full of hunger

Kirsten-

I so appreciated your email, and am so grateful for your willingness to be kind, to be open, to be honest. I was touched to be able to hear another one of your songs, to read more of your words (if everyone in the world wrote like you, yours would still sparkle), to be a part of one of the braver things a person can do: lay it on the line.

I have to be honest, though: I’m not in the same place that you are in. Even writing that gives me a little tinge of regret, as I wish I could be, but that, of course, is not the way where these things are concerned.

I do remember our time together with fondness, and when I think of you, it’s always kindly and with gratitude. Some of those memories we shared–when we met, like lightning! and when you sang, like summer rain–stick with me, and it would have been nicer if I’d been a little older, a little better at being really good to someone else, when we knew each other. I wish our ending had been less abrupt, had been kinder.

I couldn’t think you juvenile, or crazy, or something worse. I wish I had a better answer for how to give up the ghost, but all I can tell you is that that process, for me, is something like how you describe its inverse: basically indescribable, and beyond the realm of what we easily choose or pick. I’d quibble with the idea that my letting go means that I’m much more in control than you are; I’d be surprised to find you anything but the strong, independent woman you described, the strong, independent woman I remember. But, however it happens, those same things aren’t locked up inside of me any longer.

I admire and appreciate your climb out onto the limb, your deepbreathhereitgoescan’twaitanylonger spirit. I hope my response comes less like the slap in the face you mention and more like something gentler, probably sadder, but a bit less intense and with decidedly less sting. I don’t have much control over the reception, but I hope you know that there’s no malice in my reply.

Thank you, again, for writing to me, for knowing what to say and how to say it, and for trusting me with all those good feelings.

Take care,

Kevin

He’s still every bit as caring and gentle as I remember.  I just want to let it go.  How?  I feel such a mix of grattitude and reassurance, and then depression and grief.  I suppose I somewhat expected this, but it’s still so sad.

I’ve thought about it off and on for years, but I’m really starting to feel it even more: I will never find someone like him.    Maybe I need to take a different track.  Maybe I need to let go of that thought, and try harder just to accept that life is meant to be lived, whatever may happen.  That finding someone else is not an ultimate goal, nor necessarily the best part of living.  There are so many things to be felt, to be felt, to be lived, to be experienced.  This is just one of them.

Oh, my heart.  The tears just keep coming.  Please, universe, help me let go.  Help me live now.  Help me to have the best season of my life–I can do this.  There is beauty and life all around me.  Ego, be gone!