Breaking up is hard to do...

Oh my. I have three good friends going through massive breakups right now. Which means that I'm thinking about the subject of relationships a great deal, talking it over. Sometimes in a helpful way, and sometimes in a not-so-helpful way.


(To my 3 friends, I apologize if I am sometimes too blunt, or totally wrong)


But it's interesting, from where I stand, to think about "relationships" and "dating" and "breakups." As a woman about to have an absolutely unavoidable unbreakable relationship for the first time, with this creature inside me... whether I like him or not!


And it's interesting, to remember 5 years back, to that crazy girl I was in those years... remembering what it was like to wake up in the morning, in a shaky relationship, wondering if this *might* be the day he dumped me... to watch for symbols of devotion, or symbols of the wind-down. To be nervous, which also meant excited some days. To think about the future, entertain imaginings. Everything felt intense and opening, but also dark and fearful. Everything tasted strongly of something. Everything made me cry.


And then, when it fell apart, to feel the belly scooped out. To lose weight from too much coffee and Camels, and no food. To kiss strangers as a recovery tool. To drink and drink and drink. To listen over and over to Lucinda Williams records, making myself nuts with longing.


I remember it today. I kept records of the darkness, pictures and words, and so I can read it over and over whenever I want. Often, I want.


But what all this has me thinking about today is the percentage of ourselves we give to relationships. How is it that another person, someone we might only have known for a year or two, can jump ahead of family/ career/ art/ politics/ personal emotions/ the self... and become like, 99% of what we feel? Why does that happen?


It seems wrong. It seems like in a a practical way, the other person should only constitute a small percentage of our pie-chart-of-life. And when we lose that person, we should lose that percentage, sure... but then be able to regroup and focus on the rest of ourselves... until such time as that sliver of the pie can be replaced.


But it never happens, does it? The lost person moves to fill every corner of the soul. We feel 100% lost and hurt and angry and like we'll never care so much about anything again. Sigh.


I have cried a lot in my life, over men. I have missed a lot of people when I left them/ they left me. But of the 8 men I've been "in love" with... I only miss one, really. Only one lingers ever, pervades my days on occasion. And even with him, it only happens when I hear certain songs in certain moods.


And even then, it doesn't feel "real" but rather like a phantom... like the way, when I see red leaves on the trees, I always want to buy a pair of penny loafers, not because I actually wear penny loafers... but because once upon a time I was a little girl who got new shoes in the fall. And I like to remember that girl.


Relationships... Now, married and with a baby on the way, it all just seems so HARD.


Of course, there are days when, talking to a single friend, I want to be going to bars, flirting with boys, having a first kiss with a new person. There are days when, after a dinner of tuna melts at the kitchen table, while hubby runs off to band practice and I watch bad syndicated TV, I think and remember and feel longingly for those memories... for the person I was then. For the life in which you don't know what might happen next.


But mostly, thinking about it just makes me tired.


At the same time, it often seems like the people I know who are single are still reaching for things to be always exciting intense, wonderful, fun. Those same people are often the people who, when a relationship turns to tuna melts, ask me, "Do you think we should break up?" They worry that the sex is less frequent, that they don't always have things to talk about, that the other person doesn't always seem "there."


And I want to say, "Guess what? That's what happens in life." I want to tell them that they can't have the perpetual excitement and the stability together forever. That spending too much time thinking like that will doom the stability, and probably the excitement as well.


I'm just nattering now, but it is interesting to me, to think about how you can't ever have it all at once.


To think about how once the pain leaves, you're always fine.


To think about what a person gives up (in "excitement") in order to feel safe, to build a family, to start living a more simple life. To refocus on themselves and the next chapter.


And for me, what makes the stability so great is that my "other half" is just that. He may, in fact take up MORE room on my pie-chart... but he doesn't swell to fill my whole self. There's a lot of room left for me. Which is, I think, a direct result of the lack-of-excitement.... so that the lack-of-excitement equals a finished book, a trip with a friend, long talks with my sister, a baby. I wouldn't have room for any of that if I was obsessed with my husband.


Not sure if this is making any sense... or why I've written it, but as I think about "dating" I can't help thinking about "marriage" because most of the friends I have who are "dating" are telling me they really just want to "settle down."


And I want to offer a piece of advice. From where I stand, in order to do that, you need to try "dating" a man (or woman) who also wants to "settle down". Someone who can sustain a simple life. Someone who isn't looking for the excitement, but rather for the "other half."


Hard as that can be.