Filling in that Pocket of Silence and A Burst of Inspiration

And for better or for worse, time passes.

The story of the girl who moved to France, who met and fell in love with a South African man in Paris, who became engaged one July day, and who felt her world fall apart after she returned to the States now seems like ancient history. It seems almost as if it were someone else’s story—familiar, but distant.

Nearly six months have passed since S called off the wedding.

And what happened in between July and January?

Well, days plodded by, and somehow, I existed. I moved to an apartment in the city. I got a new job working in a Kindergarten. I began taking evening and weekend classes. I made new friends. I began running competitively. And I wrote. Constantly. Because somehow, I felt that, if I could put the words I felt onto paper, the pain would start to go away. And it did. Little by little.

And I learned another tactic that has served me well these past few months.

About a month after S cancelled the wedding, I traveled to Michigan with my cousin, my would-have-been-Maid-of-Honor. She had rented the honeymoon cabin at Little Eden Camp in Onekama, and the two of us squeezed our bags into the tiny cabin and kayaked and hiked and played tennis for a week. We also met up with a friend of hers for lunch, and this friend was telling a story over our sandwiches and lemonade and offhandedly commented, “Rejection is so much worse than death.” This girl knew only the skeleton of my story and did not make the statement maliciously, but I felt my eyes fill with tears, and when her hand flew over her mouth in recognition, I mumbled and sputtered and tried to force the moment to pass. Later, I received a letter from her.

“It seems that, for now, I cannot detach myself from our conversation at lunch this Saturday. My heart hurts for you,” she wrote. She went on to tell me her story of loss, and at the end of her letter, wrote down a few things that she learned while swimming through sorrow. One was so helpful that I include it here: “This point is so difficult for me that I hesitate to even include it,” she wrote. “But live in each moment, in the present. In your pain, live in it, do not try to escape it. And in your pain, do not go back to relive what was done. There may come a time for that, but for now, try to let it go.”

I felt the beginning of something that felt like healing when I read that. For so long, I had walked around with a metaphorical stiff neck, not allowing myself to look too far in one direction or the other. I had kept my mind busy, not allowing it to wander to memories or plans. Thinking of how wonderful the past had been was unbearable. Conceiving a future without S was unthinkable. And I felt perpetually ill at ease for living in a tunnel like that.

But after receiving her letter, I relaxed. It was such a comfort to have the affirmation that I wasn’t engaging in some kind of act that would prevent healing. I needed to hear from someone who had treaded further along that things would be okay.

And things aren’t quite okay yet, but somehow, these months have passed, and my life has moved forward.

S, on the other hand, has not fared so well. He contacted me in late October, and as it turns out, has returned to South Africa after some thirteen years in France. Not long after he called off the wedding, he lost his position with the engineering company in France and was sent back to South Africa. He wrote a very cheerless update and signed off, “Cheers.” For a while, I plotted and schemed how to secretly send him money, but in the end, the plotting came to nothing. I am no longer linked to him. I am no longer responsible for him.

But (and by way of transition), I am responsible for myself, which is precisely why I am writing here again after several months of silent inactivity.

Tonight was a slow night at the retirement home where I work during the evenings, so I found myself jotting down my list of 2012 Resolutions on a Post-It note. One Post-It stretched into two, two into four, and soon, I had 25 resolutions written down. Some are pretty plebian (save more money, spend less money), some are resolutions I make every year (read 45 books), and some are going to be tough for me (submit five articles for publication, go on one meaningless date).

But suddenly, I sat back, looked at my yellow Post-Its with the ink scrawled across them, and I felt a flicker of excitement. If I actually kept up with these goals, I could really see some huge changes in my life.

So, I’ve decided that I am going record this year. For the first time in a long time (let’s face it, my resolutions rarely come about), I’m going to crack down on myself, get slightly uncomfortable doing things that are “good for me but not fun”, and I’m going to keep a Resolution Log.
Crazy? Probably. Self-Absorbed? Most likely.
And yet, why  not?

I may still be feeling sub-par about my life on December 2012, but if that is the case, it won’t be because I didn't try to change.

I’m tired of wallowing.
I’m ready for a change of scenery.

Now, on to the New Year…