“We” — A poem of gratitude for two separated hearts
When we talk about who’s furniture is who’s or take pictures of ‘us’ off the wall.
When the initial shock slowly fades into the background.
When the anger stops flaring up like fire in an open wound because things didn’t turn out the way we imagined they would.
When the resentment begins to reside.
When the crying ceases and we are left alone in the empty space that is a new space we both must become accustomed to.
When days go by and weeks and suddenly months and we talk on the phone because of something logistical but for no reason at all both start to cry at the same time.
When we sit in the feeling of failure or maybe more the feeling of hurt for hurting the other.
When we acknowledge that yes, we did our best and we tried so friggin’ hard and yet still things just couldn’t align.
When we pause for a moment and forget all that and reflect on just how different we are now.
When we see how much we actually learned from our situation and how relieving it is to both of our nervous systems to be out of something that we so badly wanted to be in but was so hard to stay in.
When we hold space for the fact that there can be both love and pain and that our wants just butted heads against one another but that we know there was love and still is and always will be.
When we set each other free from trying to be what the other person wanted us to be that we just couldn’t be.
When we, in a way, stop taking it so personally and look at it as a necessary step in us becoming that much closer to being who we authentically are on this planet.
When we take a look at our souls and how the transformation happened even though it was messy but that we both feel our own individual voices are stronger now.
When we recognize that we were lovers and also friends but most of all teachers to one another.
When we see the ‘life’ classes we enrolled in and how we passed them(who knows if we can say with flying colors but what’s that mean anyway?)
When we know we can love each other still even though we aren’t together and in the same constellation that we were before.
When we know that a phone call away in an emergency or a really needed time is of course more than welcome.
When we appreciate all the smiles and fun experiences and things that did work because let’s be honest there were more than a hundred things that worked and just a few big single ones that didn’t.
When we allow our hearts to heal and time to tell and stop imagining what the future will hold from this point forward.
When we rest our heads on our pillows at night knowing we are living deeply and fully in the human experience, going into the messy bits, loving and losing with the shared intention of growing.
We realize that this dance was meant to be danced.
These classes were meant to be taken.
Our hearts were meant to be shared.
Those memories were meant to be made.
That love doesn’t mean you’ll be together forever.
That we did our best. And that’s the best we can ever do.
We can realize how much gratitude exists for one another, for this partnership and this chapter.
Even though there is no more “we”…
