maybe not your traditional love story.

** this is a post i wrote and published privately, but was inspired by ms single mama to publish it openly through this post of hers. i’m not entering her contest because i might take this post down again, but it’s out here for now anyway…**

Somewhere in between the buying vegetables from the market for xmas dinner together, and the picking up the bathtub plug replacer together, and the wrapping gifts together and the waiting in lines and the running errands together and all the subtle comments that indicate a bigger future together…. Somewhere in between all of this I was feeling myself slow down. Like I was walking through water. Like I was all in slow motion, but it was all in fast forward. Disconnect.

I went through the motions of the subway and the kiss goodbye and I walked in my door and I blew out into a heaving crying state. The kind that scares me. The kind that becomes me. The kind of crying state where whatever this skin and bones called Krista is gets lost and all there is is heaving and the fighting to breathe and the anxiety. I did what I do. I called in the mad people reinforcements. I called my psychiatric survivor friends, who know this. Who also know what it is like to lose yourself so deeply that you can’t really see anymore and all there is is the struggle to be, the fight to breathe, the heaving and the overwhelm.

I am a hysterically crying to them on the phone, I am having a crisis of esteem, “I am supposed to go over to my new boyfriends house with Georgie now- I have so much to do- I can’t be a girlfriend!!! I can’t even be a mom! I am late. I How am I supposed to really have someone else in my life, I don’t know how to take care of myself and my kids. Everything is a sham. I can’t do any of this sharing of shopping and errands and all this stuff that is so normal and regular that people do together- I can’t do this. I am not a regular person. I don’t fit into dominant mainstream culture and traditional relationship structures! I don’t know how to do this. It should not feel so scary. I thought this was easy. I thought this one was the easy one.” I go on and on and I’m heaving and freaking. This is the kind of thing that happens to me on occasion. I know this. I know I need to get help when it happens. So, I call my mom who loves me no matter what. I call and bawl to my mad friends, who get it. who care. Who have their own unmanageable states and who disappear in their own ways. Who are so ultra alive at times in their own lives that their senses explode into what people call psychosis, and who know that I am crying here not because I have a new boyfriend and somehow his presence in my life is stirring up all sorts of confusion but because I have deeper trauma connected to this, and my spirituality is activated, and my body and mental memories are stirred. Who know this is not “mental illness” but rather this is mental acuity. Mental aliveness. Mental intuition. Mental messaging. My mad friends know, and hear the ultra aliveness in my voice and they are calm, because they know this too. There are messages in these states and turning points and spiritual currents.

They tell me to trust life. They tell me to breathe. They see how already this new man in my life is so good to me, so good for me, so wonderful. I’m coached by them to open up to my new lover. To not hide this part of myself from him. To communicate and share my fear, my overwhelm, my reluctance. He can handle this Krista they tell me. Give him the chance. I pull myself together. I am late again, but it doesn’t matter so I meditate. I get some sense of centre and I go over there, in my state of overwhelm and stirred trauma memory and I am not feeling 100 percent OK and normally I’d hide, have sex with someone else, distract, escape, but instead I pull it together and I be a mom and George and I go over there and when we finally get George to sleep- I talk.

I tell him how I only do escapism, not real life with men. I tell him about my past relationships and my failed marriage. I talk about presence and lack of presence. I talk about how I like being with him but so much real life stuff with him is making me feel overwhelmed because I am not used to sharing my life in this way and when I did share my life in this way it was via a failed marriage. The simple little ways people share their lives. I draw lines. I say I need to dance and do yoga and I need lots of things to maintain my wellness. I need autonomy. I need freedom. You might not want this you know, You might not want me. I’m a single mom with an active career that matters to me and is of great importance and significance to me. These things consume my energy, take my heart and time. There might not be any left for you I explain. We talk and talk and talk and I cry and I talk about my mental health and I talk about my past few years of sexplorations and growth and learning and I talk about how I want to try something different that what I had been doing lately but how I am scared of losing myself in a traditionally organized relationship. He simply holds me and listens and offers no false assurances. He asks questions and keeps present and when he touches me after the conversation we are intimate in a way that feels really very different than I am used to, and when he touches me so softly after that conversation I energetically feel his affection for me, so true, tender, so open. Blink blink, he is still there. Open. Lovingly. Unflinchingly.

My guard’s been lowered and I am shaking and in that place, I realized how much easier it is to love someone who doesn’t love you back (as I had been doing for too long) because it is actually sort of safe that way. I realize how scary reciprocity truly is. His openness intimidates me, but I let myself shake and I let myself be intimidated and he holds me and I feel cherished.

I’m wearing the necklace he gave me that makes me feel like strength embodied and I am shaking and feeling cherished.

We fall asleep and we wake and we play with George and wrap presents and drink coffee and it’s Christmas eve so my dad picks me up at his place and we load the car with the presents from Santa and we head to my hometown to meet up with the rest of my family.

10 minutes past his house, my phone beeps. It’s a text. From him.

It says:

“I hope you have a great time with your family for xmas, I like you a lot. I hope you will try real life with me. I think you will like it.”

I almost laugh out loud and I totally well up. I smile and I text back

I think so too.