Ghost stories

The latest heartbreak was one that I never saw coming - never expected his arrival, and surely didn't expect his retreat.  I didn't even want to write about this one, but my fingers are typing and I'm thinking...and sometimes I don't even know what I think until I see it here on the screen in front of me.  So bear with this cathartic post, and maybe you'll even find a bit of your own life in it.

When we met, it was purely for professional reasons: I had been put in contact with him as someone that I should network with.  But in the course of that first informational interview, we found ourselves connecting beyond public policy issues.  As I watched him leave an hour later, I felt like my life had just changed for the better.

Our second meeting - a "follow-up" networking meeting - was even less professional.  We talked and giggled and joked and I couldn't help but notice how his eyes shone brightly and how his smile made my heart beat faster.  

A few hours later, my phone chirped and when I saw his text message asking me to dinner on Friday night, I felt elated.  That dinner, and the ensuing four weeks, were incredible.  I fell hard and fast for him.  We spent countless hours talking about our lives: children, divorces, shared interests and passions.  We covered law and politics, teased each other with vocabulary known only to policy wonks like us, and then laughed at our own nerd-ishness.  It wasn't uncommon for time to get away from us and to notice that it was after 1:00 am on a work night or that we had been on the phone for over an hour. 

But what we didn't talk about was the important stuff--how our past relationships and attendant vulnerabilities would affect a future relationship.  Like all divorcees, we both had raw, scraped-up hearts and when the Ghosts of Relationships Past floated up to create a wedge between us, we didn't know how to handle it.  In the end, the failure to talk about what really mattered was our undoing.

So for the past few weeks, I've been walking around in a daze - things remind me of him and the wound breaks open again.  It's hard to believe that I could miss someone like this when the relationship was so brief, but there it is.  There is so much I wish I could go back and change and undo - and that is the worst part of all.  I rarely carry around regret; I find the word itself to be ugly and the emotion to be not worth its weight.  But this time, I am full of regret for words left unsaid, words said in haste, words borne of past hurt.  When I find the courage to meet my own eyes in the mirror, I hate that they are full of remorse and sorrow.

Driving in to work today, I heard a song on the radio - one I'd never heard before, one that gave me pause and changed my mood. 

Maggie Rose, a relative newcomer to the country music scene, just released a song called "Better."  The melody is so-so, but the lyrics are heart-wrenching.

I just want to feel good, feel alright

Feel anything but what I feel tonight.

I just want to feel better

Music has the power to change us.  I wasn't sure I wanted to even download the song because it hit me so profoundly, but since the song was already in my heart, I gave up the fight and forked over $1.29 to iTunes. 

I just want to feel better.  Lift the heaviness from my chest, stop the flow of tears that randomly escape at inopportune moments.  Feel anything but what I feel tonight.  Why can't there be a medication that could make it all go away?

But the bad feelings are what make us human, make us alive and maybe even make us appreciate the good moments.  Pain has a purpose - it signals that something is wrong and needs attention.  Heartache is no different.  I have the hardest work of all to do: heal my heart so that the Ghosts of Relationships Past can no longer haunt me.

"The challenge is to learn from the past without giving up our innocence." --Tammie Carino