Overcoming Nostalgia

 

The last 2 weeks has been the trip I wasn't expecting, but have needed. I had hoped for a good experience, but truthfully, felt I was merely wandering aimlessly and would probably return home in the same headspace I started in. I came up to Seattle under the guise of seeing old friends in the Gay Fathers Assoc or Seattle, celebrating their Pride, meeting with a real estate business partner and seeing his operation, and just getting out of town. 

 

The last one wasn't too far off, but the reality was the prime directive was to try to shake loose all the weight of losing a partner to an affair, caring for and then burying my mother, being welcomed back to the family and then quickly being ushered back out when challenging the norm of family secrecy and face-saving. I have accomplished a lot in the last decade and can say that I recognize that I've hit some goals and made serious headway on others, but I have felt empty; empty in a way that I feared picking the pieces back up and trying yet again.

It's been almost 2 years since life stopped, the world spun in a reckless pattern, and I felt lost. The 'ever after' I was building for had become 'nevermore.'

The phases of dealing with the loss were elongated by attempted legal meddling and the typical pattern of someone mentally off kilter refusing to let go. In our relationship, it bothered him frequently that I looked so optimistically at the world and I can only assume that rage grew when he thought I might get through this.

The last several months have been tough. I've failed to feel the, once plentiful, ability to restart, to take a failure in stride and build upwards. I've known the 'what' of what I wanted to build in my life, but I'd lost the 'why' and it wasn't coming back to me easily. Part of this writing now is a daily assignment I've taken on for myself to figure out 'what next' and 'why.'

As mentioned above, I've accomplished some great things and achieved a great start to a life a you get me would have been jealous of; but that wasn't priming the pumps to restart.

I randomly ran across a bookstore on Granville Island and flippantly decided I'd walk in and look around. Maybe I was attempting to feel intellectual? And then I saw this book 'On Nostalgia.' I put it back down, but it ended up walking out the door with me anyway (yes, I did pay for it.)

I found a quiet spot on the Island and decided I'd read it a few minutes to see if I'd just made a regretful purchase.

I'll not type out the entire first paragraph. (See picture for the text), but the last portion hit '....we can't know what we will like the most, only what we did like most.'

  

                                                                        

That moment, among a few others this trip, lead to a little welling up in my eyes. Not for sadness or sorrow, but for feeling connected to myself; for release of the recent challenges in my life. 

I have been stuck in nostalgia, too deeply stuck. I don't long for him, that rose coloring wore off the glasses long ago, but I've missed being an 'us.' Not as in he and I, but of some 'us' somewhere.

I've had a few 'us's' in life. Unchecked nostalgia has led me to feel the past 'hits' were the only I would have in life; I had run out of time and willingness to try again. Unfortunately that nostalgia for something, and it's belief that I would never have what worked for, is also what probably led to me accepting the abusive neglect of the last several years in that toxic relationship.

But, in that moment on a bench in Granville there was finally a spark. There was finally a release; a pilot light lit.

I've run the spectrum on this trip. I've had moments of introspection, I've laughed, I've cried, I've remembered and released, and I've found that there is still a spark in me somehow other men see. I've had my fun and some flings. The physical, the emotional, the mental have all been sparked on this trip.  

I feel rested to some degree, willing to try again in life, willing to share myself and test the waters or possibilities. I have no idea if a relationship will or will not play into my life again, that's OK. Whatever does will be enough.

I don't know what may happen in the future, I'm again optimistic that what I 'did like the most' won't be what I will like the most.