Today hurts, deeply. I am retreating in my pain and licking my wounds. Over the last two years I have cried, railed at the world, become small and tried to disappear. I have recklessly judged friends and acquaintances who managed to bounce from one home/reality to another, who found peace in the comfort of another’s arms and promises. I wanted to do the same, I really wanted to allow myself to fall into the reality of a beautifully -broken man that promised me it would be different. With us, with him, it would all be different.

But here is the trick, I know that nothing will ever be different until I am different. I know that no relationship is strictly… you messed-up. And in my very human life/love story, he is not the Prince of Darkness, rather he is like me, like you, like most human beings…he is broken in all the tender places.

So I surrender and I pray.

Replacing him with another partner felt inauthentic and I couldn’t find my way free of his memory. So I chose the alone Oakland adventure.  I need to process the 24 years of loving, dreaming, laughing and dancing together. I need to celebrate the joy and the luck that finds you a partner that falls as hard as you do, a partner that crawls into bed and pulls you close and tells you after 20 years how much they love you and how lucky they feel to be your husband. These are the ties that bind.

The hard work hurts and I am sure I have hurt others in my chaotic fumbling, breaking through the churning of my world crumbling. But the good news is I know the pain will settle and lessen, that the healing is happening and that I am choosing to fall in love with myself first. I know its my job to heal myself in the broken places.  Even if today hurts.