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Sunday, June 15, 2003
On the surface, the beginning and end of my current story is that Dennis and I didn't work. If I sit and stew on that, though, I'm missing whole layers of what's been wrong with my life this year. I'm sure some people are thinking I should just accept that I was a crappy fiancee and deal with that. Take a Learning Annex course or something. But my theory is that as long as I'm sitting here in this much pain, with my defenses in shambles, I may as well get some solid work done. I'm going to change from all of this no matter what, so I may as well try to grow toward the light instead of away from it.
My spiritual life has sucked. I had the prayer life of a ferret for six months or so before the breakup. I had stopped looking for God, because I wasn't especially interested in the truth when I had so much invested in keeping up my own illusions. I had to turn a blind eye to the depth of Dennis' depression in my desperation to have things still be ok, and I had to avoid looking too closely at the life I was putting together for myself.
I probably would have stopped going to church except, well, I do get a paycheck there. The lousy thing about hanging around at really good churches is that the truth gets to you whether you want it to or not. So here I am. Looking at what I've done, finding a bit of grace, and seeing that I'm at the point where I get to chose transformation or sleep. Trying to make the right decision even though it's hard. It's like Jesus flung a sandal at the back of my head, just to get my attention and said, "babe*, if you're living for me, then we're going THAT WAY, not the way you're going."
* in my head, Jesus often sounds like Dennis Miller. I'm not sure what that means.
How 'bout if we all pretend I went willingly, that I hopped right up and followed? It makes for a better story. I relate more to the story of the man that Jesus had to heal twice (I'll look up the citation later, I promise) in order for him to have his sight fully restored. I feel like I'm part of the way there, but Jesus still has to give me another round of grace before I'll be healed.
The truth is, part of me would be happy to be living that nice dream life I had all planned out with Dennis, even if it meant choosing the other path. We'd be living in our little love-hovel in Oakland right now, about six weeks into our marriage, and he'd have a job and I'd be thumbing through brochures for seminaries, trying to find a party school. That life was never going to happen and there wasn't very much I could do about it, but I still cling to the idea, still feel cheated that it isn't going to be mine.
I'm grieving, and I have to remember that and be kind to myself. Tonight there was a new episode of Futurama and I had to watch it without him and I cried through most of it. Weird things happen that I want to share with him because he's the only person I know who would see why it's funny. The failure of this relationship means I'm very unlikely to ever have a child, and it turns out that I have a lot of grieving to do there, too. The grieving is separate from The Work, though, and I can't get lost in it, not for more than a little while.
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