one last time

its been occurring to me lately that all of the usual anniversaries dont really matter much anymore. realistically, the only date that feels appropriate to talk about is the end date--the last day of my job, the day we broke up, etc etc. and even those are getting tiresome. a few weeks ago, i started a blog about the 3 month anniversary of end of my relationship with jb. but at the time it seemed much less empowering and overwhelmingly sad...so i left it there. i realized that part of what seems so sad is that while i can remember all the good things and the bad, it seems awkward to talk about either with other people. i dont want to be that girl who is still talking about that man she dated a long time ago as if it were yesterday or as if she was still with him....and while its ok to have the memories, i'm not that comfortable talking about them anymore. the prompt for today's blog is that i want to say these things one last time before i try to put them away. we met at the college where we both worked in 1997. i saw him on the july rafting trip but didnt know anything about him...fast forward about 6 months, to the annual christmas party(which for the college was last night, i wanted to tell someone that thats where i really met him, but i thought to myself...whats the point, now that its over?). i remember getting ready, hoping he would be there and that maybe i would finally have a chance to talk to him and get to know him better. it was all of those things and more. we spent the next 6 months getting to know each other, not dating, just becoming friends, maybe courting is a better word. the first gift he ever gave me was during this time and it is still the most memorable gift i've ever been given. (by someone outside my family of course). and so began the counting of days, the bricks that built our relationship, the letters and cards, celebrations, gifts, laughs. the phonecalls to my friends about how wonderful and exciting it all was. in june 1998, we finally went on our first official date. its funny that we had our first date on the deck of a restaurant in polson. i remember thinking is this thing safe because there seemed to be alot of broken boards and things. about 5 years ago that deck collapsed with many people standing on it.... he was witty, intelligent, funny and motivated and so many other things.... to this very day, many rules i live my life by are things i learned from him and lessons we learned together....our connection from the very beginning was so marked, so obvious that it lasts beyond the relationship itself, still within my own spiritual being...i cant speak for him so i wont....but that intuit makes everything that much more difficult to sever, that much sadder to let go.... the first time i really met all his family was at his nephews baptism...and after that dinner he took me on a helicopter ride over the garden wall of the mission mountains. i had known this place all my life but i had never seen it from that perspective....and looking back thats a good analogy for our relationship. we got serious and he encouraged me to apply for law school. so i did and we moved to missoula and started school, him to finish his BA and me to go to law school. that was 1999. there were many incredibly moments and some very sad times during the next two and a half years. a very difficult and very personal moment ended our relationship in january of 2001. realistically, i never thought i would go back but i never really pictured him not being a part of my life. we called that year the sabbatical year. we both dated other people and went on with our lives. over a year later, we started talking again and got back together right before my law school graduation in may of 2002. during the previous almost 4 years, there were phonecalls to each other and others about how wonderful, how exciting, how difficult and how impossible this relationship was....the anger at it ending, the sadness, the hesitation to bring it back and the joy of being together again.... we had grown and changed in good ways, and maybe some bad ways too....i have known many couples who have broken up and gotten back together and end up being together for a long time and for the better...i guess thats what i had in mind. the next six and a half years were filled with joy, travel, growth, change and also some incredibly difficult and trying times, not just in our relationship but in our families, our children and our careers. some of those losses so great, years later, hurt as if they were today...and each of them, i can still clearly see in my mind....many of them though are not mine to talk about... i remember every anniversary of things that happened in our lives--the dates, the places, the people, the emotions. i even look back at what we were doing this time last year and know that theres no more chapters to write of us...only of me and him separately....maybe just for now but possibly maybe forever. i know alot of people expected us to get back together...we havent spoken since that day over three months ago...and i know the stubbornness of ourselves will probably never allow anything else....who can ever really tell what right now means ten years from now....so i just have to be hopeful that the decision i made was the best one... its the daily nuances that are difficult and stop me in my tracks even for just a brief moment. today there was something in the newspaper that before, he and i would have made a huge joke of. theres no one i know that would get the joke but him. theres dumb things like good sales of something he liked that i can no longer call and tell him about. i see him often but have yet to have any face to face contact and certainly no discussion. seeing him used to derail me. a few months ago, bb said during one of my derailments, that soon you'll pass by him and not even notice...and i agree, things are getting easier, moving on more possible and actually something that seems good even great at times. hopeful.... its the instant of being someone's confidante to being nothing that is disarming and unsatisfying. somebody asked me if it was me missing him or me missing being with someone...i know how to be alone. it goes back to my overreaching need to be self-sufficient. another friend told me that breakups, especially after long relationships, are as difficult as a death...and maybe thats true. smells, songs, anything can be reminders....just like when i hear def leppard im back in high school with big hair and wine coolers. or when i smell gasoline, i reminds me of being pregnant with rose. every moment changes but new ones come to replace the old. i know that people close to me know, that i had no alternate plans with this relationship. and so to see it go from everything to nothing has been a difficult adjustment but its also been along time in the making. its getting easier but as each anniversary of something passes, i still remember, it still makes me sad or nostalgic even for a moment. the moments are getting shorter but are still there. it seems like in writing, many people gloss over this change in the cycle--from everything to nothing where the day to day changes to the past.... when relationships end, it seems easier to move along when someone does something terrible to end it...but its not so easy when its just two people realizing that they want different things and cant get to a middle ground to give them. there has been no higher and more wanted obstacle than to love someone so deeply, to believe so strongly in the lasting of something to try everyway to make it work...and nothing so harsh and belittling than to see over the wall but not be able to climb it.... its sad and sweet and irreplaceable...so one last time even glossing over, i wanted to tell the story out loud....because as things go this time of year, it will be time to make new wishes, prayers for the future and once those are said aloud and sent out, it will time to put all of those things away...to pass into the spring....i wish only good things for all of us, including him and maybe for him i wish more...because in loving people, we should wish for them all that they wish for themselves....