I have been loved so well all my life

Maybe if I put this out into the world I can stop thinking about it so damn much. 

I recently stepped outside of my comfort zone and took a chance and dated a friend of mine (something I generally avoid doing at all costs, but I really thought it could work out this time... it didn't) for a few months this summer. It was the most complicated and messy and frustrating relationship I've been in. I suppose I should follow that up by saying I haven't been in many relationships (I spent nearly three of the last six years in one relationship, then a while later five months in another), but that I have had plenty of little flings and have never felt so thoroughly exhausted, used, etc. by anybody before. But all that is not the point of this post. 

At the end of our whirlwind of a relationship, he told me he was afraid that everything he'd done to break my trust and to hurt me had ruined me forever. Ruined. This and a few other things, I'll spare you the details on those because they're far worse, I haven't been able to get out of my head. On the one hand, it's insulting because it feels like he wants to have me marked as his territory even after the fact, branded by pain. On the other hand it's insulting because I would never let me being "ruined" even be a possibility. I am far too resilient for that and it's insulting that he disregards that entirely. I do not feel stupid for having trusted him because I took the things he told me at face value and made the best decisions I could with what he showed me about himself. None of it is or was about me. I have been loved so well all my life by my friends and by my family and I have always known what it is to be cared for and supported. Anybody would have to do infinitely more harm than he has to destabilize me. 

That is not to say that I am not hurt by what he did. Of course I am and of course it will take me time to recover from it and it will take me time to trust somebody wholly again but I am not ruined and I can never be ruined. I have been heartbroken before in an all consuming way that this cannot hold a candle to and, though I hadn't been wronged then in the way I have now, that didn't ruin me so I know this can't either.

I love to have old friends and sometimes it gets me in a pensive mood

I definitely do not have a hard time being friends with people my own age, but I do find it difficult to find people my own age to be friends with. I don't know where the hip young people hang out and, even if I did, I wouldn't know how to approach them. But that's okay. Not everybody needs to have a sitcom-style close knit group of friends their own age who all frequent the same bar and play specific roles in the group and say quippy little one liners. A lot of my friends here are people I know through dancing, most of whom are ten or more years older than I am, or through my early morning skinny dipping group, most of whom are thirty or more years older than I am. 

This morning, after swimming, I was at a friend's house for breakfast and to help give some guidance on lighting and decorating. As a sixty-four year old, she's experienced all sorts of things I can't even imagine. Her sons are my age, almost. I think I'm nearly a year older than her eldest. Regardless, what I mean to say is that she is quite a bit older than I am. On this particular morning, she finally told me a bit more about her soon-to-be ex-husband and how he just up and left one day, about a year ago. They had been together for more than half of her life and he just left. I can't even begin to imagine what that feels like. She said they've had only minimal contact because he told her that when he sees her face he can't function for an entire week afterward because he loves her so much, but that they need to get divorced. She told me sometimes she understands and sometimes she doesn't. On a very conceptual level and, oddly enough, on a deeply instinctual and emotional level, I kind of get it. But in every way in between those two, I don't. And I think that's kind of where I tend to operate. On the border between logical and emotional, but trying to make everything make sense in a very concrete way. 

The heartbreak that comes with somebody up and leaving after thirty-five years of marriage is something I can't even begin to imagine. How do you go one? When my college boyfriend and I broke up after about two and a half, nearly three years, I was completely useless for months. I couldn't eat. I became so weak that I needed two friends to help me move from my college town into the apartment I'm in now. I am only just now, two years later, feeling like I might be ready to really be with somebody again, romantically, in a meaningful capacity. At sixty-four, do you ever decide to try again? Do you wait for him to come back, knowing he loves you and wishes he could be with you but says he just can't, not now, maybe not ever?

My brake light came on today. I'm bringing my car to her mechanic tomorrow.