and skillfully recognizing the dire situation, I have used the stability of the partnership as a bulwark, while "trying to get my needs met" elsewhere. This has then led to acting out behavior with sex workers, or to affairs. The porn and sex workers have made it possible for me to be compulsively sexual to change my feelings of worthlessness, inadequacy and loneliness but without having a "romantic" experience (although I did develop a romantic crush on one sex worker I saw regularly for a while there- a pattern my father had developed, apparently paying the same woman for sex for years, and thinking of it as a romance). 

However, my affairs all led to the dissolution of my monogamous partnership. The new woman was too god of a drug. I would feel emotionally attached, she would fall in love with me, and we would embark- I'd exit out of my failed monogamous partnership directly into a "long term commitment" to the woman I was having an affair with. Many of my long term domestic and other relationships started in secret. Two started with women who were also in long term relationships or marriages that were unsatisfying for them. My own form of serial monogamy has also been overlapping serial monogamy, with no period of grieving, singlehood or sense of self in between. In the past, I had only been in an affair with a married woman once- that was A- and we decided not to be sexual until she moved out and started the process of divorce. This happened over a two month period, but she had been miserably unhappy in her marriage for years prior. (I remain astonished at the staying power of some, who find ways to navigate loveless domestic relations for years on end that do not involve affairs- I have never had the stomach for it).

Anyway, it occurs to me that, on the level of relationship addiction and codependency, agreeing to be in a secret affair with a married person is, for me, agreeing to try to make their lives work without them having to make any changes. I had not been interested in that in the past, but with U, the situation was attractive to me for many other, rather complicated reasons, some of which are still becoming apparent to me. For one thing, it was a tremendous ego boost to play the role in her life of being the drug, the excitement and fascination that was lacking. I felt useful and purposeful. Powerful and important. I reveled in offering her the adventure, passion, attention and excitement. 

It was a boost to be able to be the person who made her life as it was, without any changes, okay for her. When that started to wear off for both of us- when in fact I started to make her life worse and more complicated and help create remorse and guilt, shame and nightmares- and when I began to sense that I was more a problem than a solution- I went a little bit crazy, let's say. I redoubled my efforts to show up for her as a rescue, she began to withdraw, I chased, she ran. I couldn't let go for a long time. 

One of the truths that complicated this standard love addiction narrative for me is that, alongside the toxic exchanges we tried in order to do our best to be happy, for which, by the way, we can be forgiven as can all sentient beings using unskillful means in an honest effort to find happiness, I honestly love her in all authenticity, in ways that have never, ever been true for me before. I admire her, enjoy her mind, enjoy being friends, did not feel dependent on her for my self worth at the same time that I did, which I realize is paradoxical but for me it is accurate. I valued her and still do. 

I could have had the experience of authentic love along with my love addiction in the past, if I had been awake enough to have a recovering consciousness alongside my addictive and compulsive patterns. But I have not had that with anyone else. I was so absorbed in being the drug and drugging myself that I rarely caught glimpses of who the actual woman was, no matter how authentically they loved me for who I was. I was not able to show up. Instead of an authentic encounter, and contrary to the story I was telling, I was using and being used, in most ways. I loved all the women I was with to the utmost best of my ability at the time, but must admit I was not good at it. When I do the forgiveness meditation now, most of the harms for which I am asking forgiveness accumulate around those harms- using women and then abandoning them. It's a source of deep and enduring remorse for me. It is lifting, but it is still there. The lesson, of course, is to not fucking do that anymore, and I'm grateful to have a chance of getting out of the pattern. 

It's interesting to note my rush and high from being "the reason my life is better" to the anxiety and remorse of "the reason my life is even worse than it was before." I persisted in wanting to make it right, repeatedly, with U. It was a futile effort, but I had a very difficult time accepting how things had shifted. 

Of course, I have to look clearly at how the affair also made it possible for me to have my drug, yet not make any significant changes in my life either. When I would tell friends of mine about it (a very very few trusted friends), they would often say "you wouldn't want her so badly if she were available." I get that, and I can see why it seems true to people, but ultimately, in fact, it was not true for me. If she had wanted to be available, I would have wanted things even more than I did. This is one of the complicating factors of all of the admittedly dysfunctional things happening for me since July 2017. At the core, the reality was real reality, really. (Do I protest too much?). I found this unrelentingly confusing, painful and baffling. If it had been a simple matter of waking up in recovery one day and being clear- "whoa, this whole thing was a painful delusion based on compulsive re-enactment patterns"- that would have been different, of course. But my true heart had its reasons which reason did not know. Still does, still does not know.

