Happily Ever After
Being dumped by my partner of 12 years was the best thing that ever happened to me.
I only cried — like, really cried — once after the split. It was a few months after it happened and several weeks after I had moved into my own place. I was wearing a new pair of khaki capris to clean my bathroom on a blistering summer afternoon. I used one knee on the edge of the bathtub for balance as I reached in to scrub away the ring of grit — the sand and dirt and sweat that stuck to me daily as I ran trails with Tilda, the Labrador retriever rescue that had stayed with me in the breakup, training for my first 10K race. When I stood after I was done, there was a bleach stain on my brand-new pants where my knee had come into contact with the cleaning spray.
A bleach stain. On my new pants.
I walked down the hall to my kitchen, crumpled in the middle of the floor, and broke down. It was one of those ugly cries: ragged sobs, snotty nose, swollen eyes. A ridiculous bleach stain triggered a 5-minute maelstrom in which I let it all out — the stress of the move, the terror of being sole guardian to the first pet of my entire life, the uncertainty of being on the verge of 40 years old and starting all over again. But that was it. After that fleeting violent release, my breathing slowed, my eyes dried, and I got up and finished cleaning. If there had been any emotion about the actual relationship in the outburst, it was shame. Shame that as an intelligent, emotionally aware, and capable human, I had failed to do the one thing society drills into us relentlessly as the requisite for happiness: pick a partner and live happily ever after.
Because the breakup itself had been utterly nondescript. I felt my ex's stare boring into the side of my head one night as I was reading before bed. When I turned to look at him, he lifted his chin towards the foot of the bed, where Tilda was curled in a ball. "She's always been your dog," he said, referring to the way she had bonded fiercely to me, even though he was the animal lover. "She should stay with you." The only sound in the room was resounding silence as what he really said filtered through my consciousness. Then I nodded and turned out the light. The next day I began searching for an apartment.
It was just that easy, after having been so excruciatingly hard for years. There was no fighting, shouting, or negotiating at the end. It was simply over. The numbness I felt was most certainly shock. But it was also profound relief. I was free to be myself again, instead of the unrecognizable, diluted human I had become.
And on June 21, 2012, as the Summer Solstice heralded the sun’s highest point in the sky and marked the beginning of the season of abundance, I moved into the space that would become my peaceful, quirky, convivial home.
The first thing that happened after I struck out on my own was that I lost 50 pounds. Sure, I was running daily and training for what would ultimately end up being my first marathon the year I turned 40, where I earned a coveted qualification berth for the Boston Marathon. But what really fell off me in those first 6 months was the sadness, humiliation, dissatisfaction, anger, and disillusionment that had encircled me, layer upon layer, and that I had clung to because they were familiar, and therefore safe, states of being. For years I had told myself, "Nobody breaks up after this long," knowing full well the opposite was true and that my relationship was soul-crushing. It would be easy to say I hadn't had the courage to leave, but the more truthful admission is that I didn't believe I would find — or that I deserved — anything better.
As my kilometre count increased, I journeyed deeper into myself and began to let my authenticity resurface, the parts of myself I had toned down or erased altogether after years of their having received outright disdain or indifference. Friends told me they had forgotten how funny I could be. I bought clothes and furniture that broadcast my personality in bright, bold colour. I threw cocktail parties and travelled and wore my heart on my sleeve. For the first time I explored the totality of my sexuality. I began to write.
At some point I felt a distinct shift in my unfolding. All that running I was doing was no longer putting distance between me and a miserable past; it had begun carrying me to a new future. I wasn't sure what the future looked like, exactly, but I did know one thing: the explosive growth and change I was experiencing was transforming me into the best version of my self, and that self would finally be worthy of the love, success, and fulfillment that always eluded me.
Oh poor, misguided girl.
It would take me until the tenth anniversary of my fresh start to understand the true purpose of my evolution. Today, as the Summer Solstice once again celebrates the year’s pinnacle of light and I look ahead to the start of a new decade that will begin when I turn 50 in February, this is what I now know working to inhabit my best self really means: to become rooted so unshakably in my authenticity and self-worth that I no longer make choices or accept situations that do not align.
All that striving to be "worthy" of anything, most of all love, was a misnomer of my inner work — my deservingness is inherent. If I had spent as much time communicating desires and needs and boundaries as I did trying to prove myself to the world, I would have been shaping love and success and fulfillment rather than feeling in constant pursuit of it. But such is life and learning. It's not until the pain of current circumstances is more unbearable than the unknown that we take action. And for me, continual failure to realize my full potential scared me enough to examine why. It's the hardest work I've ever done: identifying the root of my patterns, building the confidence to own my authentic code, and trusting myself enough to hold space for what honours that true self while letting go of anything that doesn't.
That last part? The letting go of things that don't serve and trusting things that do will come? It's the ultimate act of self-knowledge and self-love. Which sounds noble, but don't be fooled. It will break your heart, stir your deepest fears, and force confrontation with your ugliest pieces. It will require you to walk away from a singular man you love profoundly, one who sets your mind on fire and is the most exquisite erotic match you've ever known, because he cannot respect you with any kind of consistency. It will challenge you to table your best vision and boldest ask and then figure out what to do with the "No" you get in response. And it will compel you to shut the fuck up about how everyone else got luckier than you and just find your own damned way.
There are days when I lament not having come into this learning sooner. What might my life have looked like if I knew all this at, say, 20 or 30 or that pivotal age of 40 instead of almost 50? But there is privilege to be doing this self-discovery work in middle age. At 50, I only now have enough life experience to separate who I am at my genuine core from social conditioning. I will no longer choose partners, jobs, and experiences based on unconscious modelling of societal norms. I couldn't have done at a younger age — there were so many things I simply accepted as true because they were the only options the culture I live in showed to me.
It would take until nearly 50 years of age for the men I've loved to show me my vast capacity. It would take these many decades for me to embody my physical self deeply enough to know I am far stronger than I ever could have imagined. It would take nearly half a century for me to encounter the wisdom of thinkers who advocate the explosive abundance of nature as our human birthright rather than the fear-driven exclusivity and protectionism underwritten by socioeconomics. It would simply take this long.
What it all means is that my happily ever after doesn't look like anything like I thought it would when that Summer Solstice dawned 10 years ago. I'm still looking for connection and intimacy, but I'm certain it won't come in a traditional partnership. I know that my core gifts haven't changed, but how I will use them to achieve my potential has. And, perhaps most important of all, being my own biggest obstacle has completely lost its appeal.
It took 10 years to get here, to journey to the heart of my truth. I stand on the cusp of the next 10 years, finally ready to live it.
