shine

.
so, since i wrote that letter on monday/yesterday (started monday, finished tuesday... what? some of us DO sleep you know) i've been thinking about how i ended it.

'love always'

and i realised later how true it was. just not in the way you might expect.

i look back at all of my previous men whether i ever dated them or not and i still have a soft spot in my heart for all of them. some spots are softer than others of course.

i certainly can't think of too many of them that i would want back in my life although there are a few. some even as lovers. no, i'm not telling you who falls into what category but i will tell you it isn't so much category as... shine.

like i look at this little row of crystal bubbles with pictures inside them and some of them are all shiny and bright and others are tarnished around the edges and some of them are pretty dark and dim and a couple of them are smoking holes where crystals once sat [although even they still own a soft landing] but all of them are somehow treasured in my memory.

now that i think about it? i don't think there are any smoking holes left. i think they've all healed.

i wouldn't be me without them after all ... and maybe they wouldn't be them.

and the shine isn't determined by length of relationship or style of breakup or anything. there are men with shine that i dated for a long time and men that i knew for a day [ahhh PL]. but all of them touched me in a positive way and left me a better person or at least more myself.

there are men with lots of tarnish and men with very little. again that isn't really determined by a timeline but it is somewhat coloured by their treatment of me. the men that i wrote about yesterday are so full of tarnish and dirt that i can hardly see them through it but they're there too.

maybe i needed k to come along and be all inexplicable because that made letting go of someone else just a little easier. or maybe i needed to fall for someone else to help me find out what i do and do not need. and interestingly k's tarnish has faded... but he has no shine really.

maybe i needed my ex husband just so i could remember that someone once wanted to marry me. actually three people but only two of them asked. the third and i did the biggest number on each other of all... but since i had dinner with him his shine is back. he was the biggest smoking crater but still? still the crystal grew back up.

maybe a little more realistic than before and with some rough edges but it's there. it's actually prettier now. probably because it's closer to reality than the original. it makes one wonder what it would be like to have dinner with all of one's exes.

i wonder how many of them i would have nothing to say to at all.

this post is taking a long time to write because i keep getting lost in reveries. i've thought about the way i met my ex husband (yes, we met 'cute') and the day tr implied that we would get married and the way k looked that magical night and the way my ex fiance showed me my first shooting star.

i've thought about re that i dated twice when i was a teenager and dumped badly both times. and bg to whom i did that as well. both men i cared for so much i couldn't hurt them so i ran away from them. funny how that works. i called bg once a few years later and his mother asked me not to find him.

what's funny is that she asked with the utmost respect and with utter liking of me in her voice.

"he loves you like the movies sass but he's living with someone and i think they're happy." and i *miss* my friend bruins but she was right.

*sigh* she was right. i hurt him enough. (wow, who knew this post would bring stinging eyes)

the thing is? i'm someone else's brooding guy in the corner with the cheekbones. but i was much younger then and not nearly so wise. hrm, i don't consider myself wise at all... and yet i'm clearly wiser than i was then although i know less.

i thought about pg and how much i want to see him [pause to google *sigh* still nothing] and about g's cocaine habit and about how g is the one that showed me what it is to wait for sex while sharing intimacy.

thanks g.

and i thought about Ke and the crush i had on him in uni and about P and the crush i had on him in high school and about rc and the crush i had on him a couple of years ago and b who showed me the difference between having sex and making love...

i love all of them. even the ones that hurt me. even the ones i never dated. all of them.

there are some, like tr, who could call me up and say "hey sass i need aftercare from surgery, can you help?" and i would. i would have BEFORE we had dinner. i think that he would have too. some people are in your heart forever no matter what happened with them.

some people, even if you never speak to them again, have still earned that kind of place in your heart ... and some haven't. there are people i know who would never see their exes again, not even to spit on their graves.

it's just so strange to realise that i wouldn't refuse to see any of them. that i actually care deeply about them all. i don't need to see them but i would like to know that they're okay.

inexplicably by setting myself free from that guy i wrote about yesterday i freed myself to realise that i will have a slowly shrinking soft spot for him forever.

and that that's okay.

because it is. i loved him. he wasn't my friend. these statements are true but SEPERATE. and maybe i had to realise that i could love someone that deeply that didn't care about me. me who always said 'i don't think you can love people who don't love you back, i don't think it's possible.'

so it's okay to hold a little space beside all the other little spaces and fill it with the happy moments while letting the tarnish heal itself. and that doesn't mean i've got him on the back burner or that i'm hoping he'll come back somehow or anything.

in fact it means just the opposite.

the crystal bubbles in that lineup all have one key thing in common. they're complete. i've done with them. sure some of them are slowly letting the tarnish heal itself but they're things that i've done with.

over now.

even if i got back with one of them there would be a new crystal not a revisit to the old one.

and don't think that wasn't a huge realisation too.

kathi asked me in my comments yesterday what i wanted from that letter (okay that's not exactly what she said but whatev) and since i couldn't sleep i let my mind play the free association game and it went from never seeing him again... which it was okay with.

to running into him somewhere and being utterly indifferent

to consciously choosing to hang with him at a party or dim sum or whatever

to having him show up at my door and declare his undying love and adoration for me and i realised that there was one thing all this had in common. i didn't care.

and i don't. i don't care what happens with him... at all. in fact? i was *in* all of those scenarios except the one where he shows up at my door, in that one i was a spectator. i was not *in* it.

it worked y'all. i'm free.