Thus, the grief. It's legit. I have to grant myself, with compassion and openness, that authentic experience, no matter the surrounding circumstances. While, of course, also being honest about my codependent and addictive dynamic. 

The CoDA welcome includes, "No matter how traumatic your past or despairing your present may seem, there is hope for a new day in Codependents Anonymous." It's good to hear that at every meeting, to be reminded, to remember that there is light on the other side of this passage. The speaker at yesterday's workshop is living proof- even in the face of years of unimaginable boundary violation and intellectual and spiritual toxicity and annihilation, she is not just surviving life, but living her life with fearless love and an obvious embrace of vulnerability. 

I want an enduring love largely free from the mutual use, the drug exchange. An adventurous and interesting love rooted in authentic connection and trust, passionate and wild, but not in secret. I want it in the sunlight. If it were ever possible, there's a person I'd want it with. If that particular is not feasible someday, I at the very least want to be in a love relationship like that with myself- connected, authentic, present, accepting of myself. Since there's nothing else happening, I might as well see how I can grow into the latter right now.

 



 

Staying Soft

One must not tell people of things they cannot grasp. There are mysteries that cannot be shared with everybody ... Some things can be told to no one and a secret told to a wrong person is destructive and even irresponsible.
M.L. Von Franz -- The Feminine in Fairytales

This, in balance with our confessional culture and lack of privacy, especially blogging during these phases of intense sorting through trauma and experience, makes for an interesting conundrum. Not to mention (uh- pun intended) the ways we tell secrets without even speaking- the level of exchange of purely intuitive knowing, in images, or subtext, a mysterious set of translations. 



The Fool, on the one hand, and the High Priestess, on the other- in what ways the two of them can make peace with each other and be friends- and in what ways would they be at odds. The Fool is at odds with many other of the archetypal cards of the tarot, but in spirit, maybe the most at odds with the High Priestess. 

 The Fool is an open book, and gives everything away. The High Priestess reveals nothing, and gives nothing away, until approached in the proper spirit of maturity, confidence and trust. Concealing is not a strong skill of mine, as those of you who know me or have been reading here must have guessed. My foolish (factually, not judgmentally) tendency to reveal much, even to those toward whom it would be much wiser to not trust, to stay concealed, to protect and keep secret, is one of my habitual patterns. On another level, even when people to whom I reveal my secrets are trustworthy, it may be that we do not share the same values. The way I feel my way through grief, for example, seems dangerous, or unstable, or repugnant. 


For me, the work is only possible because I am already steady. In unsteady times, I tend to avoid the work, or spin my wheels, or get into denial. These are not necessarily bad survival strategies, especially since the despair involved in some of this work can be dangerous. Marsha Linehan calls is "skillful avoidance." My avoidance is not always skillful, but it is usually self protective. 


In reality, when I am "going through" darker passages of integrating loss of something I cherished (someone), the steadiness is already there. It isn't the goal, but the baseline. I was raised with the cultural pressure of being functional, somewhat stoic, capable of hurrying up to get through "negative emotions": "be happy" and "move on." I grew up in an environment of unrelenting shame for having emotions. All emotions were problematic and shameful. My sensitivity was mocked and ridiculed. So it was an easy matter for me to adopt those cultural pressures to "be strong" and "get over it" and "stop being so dramatic" and "move on." My natural personality or psychic framework is in many ways directly opposite these exhortations. I see no reason to hurry, to move on, to get over it, or to force myself into some faux extrication from legitimate grief. A value that is much higher for me than stability and functionality is *authenticity*. 


But one has to pick one's spots. My authentic experience is not going to be of interest to everyone. There may be those who would like to be interested, but for whom my authentic experience is unwelcome, for many different reasons. Maybe my expression of "what I am going through" catalyzes a feeling of responsibility on their part (even when I assiduously express everything in I-statements), or reminds them of unpleasant and painful emotions they would rather not have or are just not ready or not interested in being reminded of, or in some other way feels threatening. It might just be a sense of being overwhelmed with their own urgent need to function and the immediacy of their lives. And, apart from these circumstantial factors, it may be a true difference of values. If someone values being strong and functional, my lack of interest in being strong and functional is confusing, or even repugnant. 

