Dream

My dream of you died today. This dream was made up of childlike innocence and a belief in fairytales carefully concealed in the creases of my being. A dream of forever and growing old together, watching our children grow and explore their world as young adults. Being there when they marry and have children of their own. I do not know when I lost faith in this dream or when I gave up hoping. I do not think there was any one defining moment. Over time this dream faded and morphed and changed.

I made a conscious decision to quit believing in fairytales at some point in our marriage. I told myself that fairytales were foolish and that they are just hopeless stories that we tell our children filling them with senseless unattainable ideas of what love is. In fact I once probably very cynically told someone that we were teaching girls incorrectly to believe in prince charming as no such person exists. I even espoused that we should be teaching them to find their own happiness independent of a prince charming.

No matter what the mind says, the heart still yearns for the fairytale no matter how improbable. Funny the narratives we tell ourselves isn’t it? That one must make the best of what they have been given. My life is better than most. He loves me in his own way. It doesn’t matter that he isn’t a touch feely kind of guy. I accept him for who he is. The only thing I didn’t realize at the time is that in accepting you for who you were I would end up not being true to myself and that in the process my wishes, my hopes, my desires would take a backseat to yours.

I believed in you. I believed in the goodness of your heart. I knew it was there. I knew it and I defended this to those around me who doubted it. In the process of loving you, some parts of this goodness was unearthed and made more accessible but there were limitations. Limitations that I didn’t fully get or even want to accept. I knew that you did not truly understand what love was, that you had not experienced the full embrace of unconditional love. I don’t think I ever really understood the damage. There is a certain sadness and heartache in this. I felt this for you and knew the ache of what you felt. I can however never really know what this growing up was like for you and all that you had experienced for I realize that you never actually verbalized the childhood you experienced. I believe it is something you wanted to leave behind and move on from. The thing is when we never acknowledge something, name it and recognize it for what it is we actually continue to carry it around with us where it hides and lurks about never being fully exposed and in the process we have allowed it to remain in power, to have some hold over us. Only when we name something, can we then begin the process of understanding and letting it go and then, and only then, does it no longer hold any power over us.

Funny in the process of loving someone how we sometimes lose sight of who we are. I did this. I invested in you. I bent over backward to try and please you and be what you wanted. This was a gradual process. More of an erosion that occurs overtime. We never really know that it is taking place until someone or something draws our attention to it and we look back and see what has taken place. I loved you. I stood by you in everyway that I knew how. Somehow in the process I lost my voice. I quit expressing what I felt and in some ways what I thought because I knew from past experience that they were not received and eventually I learned not to go there. The process seemed counterproductive and after all I wanted to keep the peace. To make this work. I had been given many blessings and I thought my blessings outweighed what I was losing. In actuality, I don’t believe I even realized what I was losing but there is a longing in the soul that after awhile cannot be quieted and it often sends us on a quest of understanding and growing, and uncovering of the mysteries that surround us. Our eyes are opened to the majesties that surround and enlighten us moving us farther to the stirrings of our soul. In this there is insurmountable joy. I think it might be comparable to the exhilaration of flying. The thought and belief that anything is possible, that there are no restrictions, that freedom exists from every expanse of the Universe.

There are always words that come into play but I have since then come to the understanding that words are meaningless unless there is action behind them. And after continually believing in you, of having unwavering faith that there would be action a devastating hurt happens which jolts us out of this hope and belief and we realize that words are worth only the paper that they are written on. Hurts can be forgiven but when the desire is to keep things as a status quo that is when the curtain is drawn back and we see with clear eyes what has been hidden so very cleverly. That to do anything differently is too hard, to invest in me is too great of an imposition. When the tables are turned and it is now your turn to invest, to build up, to steer the ship you are unable and unwilling to take the wheel. This at the very least feels like a slap in the face. I tell myself that it has nothing to do with my worth and that it has everything to do with you and what you desire and what you believe yourself capable of.

I have hurt you too. For that I am extremely sorry. I thank you for my girls. They are beautiful. They are insightful and have a certain spirit about them that cannot be contained. I thank you for the time that we had together. Which was exactly half of my lifetime. That doesn’t even seem possible. On one level this makes me sad because of what has ended and all that had been invested and is now lost and on another level I try to tell myself to look at the good, to appreciate that time and what would not have been experienced if it had not been. People sometimes like to use mistake to describe something that doesn’t turn out the way they thought, however, I will not accept that our time together was ever a mistake. I believe that we were meant to be together otherwise we wouldn’t have been. Our children would not have been and I know in my heart that they were put here to change their part of the world. No, not a mistake. We both grew in our own ways which brought us to a crossroads. We didn’t envision this crossroads 25 years ago but still here it is. With this crossroads a dream that began ever so many years ago has died. Other dreams will take it’s place. I am reminded of the Sufi prayer, “Shatter my heart so a new room can be created for a Limitless Love.” The heart has been shattered and room is being made, a new dream, a new way of being. A painful process yes. If done right, limitless love will be the new dream. Thank you for the many blessings of this life we had together. Thank you for the dream. Simply, thank you.