The patriarchy is real. It has attached its claws to my core. It creeps up when I am having to talk myself into functioning like a normal, independent PERSON. Not woman. Just person.
It goes something like this: "Of course you need a man. Your heart isn't whole without one."
"You aren't strong enough to do this life without a partner."
"Your boys need a male role model."
"You need a man so you can be safe and secure."
"You need to be held."
and on...and on....
Thankfully, I am now 20ish years into this battle. I'm onto their lies.
But a broken heart is a broken heart.
The difference when I was 26 with a broken heart and 46:
1. I have no fresh tears. These broken hearted tears have been recycled many times.
2. I don't have the private space to paint with a bottle of wine while listening to Ani DiFranco without fear of interruption by a little person. My tears incorporated into my paintings. My freak flag flying in full view. I have to schedule mental breakdowns when the boys are at school and it's my 10 minute break...or when they go to bed but that is unlikely because my bedtime is also 9:00 p.m.
3. My people are onto me. I can't hide from them like I could at 20.
4. I have an incredible therapist that does trauma energy work with me. We worked that shit out in one session.
5. I have too much knowledge for self-pity and despair. Brene Brown lives in my brain. And homegirl will not let me sink.
6. I meditate.
7. I live in the moment. Mostly. Being fully present in your body alleviates a lot of anguish. At 20, my body was a foreign, weird machine that I was mostly trying to beat down (or cut...I was a "cutter" for a short stint)
8. I have decades of successful, independent, single women to look to for empowerment.
9. I have decades of my own personal success to empower me.
10. I have two beautiful boys that prove that a man is not the ultimate orgasm.
All of these things are true.
And yet...the pain is the same. It's just fainter. The disappointment of once again getting attached to a narrative that I have replayed a thousand times in my head only to see it fail is real. The narrative of me living happily ever after with two kids and a dog and a stable marriage to one person in the same house. You know, the damn picket fence and all. Who even has those?
It's the narrative that perpetuates our lies.
I have clearly failed at finding a lifelong partner...rather, my narrative failed me.
The failure hasn't kept my heart from feeling like it was going to explode because the euphoria was off the charts. It hasn't prevented me from love. Or hope. It hasn't kept my wounds from bleeding. It hasn't kept me from being vulnerable, intimate, exposed...gloriously alive.
I suppose if failure = divorce, then I have failed. But that is not the narrative I want to pass on to my boys.
The narrative I want them to know is that I loved. And lost. Again and again. And it felt fucking great.