Today's initial hexagram. Already I can see The High Priestess wincing. "Why would you post your I Ching reading for other people to see? These are secret weapons!" This particular archetype is about the whole range of being wounded and having to go into hiding, to being savvy and concealing what one knows, to taking one's consciousness into the dark, and shining the light in there. 


This hexagram always reminds me of the old Concrete Blonde song. 

Where the clouds (where the clouds)
Pull apart (pull apart)
Where the moon changes faces
In the quiet (in the quiet)
Secret places (secret places)
Are you there? Are you there?

Shine on friend. Goodnight
Why, then, the darkening of the light?

This hexagram changed into The Well- the inexhaustible source. 

Not interested in being well, per se. But in drawing as deeply from the well as possible. Get it? 

Some of my recovery has taught me that the goals I used to have- to be happy, at ease, successful, skillful, kind- are not goals, but side effects. My own karma or whatever has this quality to it: there's no shortcut. The qualities of life that I want arise out of doing the work without trying to create those qualities. Whatever steadiness arises for me is a byproduct of being familiar with The Tower. Or any other symbol of either upheaval or loss. Grief will not be denied, for me. It was, for a few decades, and it got me nowhere. And it came out sideways and caused myself and others harm, sometimes deep, lasting harm. The complexity of this process is astonishing at times: an original trauma, left largely unhealed, that then operates as if independently, causing more trauma, left unhealed, in layers and layers. Thus, the CoDA pamphlet title: Peeling the Onion. 

I'm fully aware not everyone is under the compunction to do this process. I know several people who function perfectly well and are successful, satisfied, happy and fulfilled whose approach to loss is to get over it fairly quickly and move on without looking back. I am not thusly constitutionally equipped. This seems to just be the way it is. I do sometimes envy the people who just wash their hands of heartbreak and buck up and smile their way forward. I have the ability to get to that sunny and optimistic place, of course, and have authentically spent a lot of my life with a truly sanguine and upbeat disposition, but it has always been true that I have to muck through without shortcuts for it to be authentic, and to be sustainable.

 And sometimes, I'm reminded that my unfinished business goes very far back- and I think- "I have already processed that," and no, I haven't. I have to go back to the well and draw deeper this time. 

A new (to me), tremendously powerful tool in meditation is the tonglen practice- in its simplest form, allowing all of the pain and suffering of oneself, one's loved ones and the world in, with each inhalation, and exhaling compassion. The first aspect slowly erodes denial and gets my heart in touch with the truth of suffering. The second aspect alchemically processes that experience into an encounter with the possibility of healing and freedom. This practice has been a perfect complement to the forgiveness meditation I wrote about a few days ago. Pema Chödrön writes at length about tonglen in her book, Start Where You Are. 

I highly value staying soft and tender. All of the ways that heartbreak and loss work in my life tempt me to get walled off, armored, to protect myself. My experience of that is that the price is very high. Bitterness, mistrust, aversion to the suffering of others, contempt for my own "weakness." I would much rather not be well and remain tender. This puts a high value on resiliency, rather than strength. I want to stay capable of love, in spite of my past unskillfulness, disappointment and pain. I want to grow into more non-codependent love, which is the opposite of being walled off and protected. 

The heart, stripped of muscle and fat

 

Asking and offering

Variation on the Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping, 
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you, 
sleeping. I would like to sleep 
with you, to enter 
your sleep as its smooth dark wave 
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent 
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves 
with its watery sun & three moons 
towards the cave where you must descend, 
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver 
branch, the small white flower, the one 
word that will protect you 
from the grief at the center 
of your dream, from the grief 
at the center. I would like to follow 
you up the long stairway 
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands 
to where your body lies 
beside me, and you enter 
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.
-Margaret Atwood

I set out 15 days ago to do one of the Refuge Recovery meditations every day, make it a daily practice. Then I noticed that the Refuge Recovery book recommends doing the forgiveness meditation every day for the first year of recovery, or something like that. For a long time. 

