Who Is Responsible For What?

Present...
 

So right after I hit "send" on what I last sent you, I get a notification from Linked In that someone on a writer's group I joined in there posted a post I found interesting. So I go, "OK, I'll go and look," and while there, I decide to check who's viewed me, too.



I'm going, "He won't be there, it's over, I'll never see him again."



There he is. In just the past four days or so, because I checked last week also. Interesting how every time the horoscopes suggest contact, I get this anonymous browser again.


This coincides with a.) his anniversary, and b.) the last time we ever saw each other two years ago.



I don't remember the exact date anymore--because I didn't realize I'd never see him again until two weeks after the fact--but it was right before his anniversary. Right before he (obviously) moved back home. Most likely it was the 7th. I can't be sure which Mondays the club meetings were that year, but I'll never forget those blue eyes following me around the room. He never let me see him watching me before that. 


And I'm betting he DOES remember the date. That's why I'm sure my anonymous browser has to be him, because I only see this anonymous browser on anniversary dates. The day he broke up with me. Valentine's Day (and I know the anonymous browser was him that time, because Linked In inadvertently fingered him, prompting me several times to connect with him as a person I might know, right when it happened.) The holidays, 2015. And now, the last time we ever saw each other.


Instantly, I felt better. 


Not that I think this means anything will happen (witness all the prior visits nothing did).



The reason has to do with, not just the fact that obviously I'm still special in some way to him, no matter what's going on with Rory right now, and not just the fact that one does have to wonder what IS going on that he's going to look me up right before their anniversary. If all is well at home and husband and wife are back in love, ranks should be sealed tight against The Girlfriend, who should be Public Enemy Number One and certainly NOT to be visited right before one's close-to-forty-year wedding anniversary. (Why would anyone even think to do that? Most benign reason: marriage is perfect, knows he's never coming back, hopes I'm okay for that reason. Least benign reason...?)


The reason I felt better had more to do with the fact that I see that what I would do if the visit led to something more now is much, much different than what I would have done two years ago. I've learned A WHOLE LOT. Sure, it seems a waste to learn so much about this particular situation, and then the situation never happens, and I know all this that I'll never need or use.



But, one of the purposes of our relationship was to learn what it means to truly love another person, and I now know what that is.



It's not to use that person to bolster your flagging self-esteem, nor to trade your "love" and companionship for financial caretaking and security from that person. It's not to use that person as a bulwark against being lonely or feeling aimless in your life.



It doesn't matter if he ever came back into my life or not, because the outcome would be the same. It matters what that outcome would be: That I would haul him right back into therapy and insist on his health and well being, even going so far as never to see Chi again if I didn't see that the needed work was being attended to, because I care about his well being and his future, and I see that neither will be good unless he does this.



So what  if I'm all alone? Next to the devastation to Chi that would ensue if the codependency and the zero self-worth weren't addressed, whether I'm lonely or not dwindles to insignificance in my mind. And that's a big change in me.



I don't know, and probably will never know, what changes, if any, occurred in the other two people. But I made a big step forward, and I know that if he showed up on my doorstep again in a tizzy over his marriage or over me, I would never, and will never, back down on that point; and that's what love is. 


Love cares about the other person's welfare, does everything in its power to ensure that, and never ever does anything that will harm that, no matter what. And if the other person gets well and chooses someone not you, love just has to accept that. It's called, Life.

 

And it's also called, Love. Why would I stomp my baby foot and ask someone to be with me when their heart--their healthy heart--chooses someone else?



The important thing in an affair is that everybody heal. That everybody get well from whatever malaise started the damn thing in the first place. And when that is done, the correct solution for everyone will happen, as naturally as the leaves fall in autumn.



I can't get all the corners in the triangle well...only mine. And, one never knows, the triangle may never reform in the first place.



The other thing that made me happy was, if I turned out to be right about the next two to three weeks, I'd have quite a story to tell. Not a bestselling novel-type story (although that could happen), but a story about how to use various modalities available to us to grow, notice what's truly right for us, and make choices that avoid misery.



If he never came back, the ending would change, but the knowledge wouldn't. Maybe what I did these past two years could save someone else's relationship or head off something horrible for another person, because they happened to stumble onto something I wrote. 


That's valid even if he never comes back, but if he did, and I had to go for the gold (see my previous post)--well, there was maybe a one-in-a-million chance of being right about that outcome. It would have made a real miracle that a person could accurately see all that, and that would certainly lend legitimacy to the telling. If I wrote about that, I'd know it was the truth, real, and valuable. I might still end up alone, but I'd have concrete proof that I have real truth to tell, truth other people could use.



And that would supply the only thing left that could make me happy again. One thing my life hasn't really had since Simon died:



Purpose.


Today I realized one thing: If you have no purpose in your life, loved ones--good, healthy people close to you whom you fit and who fit you--make life just as worth living.



And if you don't have people, then purpose, the sure knowledge that who you are and what you know is valuable, and the ability to do something in the world with it that makes a personal difference to someone else, will more than make up for those you lost. It's the internal certainty that your life and the fact that you are here living it has intrinsic worth. That you know something that matters, and when you share it, it matters.



The happiest life is the one with both people and purpose.



But if you have neither one, you really are lost, and you will just drift through life like a feather on the breeze. And that's what I've been doing since Simon died. I have had neither people nor purpose. And life is nothing with neither one. If I'd been right about everything, that would have made purpose with a capital P.



But no one exists on earth to give you Purpose, and really, they'd better not. That would be codependent. Tonight, I log on, and Rory has posted a photo, obviously from their anniversary dinner or party. They are dressed up, looking happy, and smiling. They seem close.



Sad to say you can tell he is getting older. So am I. With any luck, we're all getting better.



Maybe they got better together.


Maybe the picture really is true. So many in the past, I know, were not, but who knows? Two and a half years of therapy, transits that say, "Now is the time to buckle down." Maybe they actually did. Maybe the photo is honestly the triumph it looks like.


Would that really negate anything I've learned? Or make anything I write about relationships, health, and life less true, because the circumstances most heavily favored did not materialize--and it was their decisions that averted them instead of mine?


Because in the end, the only place Purpose really comes from is you. Not someone else.


I know I was special enough to him that he remembered me, two years later, on the anniversary of the last time we ever saw each other, and right before theirs. That, and whatever purpose I create for myself, will have to be enough.


That is my job.