Not bad for a conversation starter, don’t ya think?
I was sitting at a bar in Ottawa airport on Christmas day, working on my last post in 2018 about my impending trip to London during my 3 hour layover. A pilot slid into the bar stool next to me, clearly in a chatty mood. I tried typing really really loudly, but the dude didn’t take the hint. Figuring it wouldn’t hurt me to demonstrate a smidgen of non-Grinch spirit, I put my laptop away. I think he was a little lonely, having to truncate his family celebrations in order to fly out to London for a reason I didn’t catch. And then.
“So tell me, have you ever fallen in love? Yeah? What’s his name?”
Hickster.
Full stop.
His name was out of my mouth before I could think.
Not my ex, with whom I spent almost 6 years, until he called me up one day not long after we’d discussed the broad details of getting married and moving across the country to be closer to his family. He was distraught at having woken up half naked next to a girl. “Why did you do that? You aren’t a cheater. You are an honest, good man. So what’s going on?” Turns out he’d gone ring shopping, and that is how he figured out that while he loved me, he didn’t love me enough to marry me. And rather than deal with that like a grown up, he got drunk and did the one thing that would ensure I would never want to talk to him again. Took me years to reconstruct my identity after that breakup.
Not Beaut, even though there was some love shared between us.
Not ICB. I’m still processing the ramifications of that realization. Just like I am still working through his comments about my mental health, which have left me with the unshakeable feeling of being a commodity – specifically, damaged goods.
“But you’re not married?”
No.
“Divorced?”
No.
“So what happened?”
Sometimes love is not enough. From the moment we met, we both felt our worlds tilt and shift. We knew with certainty that our lives were going to change. And change they did, in ways we never would have predicted.
But he is a broken man. And I am a broken woman. He sees me, all of me. I see him, all of him. Unfortunately together, our brokenness destroys and maims the other. We aren’t ready for this love. We have too much healing to do, respectively.
“You guys still talk?”
Yes. After a lot of ups and downs, we seem to have figured out how to carefully stay in each other’s lives.
“Is that him calling now?”
Yes. To tell me a silly shenanigan he was up to and wish me a good trip.
“Well, it sure sounds like you guys have a great connection. Pity it didn’t work out.”
Yes, we do. And no, it isn’t a pity. This is life.
I can’t bring myself to think of Hickster as a regrettable mistake.
Hickster is Hickster – swept me off my feet, without warning. One is never sure what the outcome will be: like a hurricane, he sometimes strips away superfluous stuff, revealing underlying beauty that got muddled by life’s modifications and sometimes inflicts deep wounds and scars.
I see, now, that his purpose in my life was to turn everything upside down, and get me to feel. All the feels. Uncontrollably. Had he not pushed past my vulnerability and just taken over, I would never been triggered to the point my symptoms became unmanageable. None of my coping mechanisms worked last fall and winter. My emotions were everything, so scary, to the point I was forced to get help.
It is funny that the guy who was the source of so much emotional volatility in me, to the point that I snapped into one of the scariest and darkest depressions in my life was also the reason I fought so hard to survive it. There were many days in winter/spring 2018 where I couldn’t comprehend how to make it through the day. But I would because Hickster expected me to. Not kindly, not empathetically, but because our lives were so completely interwoven, even as we were ending our relationship, we needed to remain in contact to figure our shit out. Those were scary days. I had no idea what was going on, other than the certainty that my brain was trying to kill me. I was scared I would not be able to bear much longer the invisible screaming pain in my head. Looking back, I see that I was frequently experiencing paranoia and cognitive distortion, my grip on reality slipping. But I had no idea then, and wouldn’t till August 2018 when I finally got my psychiatric diagnosis. What did I know? Despite the yelling, the sometimes awful accusations and betrayals, Hickster saw me. He was a hurricane in my life, but when he was around, I was in the eye of the hurricane, the screaming voices in my head silenced. Those moments of silence gave me strength to keep fighting my brain.
This borderline personality diagnosis has broken me. I am relieved to finally be able to name what has been causing me endless tormented sorrow and failed relationships for as long as I can remember. But I feel shattered by this new understanding of who I am, and just how much of me is broken. I don’t forgive ICB for his fears about my mental health, because I struggle with the feeling of being damaged, dangerous goods already. The list of interactions I’ve ruined, personally, professionally, anecdotally, is a long one. I’ve been described as an agent of destruction too – not a hurricane, like Hickster, but a heartless bulldozer. I damage all who come near me. I grieve and rage daily.
It is fitting that the person who made me so unhinged I had no choice but to uncover my underlying brokenness is also the same person who has made me believe that I can feel whole, through his complete acceptance of all of me. Hickster is more familiar with my brokenness than possibly anyone, he bears the scars I inflicted on him, and yet, he has forgiven me as I have forgiven him, and continues to believe in me and my capacity for joy as I do for him.
I fell in love with Hickster, alright. I still love him, fiercely, albeit from a very safe distance.
I hope I never experience a similar love again. I’ve no interest in reinacting Romeo and Juliet in my middle age. I don’t know that I ever want to fall in love again. I want to grow into love. I want to grow old with someone who knows me inside and out and accepts me.
I have fallen in love. It almost killed me. Now, I want peace.
I’m hoping the next time I get besieged by a chatty pilot at an airport, he is a wee bit less nosy. Damn, those questions had me thinking!
Discovering ratchet 
That is a fine ass question. And I love your answers and the thinking it lead to.
As for me, my answer is yes. Her smile.
LikeLiked by 1 person