So that's what I've been doing- a daily forgiveness meditation. The exercise starts by considering al the ways I have been unskillful and have betrayed, abandoned and otherwise harmed others. The second part of the meditation is entering into all the ways I have been harmed, and offering forgiveness to those who have harmed me. The third segment is encountering al the ways I have betrayed and abandoned myself, and offering myself forgiveness. 

The whole trip has been shifting things in a big way for me. There's been a lot of grief. Resentment, judgment, fear, resistance, anger. And, always, underneath those feelings, grief. In the clear light provided by breathing meditation and open space, it's jarring to recall with such force the ways I have harmed people. It's challenging to offer forgiveness to some, although forgiveness flows easily toward others. But the last segment, reflecting on all the ways I have betrayed and abandoned myself, is the most difficult. 

I have not been willing to forgive myself for a long time. I figured if I just suffered enough I would somehow find peace, eventually. The self hating voices in my head, the critical, judging and mocking voices that I have long carried, have seen to it that I don't get too close to self forgiveness. But this meditation practice is opening that up. 

It's just the leading edge of some deeper work, moving on. It's exposed me to the plain truth that I do not trust myself. I fear that I, myself, will betray me- abandon or otherwise unskillfully sell myself out. It's been the shaky ground of my existence for a long time now, this lack of trust in myself. It's of course tied intimately to codependency. Finding my sense of worth in others. Jumping ship. Maybe it's a function of age, or of misery that I'm tired of, but I want to change that pattern. 

Self forgiveness, trust in oneself, self care. Taking myself seriously, in productive ways- as I wrote on my list of intentions back on New Year's Eve. 

It's Gary Snyder's 89th birthday today. 

Ground control to Major Pain in the Ass

Everything is under the microscope as I do the steps in CoDA. One of the things that clearly appeals to me about recovery in general and 12 step recovery in particular is the emphasis on always doing the work- embodied in step 12- having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other codependents (or whatever) and practiced these principles in all our affairs (which Sex Addicts Anonymous wisely changed to "all areas of our lives.") 

Practicing the principles in all of our affairs is the living challenge- to be "happily and usefully whole," as Bill Wilson said. That's the purpose of the steps. It has long been clear to me that being happily and usefully whole may well be the hardest thing there is - I can be happily fragmented (in fact, I think that is the most familiar state for me), or I can be usefully fragmented (caretaking, etc.) and fairly miserable, but to combine happiness, usefulness and wholeness into a totality is a work in progress, definitely not perfection. I am happy and serene sometimes when I put about 50 to 80% of myself on a shelf and just shrug and say "well, all of that is fucked, but at least I have stability." 

For example, none of the long term domestic partner relationships that I have been in, six total, has involved much understanding or appreciation for the music I either like or perform- or at least, I have been shy about it and deprecated its importance to me. Usually I have felt like I cannot play it on the stereo, or carefully choose when to put it on- I think if I ever throw my lot in with someone again, I am going to fucking blast that shit every goddamned day for a few years, just to compensate. The thing is, the music is vitally important to me, and I take my own playing seriously- but how often I have diminished its importance to me or made light of my own performance, just to "keep" someone who I never "kept" anyway. 

24/7/365 with the volume at 11 for the first three years of living with the next woman. If she can't handle Brotzmann at his best, she doesn't deserve Hades. Right?

Or I can be whole, or try to be 100% myself, and seem to get slaughtered and end up in turmoil, or just end up alone. I can be useful and not particularly happy- or try to make myself indispensable and be fucking miserable. It's all a jumble. It's all a re-enactment of my childhood. "I don't love bad Percy; I love good Percy," was something my mother said to me. So of course when I care about a woman and want to keep her around, I try to figure out what "good Percy" is to her and then I try to be that. It is my own story- it is not something she and I negotiate or even talk about- and I carve myself down to a very, very thin slice- or I insist on being myself, and get rejected. Or, more accurately- I am a thin slice at the beginning, the knight in shining armor, "not like other men," and then my self starts to leak out, and that's that. It's exhausting work, being a fucking impostor. Lying to get love. Settling for intermittent reinforcement rather than trust.   

