Despite all the pain and anger over the past couple weeks, the strongest and most consistent feeling since ending things with the gender-expansive guy with whom I had hooked up has been that of “getting my life back”.
Something cracked, and that’s where the pain comes. But the crack is also allowing “good stuff” to fill my life again; allowing me to pour “good stuff” in & out of me again.
As Leonard Cohen sang,
“There is a crack, a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in”.
Saturday I finalized plans for what would seem like a wonderful Sunday: climbing outdoors for several hours in the afternoon sunshine with my closest climbing buddy and then rehearsal with the gay men’s chorus in the evening. And yet, Saturday night something woke me up and I couldn’t fall asleep again for hours. I felt anger and constriction.
After several unsuccessful attempts at falling back asleep, I gave up: I sat up in bed, flung my pillow across the bedroom, and then decided to listen to what was coming up for me. And there it was: a little voice, small but clear, saying, “I don’t want to go to chorus rehearsal tomorrow evening”.
“OK,” I replied, “if you don’t want to go, you don’t have to go. If I don’t want to go to rehearsal, I’m simply not going to go”. And with that, I settled down, and fell back asleep within a short while.
In the morning, as I got ready to go climbing outdoors and shared my decision with my housemate, I was able to clarify more explicitly the reasons for this “No” that had come up for me. In reality, it had been lingering there all week, since the chorus retreat the previous weekend. There were several reasons for this “No”. One was, simply, that I had had “enough of the chorus”, or “enough closeness” with chorus members, the previous weekend at retreat and still needed to “detox” from that: an example of my “close but not too close” attitude/need. Another, related, reason was that I didn’t want to reactivate emotions and dynamics that I often experience with the chorus. The gay men’s chorus has been a wonderful “place” for me to experience new emotions and dynamics, for me to find and express new parts of myself, for me to blossom and connect in new ways — and for all this, I am very grateful to the people in the chorus. But many of those emotions and dynamics have also been very intense and confusing for me, and have taken up a lot of my time and energy and attention over the past months since September, partly also because I had been exercising less (due to injuries and winter weather). So I just felt the need for a break from all that, especially after the intensity of the chorus retreat the previous weekend. I just wanted an easy, “usual weekend day out” with my closest buddy: climbing, catching up, exchanging stories, going for beers&burgers afterwards. And I didn’t want to have to do all that in a rush: I didn’t want to cut that quality time with my buddy short. That time with him is precious to me — it’s at once easy and profound and nourishing — and yesterday I needed it more than anything. I needed that easy, profound connection with a close cis-het guy friend. And I also needed to be outdoors, in the sunshine and breeze and fresh air, without having to rush somewhere else (indoors). And I needed to feel my own “wildness” and freedom and self-determination and strength: part of that was the simple physical strength of climbing; but part of it was also the emotional or mental strength of saying “No” firmly to something that didn’t feel right to me and “Yes” fully to something that, instead, felt good and healthy and affirming to me.
Yes, I can choose. And I chose to get my life back.
The Little Prince and the Fox 