the spiral path 3
tethering, holding on, letting go
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spiral path 3: tethering, holding on, letting go
After I kiss Married Ben, I get in my car and drive 5 minutes home. I feel like I’m going to be sick as the realization sets in that I have to tell my (soon-to-be) ex that I kissed someone else.
We have tickets to see Khruangbin again that night, the first time we’ve ever seen our favorite band twice in a row. I’m worried that I’ve ruined the night. But a tiny little devil’s voice in me laughs, and thinks “Now he’ll know what it feels like.” Another part of me can still taste Ben’s lips.
What a Scorpio thing - to be inspired by revenge, just as much as desire.
I tell my ex in our bedroom. He’s not happy. He’s a little surprised. Then he gets mad, but it almost seems performed. Like he’s reacting on principle, not feeling. He throws a shirt from his hand onto the bed half-heartedly.
I act as though I did it on accident. As though it didn’t mean anything. I tell him I still want to go to the concert. And that he needs to get over it, if I am to get over what he did with her.
I don’t tell him that I also did want to kiss Married Ben. And that I wanted to, again.
We go to the concert. We choose each other, one more time. That’s all our relationship is at this point. A series of moments, nights, days, where we choose each other. No promise of tomorrow, let alone forever.
Laying on the grass at the top of the Greek theater in Berkeley, we cuddle on a blanket and joke about it. That I kissed someone else. What a mess everything is.
He tells me that I have to tell Married Ben that our relationship is not open. It feels like he’s choosing us. A small portal opens and I see a possible future: maybe since I evened the score, we can go back to how things were.
I do it, I text Married Ben, immediately. I choose us, again.
Then our favorite band plays their song “So We Won’t Forget.” The lyrics say:
Ooh, one to remember
Writing it down now
So we won't forget
Ooh, never enough paper
Never enough letters
So we won't forget
He wraps his arms around me from behind, and we sing the lyrics to each other, cheek to cheek, as we cry.
Though we don’t say it out loud, it feels like a goodbye.
I call this stage of the spiral, tethering. I made that up just now. Where we almost complete a loop, we almost break an intergenerational pattern, or an inherited conditioning, some karmic pattern.
But right as we are about to let go, and fall into a new layer of the spiral, we throw out a thread like a spider and latch on for another ride. Another spin around the cycle. Where we learn the same lessons all over again, oftentimes harder than the first time, or at least they prevent themselves more obviously. You have to really not want to change, to not learn the lessons this time.
I could have chosen myself here, at this point in the story. Taken a break from men, and dating, and focused on myself. Fallen into a new layer of the spiral.
But instead, not only did I not let go of my ex, and chose to stay entangled in a mess of codependency with him until the bitter end…
but I, also, created new tethers, to new men.
So that I didn’t have to let go, completely.
So that I didn’t have to jump.
So that I didn’t have to free fall.
So that I didn’t have to catch myself.
So that I didn’t meet the God inside of myself, that was waiting for me there,
yet.
My ex is okay with me being friends with Married Ben. This is one way I know that this is the end. He is letting go.
Married Ben and I go on little walks in our neighborhood. We hang out at the park where he takes his daughter to play. We go to this weird secret hot tub in Berkeley in a man’s backyard, that you need a code to get in. It’s a nude hot tub, and we do yoga next to each other, naked. I want to grab his face and kiss him.
He, on the other hand, doesn’t ogle me once. I feel frustrated by this, but also turned on that he is respecting the boundary I named around being friends. I’m the one that can’t keep it platonic.
When my ex and I finally talk about taking a break — a week, or two of no contact, I can’t remember now — I call Ben. He tells me that I should decide what would make the break worth it for me.
I want to hook up with Married Ben. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this. I see myself as an addict. This is harm-reduction.
So I tell my ex I want to open up our relationship during this break. His face drops any expression, goes blank for a moment. He sighs almost as if he’s relieved, that I’m finding new people to hold me. He goes to stay at a friend’s house, which happens several times during this long, painful, prolonged 4-mo break-up.
This time it feels different.
I go over to Married Ben’s late one night, while his wife is out on a date, and his daughter is asleep. We go into his bedroom, and I climb into the side where his wife normally sleeps. He has a little baby monitor set up on the night stand. There are toys everywhere, all over the floor. A small chihuahua dog named Winky tries to get in between us.
*** omitted erotic confessions ***
Married Ben is like a future version of my ex, I always hoped to see. Who I had fantasies about meeting.
We stay up late talking, dreamy, euphoric together. I don’t stay the night, because his daughter climbs into his bed in the morning. But when I get home, I crawl into bed, and I sleep better than I have in months that night.
When my ex and I officially break up, we do so at his friend’s house, where he’s been staying. There is still an opening between us. We still love each other deeply. It’s not obvious he’s leaving me for her yet.
He looks at me square in the face and says, “I don’t want this relationship anymore.” This is the clearest he has been. It seems like he’s choosing himself, like he might have actually been choosing himself for the first time in his life, in that moment.
I feel proud of him. I feel completely destroyed.
I tell him we can let go slowly. That it doesn’t have to be such a hard stop. That how we relate can shift, and change. We can just keep checking in, and being honest with each other.
This is my way of saying “don’t let go, don’t let go.”
We cry together. He asks me if he can hold me for a little while.
*** omitted erotic confessions ***
He feels more present with me than he has been in months. I surrender to his touch, his weight, his breath, his force. It makes me cry, it makes me moan.
And I let go. I let go. I let go.
Ben meets up with me at the neighborhood park when I tell him its over. I can’t remember if I cried in front of him or not. I can’t remember anything we said or talked about. I was rather disassociated. But it was nighttime, and the park lights had come on, and I know he held my hand as we sat on the park bench, for long stretches of silence at a time.
I hold on, I hold on, I hold on.