Emerging into some perspective helps me distinguish between the proportional, natural responses to losing people whose company I enjoy versus the ways that codependency mucks things up and causes me suffering. Proportional and natural: missing, wanting interaction, appreciating and admiring, seeking communicative closure when appropriate and consensual, listening, letting there be space, being hurt by seeming indifference, accepting that it isn't about me, grieving a loss, being grateful for what was possible, accepting things as they are, thankfully moving on. Muck: stabbing myself with aching daggers of longing, waiting for interaction, idealizing, desperately wanting to be seen, taking it personally, hoping to use interaction to "win someone back," wallowing in self pity that is not grief and fantasizing about performing sadness to get sympathy, being resentful about change and being angry that I didn't get what I wanted. 

The reality is that all of these levels of both functional and dysfunctional responses and behaviors operate at once, so I am called to be extra vigilant when I am "working a program." Combine the emotional challenges of life with the long stretches of time I'm spending alone in order to complete the PhD and it makes sense. Like Dr. O said- "whoa, no wonder you feel bad." 

It is not pathological to miss someone one appreciated and who has gone, and to be sad about a disappointing and unwanted outcome. I have to keep reminding myself that it's neither necessary nor helpful to pathologize everything. It's especially important for me to not become closed off, bitter or hardened. But, at the same time. it's been important for me to be mindful. I have many uninvited memories, and I am training my mind to redirect, and not to wallow. 

I miss the Twin Cities and those visits stand out as high points of the past months- and the visits to Santa Fe. Three times to Santa Fe, five times to the Twin Cities. Eight visits in real time in 15 months- how funny that I set myself the goal of being with this person every other month and "exceeded expectations" by one. The April visit last year was when I stood in the parking lot of the place I was staying, and watched U drive away, and thought to myself, "you'll never see her again." We tried- Santa Fe in June, Twin Cities in July on either side of a conference I attended, Twin Cities in November, a scheduled visit to Santa Fe in December that I had to cancel due to eye surgery- and it was over the time period that I would have been there that U dumped me. I still chuckle when I recall that her last words to me during that exchange were "Stay cozy." I was two days out from having had pars planar vitrectomy, laser coagulation surgery and gas retinopathic injection to try to reattach my retina, face down for several more days, alone over Christmas, dumped by the love of my life. Stay cozy. haha. Also, how funny that even my retina has an attachment disorder? 

Since this is an anonymous blog, I really shouldn't post a picture of me, but there it is. 

I've been doing the forgiveness meditation every day, from Refuge Recovery, and awareness of breath. Working on fundamental emotional health- redirecting thoughts, being mindful, cultivating detachment, taking refuge in the present, dedicating myself to the PhD work. As much as possible. Moments of deep acceptance and serenity arrive. Detachment is possible. By far the most emotionally challenging segment of that meditation right now is forgiving myself for the harm I caused myself throughout my life. It's excellent work. Clearly, my life has the repeated pattern of me betraying, abandoning and rejecting myself over and over again to try to "win love." (Not only in romance, but also in employment and friendships and in my decisions). It's good to see it, and it's good to work on forgiving myself for it. Weeping, weeping, weeping. I'm glad the sobbing is in private, and not at my Refuge meeting- how embarrassing and weak (right?). The forgiveness meditation just reduces me to to a puddle, every time lately. 

I'm still having counterproductive trips- lately, the unhelpful questions of "was it true? was it a real experience? were all the things said true things? or was it all just a delusion and were all the things said just pretty lies?" (like roses and kisses- trying to avoid having tombs in my eyes, however). This area is a total waste of time and heart. Who cares. What happened, happened, and what difference would it make if I was lied to, or if I lied to her or myself, or if it was all true? Or if it was only true then and is no longer true, which a real philosopher would argue means it was never true. Etc. I get angry with all of this, angry with myself. Shut the everloving fuck up, what the fuck, who the fuck cares. It's annoying; I annoy myself. 

"You can't make the past a better place to live," say my recovery friends. Anyway, it all goes back to my anger at being abandoned, which is my stuff. The core of codependency resides in the pain of being forgotten, or not being important to someone to whom I used to be important. The feeling I get when I tell myself that I am superfluous and disposable feels like I am trying to kill myself. The feeling that, even for a person for whom I was major or important in their lives, I can and will eventually, inevitably also be completely forgotten and discarded. Annihilated. 

