July 25th, of last year: oh yeah.
I remember it vividly.
I was at a protest. In front of the Capitol. Green dress. Rainy day. I was focused on the action which- when half of your government is trying to kill half the country- was probably a good thing to be focused on.
And then, abruptly, striding through the crowd with the pseudo certitude of a man who hopes a camera crew is watching from somewhere, was Rex.
Oh, Rex: for 2.5 excruciating years of my life, I was positive that it was impossible for me to love anyone the way I loved that man. Hence-with and therefore, so forth and etc, I tolerated a lot of miserable shit from him that I absolutely positively should not have.
But still, on July 25th of 2017, seeing him inspired that punched in the gut feeling you get when you’re not exactly over it.
I hadn’t seen him since five months earlier when- suddenly, like responding to the voice of God- I knew I had to get away from him. I knew being in a relationship with him was killing me, and with an adrenal rush- unlike any of the other stop/start attempts to rid myself of that man- I left and never looked back. Leaving was agony, but staying had finally become more so.
So you can imagine how, livid at the political state of things, the day before my birthday, seeing him walk toward me with furious love and pain scrawled across his face like an anthem would be….
well.
“It’s so good and hard to see you. I still love you, Jocelyn. So much.”
“Still?”
“More than anyone. Or anything.”
“How much is that?”
“Way too much.”
It was our old verbal choreography, and when I tried to pull away from him to have an actual conversation I knew, already, that he was walking away.
“Wait”, I stalled, “we should get coffee. It’s been 5 months. We should…sort out things. We’re going to run into each other. We share so many friends. We share…” I gestured around me.
He just laughed:
“we can’t just get coffee Jocelyn. We’ll never just get coffee.”
“I have a boyfriend!” I lied wildly.
He flinched: “Do you really?”
“No. But I could. You could pretend.”
He laughed: “I still love you. You know I still love you. I’ll always still love you. I have to go.”
After, I ran into some friends: “Rex just yelled at Jared Kushner”, they told me, with the implicit silent inquiry, as always being: “did you have anything to do with that?”
Which, of course: I emphatically did not.
I googled it: Saw his face in papers; resolute with something holy and something not. I could see Anna, one of my best friends, watching my reaction with studious fear.
“I’m fine”, I told her; laughing it off: “I ran into him actually. Something something eternal love. Something about f*ck trump. Something about how deeply and mercilessly he loves himself.”
“Are you really fine?” she asked me. “Are you?”
And for the record: I was not.
But here’s what you need to know, internet, about July 25th: I took that misery and love and confusion and went home with it, and wrote about it, and cried about it, and prayed about it, and the next day flew out to see my family, and I guess what I’m trying to say is:
For a lot of those months, between the moment I walked out of Rex’s house forever, and the moment I fell in love with someone else, I was steadfastly and painfully hurtling towards something I did not understand, but knew I had to keep fighting for.
Before I met Rex, my life had been defined by an almost metallically tenacious inner world. My life was my Books, my political beliefs, my relationship with God. I’d been in love before him, of course, with other people: both deeply and meaningfully. Rex, though, was something different: the extreme sacrifices he demanded from his partners tricked me into believing that he was worth everything I endured for him.
Which of course: he hadn’t been.
No one is. Not really. Not like that.
Leaving him, then, hadn’t just been the jarring sense of losing the man who’d knelt down and put a diamond ring on my finger. Who I’d shared a home and a life with. Who I’d thought- however briefly- I’d one day have children with.
It was rehabilitating the parts of me that I’d chopped off to accommodate his spinning whims and erratic mood swings. It was remembering who I’d been before I’d known him at all.
The month I met him, he told me- earnestly and almost childishly- that I was the only truly happy person he’d ever met.
Which is funny.
Because by the end of it, it took visceral will to find that girl again: or, woman, I suppose.
But I did find her.
And that’s what I want to tell you about.
Today, on that very same day, I am happier- not only than I was before him- but then I’ve ever been, in my entire life.
Internet, hear me out: I’m not saying bad things are good, or that good people who go through bad things come out even better, or that EMOTIONAL RICHES ARE YOURS IF YOU SIMPLY THINK POSITIVE!
No. Sometimes things just destroy us. The universe is filled with tragedy, and if it has poetry in the broken moments, those moments can break us, nonetheless.
What I am saying, unequivocally, is that I am grateful I kept going. I am grateful I journaled, and had deep discussions, and went to mass, and meditated. I am grateful I kept showing up for my life, and continued to go out to meet new people when I wanted to be home eating cafeteria food and crying and netflix binging. I am grateful I kept chasing my education, and showing up for the world outside of my own pain, when my own pain felt like a drug that both numbed me and implored me and wouldn’t let me sleep.
For, of course, I wasn’t just heartbroken. I was also finishing up my degree, with all the anxiety that runs through that. I wasn’t sure if I’d find work. I wasn’t sure if I’d find love again, or somewhere to live, or something to do with all the raw unbridled energy that had drawn me to Rex in the first place, when it felt like no one else beside him could ever understand me- or maybe even want to.
But I did find that. I found all of that, and in greater ways than I could have ever imagined.
A month after running into Rex on the hill, almost to the day, I met a boy at a party that I almost didn’t go to. He was beautiful, and brilliant, and funny, and- perhaps more germane to the story- simply a better fit for me. We went out the following Monday, and fell wildly inexcusably in love.
It was nothing like what I’d had with Rex- it was far, FAR, almost paradigm shiftingly better.
And today, that’s more true than it’s ever been.
I love my job. I get to work with kind and brilliant people doing interesting and essential work. In the brooding introspection of the after-Rex, the people I already loved became dearer to me, while my discipline in meeting new ones led to friendships I could never have hoped for with incredible individuals I’d have never met otherwise.
And today, on July 25th, as I look forward to a birthday where Rex is only really a memory- or, let’s face it, a strange and surreal sort of nightmare- I just want to let out verbally….
A moment of gratitude, or maybe even a prayer….
That if YOU are rehabilitating yourself in some way- no matter how dark it feels- to just keep going. And trying. Because you really just don’t know. Can’t know. All the good things that may be in front of you….
If you let yourself feel your pain….
But keep trying for a better life anyways…
because seriously: why the f*ck not?
The Intimacy Desert 