The Ghost of Christmas Past

Exactly one week ago my ex and I crossed paths on the sidewalk outside the Italian place I was headed to with a friend. I looked up and froze. He glanced and looked down and cut across the street to our vehicle, now his.

I immediately smacked my friend- "That's him. My ex."

It's only fitting, I suppose, to have had this encounter in the middle of winter, in the middle of darkness, in the middle of coldness, and only a week and a half before our anniversary date, in the middle of December. I felt a chill run through my spine and I realized that I was watching a ghost walk away from me. And not only a ghost, but nine years of memories, of Christmases, of traditions, of fights, of happy moments... and without a word they got in the truck and took off.

I still get shivers thinking about it.

And so it is Christmas night and I am awake and wrestling with the insomnia gremlins again and beating myself up for recent dating mishaps and bemoaning the fact that I should know better than to tangle with thorny creatures and thinking about my past and thinking about the relatives I made and now will never share a holiday with again--and--I am doubting myself. I am doubting my gut. I am believing that others know best about my welfare. I am believing that others will recognize the prince among toads when he arrives on my doorstep but that I will not. I am believing I am not to be trusted. That I make things up. That I believe what is not real. That I seek men to validate my feelings. That I am doomed to perpetually choose the wrong people to form relationships with in life; people who can not and will not love me.

And I am thinking about the ghost sighting again.

Because here is the thing--as I processed my doubts, my anxieties, my insecurities and called my dear friend to discuss the situation, I realized--I know when to leave. I know when I've had enough. I know when to cut the threads on my present and let it drift into the graveyard of my past, where it turns into a figment of what was, takes on white gossamer swaths of ancient history, and becomes a specter whose only power is to drift into my life once in a while. 

I know when a relationship is dead.

I left my ex in clarity. I left with the word "severed" on my tongue. I knew trust no longer could exist in my relationship. 

Do I wish I had never met him? Do I wish I could have replaced pain with the emptiness of missing this experience?

Absolutely not. 

Last October a hairdresser told me that the best thing she ever did was marry her ex-husband and the other best thing she ever did was divorce him. I blew on my dark-purple-nearly-black nails and thought I would never understand what she meant.

Now I do.

I love who I have become, am becoming. I love the fact that I married someone when I was a girl with an open heart full of naive optimism and earnest faith in the pact of marriage. I love that I spent nine years with a man who taught me so many lessons about myself, about life. I love that I waited until I knew it was time to leave, that I gave the relationship every chance that I could. I love that I learned to trust myself. I love that I discovered the multitude of issues I need to address in my life. I love that my new friends can't fathom the 24 year-old who got married. I love that she is just as dear to me, in fact dearer, as she has ever been.

Looking back, someone could have pointed out the patterns for failure that showed up in the early stages of our relationship. I could have been warned to avoid the whole mess.

But I never would have learned by listening. I never would have discovered the new layers of me.

So I will be gentle with myself as I make decisions about the future, about relationships, about men. I will trust my own instincts despite the "shoulds" I hear in my head and on the lips of a few others who want to protect me from future pain. I hope not to chastise myself anymore for not recognizing an unsatisfactory relationship immediately. I hope to feel powerful about my decisions and to have faith in the fact that everything leads me to where I need to go.

 

My ghost of Christmas Past, with its ancient white gossamer material, its goatee and hoop earrings, will never fall out of my life completely. Nor should it. Instead it will remind me of who I am now, who I was then, who I can become, and who is waiting inside. 

I can trust that my gut serves me well. That I am in the process, still, of figuring this all out.