The control strategies that this core fear generates in my behavior are multitudinous and often unconscious. They are never, ever effective. I end up controlled, not controlling. I give my power away in a fruitless attempt to be indispensable. To be needed and to be important to someone. And I tend to choose women who seem to be skilled at forgetting, and whose emotional attachments seem easily switched off. I am out of sight, so I am out of their mind. One of my control strategies with women like this is I try to be *in their sight* at all times. "Don't forget how amazing I am!" Fuck, that is hard, hard work. They always forget anyway. Or someone else catches their fancy and no matter how "amazing" I am, I'm fucked (and not in a good way), or they grow tired of the Hades Channel being on all the goddamned time. I don't want or need attention- I need to not be forgotten. Psychically, I need to not be killed by disappearing from the mind and heart of someone to whom I am attached. 

In spite of one of the great joys of my life being interactions with U on social media, it was the recognition of this vain and fruitless hope that I would impress her- "I shall find exactly the right hilarious meme to post and she will leave her husband and spend her life with me!"- that pushed me to decide to block her on Facebook and Instagram, until I trust my motives more, if I ever do. I also couldn't handle seeing a picture of her face- as written on my body as she is. 

Re-enactment compulsions are a pain in the ass. The rush of being admired by an independent woman who seems to need no one at all is addictive. (The Queen of Self-Sufficiency).




The confirmation in my own imagination of my "disposable" status and irrelevancy when I become inconvenient or just when things have run their course is addictive too. Repetitive craving for the high of being loved by a cold woman, repetitive craving for the low of being rejected by same, hello again my favorite, my Queen of Swords. 

And, if she tries to be warm and kind, I push the boundaries enough to guarantee she has to go to a very cold place to create not just a boundary, but a fucking wall. Through all of these threads, I am trying to stay in control to avoid being hurt. And I stay hurt (or painfully numb- a styrofoam lover with emotions of concrete, pace Lou Reed) at almost all times. 

I am an accessory and I'm being taken for granted, and I have chosen this. ("Begging for scraps" as U put it). Even knowing I am fourth or fifth on a woman's list, no matter the reasons, I keep choosing it- and admittedly, sometimes the scraps are an incredible banquet, a feast, and I get hooked. But the inevitable rejection of a "cold woman" hurts for obvious reasons- yet again, I "failed" to make myself impressive or important or useful enough to be worth caring about. I am not worth her time. Eventually, even the scraps stop. I'm not fourth or fifth on the list anymore. I'm not on the list at all.   

I have never been in love with a woman who was reliably there for me. The ones who have gotten me, and this last got me the best, have been unavailable, one way or the other (although never married before this)- usually just emotionally unavailable. The tendency to fall hard for unavailable women seems to be getting worse over time- and the last choice of mine to open myself 100% to a person with an entirely self-contained, demanding, existing life, marriage, children, at a different life stage, 1600 miles away, an avoidant attachment style, skeptical about romance, with Sun Capricorn/ Moon Virgo (as opposed to my Sun Virgo/Moon Capricorn- damn you, astrology, why are you impossible yet accurate?) seems like a hilarious attempt on my part to put every possible unavailability together into one choice. 

She showed up as she was able and in fact took great personal emotional risks to do so. Those times were thrilling and I wouldn't trade them for anything. Yet, I also knew along the way that I was running back into the heart grinder of abandonment over and over, and I chose it anyway. I chose to be 100% unprotected and vulnerable. I knew *exactly* where I stood at all times, after the initial exchanges wherein she and I imagined a future together and when it seemed possible that that change might occur. It wasn't too long after that, that she withdrew all such statements, as well as hints; I would try to go there and be met with nothing, and I think I kept trying for months. It was clear to me about two months in that we would never be able to be together in any "normal" way, or at least not for years. I undervalue my own safety enough, and the moments of connection were so powerful, that I chose to stay. I do not regret this, but I do see now that I had other choices. I am told by people with recovery wisdom that I might have chosen to leave. It didn't occur to me, really- as if I had no choice. I "tried," one time, last summer. It lasted a few days. She tried several times. We kept reigniting.  

In spite of all of these truths, I miss her. I powerfully enjoyed her company. I love, respect and admire her. It's weird how the simple, actual things remain- how clear it is that codependency ("a most deeply rooted compulsive behavior," as the lit says) is a separate thing. Letting go while acknowledging missing and loving someone who is gone is the deal. It's a worthy project. It hurts. 

It is what it is. Like bacon and ice cream.