Finding Momentum

For every­thing there is a sea­son, and a time for every mat­ter under heaven.

Sarah had always made light of the fact that I’m like a robot. After all, I work in code all day at my job. And I’m sta­ble, famil­iar, and pre­dictable. And I could always be counted on to “do the right thing.” And often I have, how shall we say, lim­ited emo­tional capabilities.

When Sarah and I recently decided to break up after two and a half years together, we both felt strongly that it was for the best. Things had pro­gressed to the point where we didn’t feel it was right to move on. She didn’t feel under­stood, I didn’t feel accepted. We didn’t have the self-awareness to pin­point a grow­ing uncer­tainty within. We had been through good times and bad, we were dif­fer­ent. But at one point, we had piled up more dis­tance and unre­solved con­flict than we could afford to handle.

I’ve spent the bet­ter part of the month try­ing to get inside my own head and put the words to what’s really going on in me. It’s been dif­fi­cult to know where to start. The first day I was hurt and angry. The sec­ond, I was over­whelmed with sad­ness. The third, I was numb, and so on, in var­i­ous lit­tle per­mu­ta­tions. There are days filled with the hum­drum of work, the sup­port­ive words of a good friend (per­haps you!) and tremen­dous free­dom. And there are days where I’m hon­estly pretty mis­er­able, mourn­ing the loss of shared dreams and a com­pan­ion­ship dear to my heart.

I’ve read it some­where that men are often unfairly por­trayed as emo­tion­less; they sim­ply don’t know how to express what they feel. True; some­times I feel that hav­ing a pre­cise vocab­u­lary and incred­i­ble emo­tional self-awareness will be the tools I need to heal. But if I let this go on too long, I’ll never write. Of course, I say this with some embar­rass­ment that what’s com­ing out is com­pletely over­dra­matic. But I won’t apol­o­gize for that… yet.

And in some strange, kinda sick way, it’s kind of nice to feel the pain and know that I’m not a robot. I’m skin and bones, joy­ously frag­ile, with lit­tle to boast about but the Father who loves me.