Bittersweet — yet mostly sweet — anniversary

This weekend I’ll be incommunicado, off my cell phone. 

Today marks four months since I did the burial for my European (gender)queer ex-lover. This weekend also is one year from the weekend that marked the start of our “love affair”. 

So there’s a bittersweet taste to this day, to this weekend for me, and a desire to be by myself to commemorate and reflect. 

At the moment, though, I’m feeling more sweetness than bitterness. 

I’m feeling more a sense of how far I’ve come, how much I’ve learned & gained than how much I’ve lost. 

A year ago, as I fell head over heals for that person, I thought I would never again be liked with my “weird body”, that I couldn’t be truly loved as a whole (“das ganze Packet”) other than by them. 

Now, a year later, I feel surrounded by the love of many people, persons who are close to me (even if some are geographically far away), who love me as I am, who support me in a plethora of different ways. 

Now, a year later, I am navigating romantic/sexual relationships with two people that I really like — and who like me back, just as I am. 

Now, a year later, my needs & wishes & boundaries around relationships, and particularly romantic/sexual ones, are much more clear and healthy especially thanks to the clarity & support I have in my platonic polyamorous nature & platonically mutually polyamorous relationships. 

Different friends see and nurture and reflect back to me different parts of me, but all those parts are still me, me just as I am, and together they make up the whole which is more than the sum of the parts. It’s sort of a “distrited love”, relationship anarchy so well suited to who I am, to how I function. And this sense of “distributed” yet solid, safe love is what allows me to spend a weekend like this, incommunicado, commemorating & reflecting on my own, all by myself, in solitude but without feeling lonely (despite the fear & sadness I still feel about my thumb injury). 

And also feeling keenly that this same weekend marks another anniversary, unrelated to my European (gender)queer ex-lover, an anniversary that is wholly sweet & happy: it’s one year since I met my two neighbor runners who are now among my closest friends. This is also a very important anniversary for me, something I want to not only commemorate but also celebrate.