I hate this feeling.

I’ve never been the one to break off a relationship, I’ve always been the one who had my heart broken.  Right or wrong, if I made a promise and a commitment to someone I stayed and tried to figure out how to make it work.  To me, what good is a relationship if the promise means nothing, you might as well not  bother at all.  So, while I stuck it out, tried to exchange parts of me to make others happy and be what they needed, they were the ones that cut out my heart and stomped it in the dirt to end the relationship.  I KNOW how painful it is on that side.

Now, I know what this side is like, at least this side if you care about someone you are breaking up with, and I do care.  I love the Biker, make no mistake about that.  But love isn’t enough to make something last, get it through the rough spots.  It takes that promise to stick it out no matter what.  This time I cannot keep that promise, and that hurts.  In order to keep the promise it means not being true to myself right now, and that isn’t happening again.  I know that sounds horribly selfish, and it is.  But I have yet to finish healing and grieving my 22 year marriage, and the 3 major heartbreaks after.  I’m still finding me underneath years of layers covering up who I am in order to make someone else happy.  I’d come a long way in between relationships, but I have some work left to do and I have to complete that.

We never really know all of ourselves, we discover new strengths and weaknesses as we go through life.  My inner Diva needs to finish up that process of polishing up her bling and her tiara.  I cannot keep putting it on hold.  I need to figure out what parts of me I’m keeping, which parts I’m tossing, and what just needs some tweaking and fine tuning.

Life experiences cause us to build walls or bridges around some areas in our inner gardens.  Some of those walls get thicker and taller, until we no longer have a memory of what is on the other side.  Some walls have gates that lock but we can still see in to those parts.  Other areas we build bridges and let the memories flow like water under our feet and we visit those areas often where happy things are growing.  Some areas we simply take a hoe and turn over and replant, and sometimes others set fire to the meadow and torch the bridge, leaving it behind.  New growth will come to that area just like a forest comes back after a raging fire.  And then there are the meadows and flower beds at the center of our  inner garden that have no walls or bridges, we live day to day in those allowing others to come join us there.

There is a section of our inner gardens where the flowers of love for our mate grow.  For 22 years I cultivated and nurtured what grew there.  The ex poured gas on it, lit a match and set a roaring inferno to it all, then torched the bridge when almost 2 years ago when the judge’s gavel brought our marriage to an end. The bridge has been rebuilt, and I’ve spent the past 2 years trying to force that area to bring forth lush flowers of love in new relationships, but that doesn’t work.  The area needs time to finish healing and I lack a green thumb, in fact mine is so black that in real life anything that grows in the ground sees me as the angel of death.  At the edge of the area where the seeds of the Biker were sown the soil isn’t ready.  No matter how hard I try to work the ground and make things grow, the dirt simply isn’t ready for sustaining life.

Meanwhile I’ve neglected the center, the ME section, and let the weeds grow out of control.  For 22 years I had allowed someone else to prune and determine what would be allowed to grow there, and what had to be uprooted or left unattended.  While I’m trying to prune and replant the center of the garden, I was trying to plant new things in the heart area with the Biker.  One area not ready for new growth, and the other not getting the attention it desperately needs. Until the center is weeded and cleared of debris, and fertilized, watered and properly cared for, and the burned out section is ready to grow something new,  I cannot hope to have any success in maintaining a new relationship.

So, now I stand beside that section I was trying to grow, holding the wilted plants in one hand, and his bleeding heart I cut from his chest in the other.  When our own hearts drip blood in our gardens, the drops seep into the soil and help new things to grow, despite the painful wounds.  But standing here holding his, watching the blood drip, I see it bubble like acid on the dirt, eating away at the edges of what was growing  there.  There  is no way to stop it’s assault on what is there, short of tossing the wilted remains  into the center and tossing a match on to it.  And that is hard to do, burning an area myself.  Others always lit those fires while I watched helplessly from the other side of the creek of memories.  The blood running through the artery that fed his love for me will eventually clog up and that part of his heart will die off.  I carry the scars of many such areas to my own heart.  He’ll put it in ICU for a while and be okay, wounded but he will survive.  I hate being one of those that has caused him more pain.  I cannot stomp on his heart and drive it  into the dirt under my heel.  So I lay it beside the dying vegetation.  I’ve lit the fire to burn this area once again, but not the bridge that leads there,  I don’t have the heart to set it all aflame.  Someday I’ll wander across the bridge and find things growing there on their own and not by my trying to force them to take root.

Time to pick up where I left off weeding and pruning the center of the garden.  I will be okay.  I’m not a cold hearted bitch.  I just have to finish the task at hand and allow the ground of love to finish restoring itself before I can start a new, lasting relationship, and let love grow at it’s own pace when it is ready.

Hopefully one day he will understand….