The Long Kiss Goodbye

Every great kiss begins in the eyes.

It starts in that quick glimmer, that almost imperceptible look you see in his eyes that lasts just a millisecond, but betrays his thoughts better than a thousand words could do.

As soon as that flicker of something, maybe it's passion, maybe desire, maybe just curiosity-- whatever it is, as soon as you see it you start to anticipate the warmth of his soft lips against yours, his breath on your skin, the bristle of five o'clock-shadow on your cheek..  You know from the minute your eyes catch his and he sees that singular thought in yours, that this kiss is going to be a long one.

It starts out gentle and timid.  A little peck, then a lingering one.  Before you know it you're engulfed by the intimacy of it, his lips on yours, his hands in your hair, you reaching for him, letting him support you as the high of passion makes you levitate off the ground.

And you stay there, floating above reality for a while, letting him take your breath away so that even when your feet touch the ground again, your head is still in the clouds.

Your head stays in the clouds, even when he steps back and lets you go.  Your mind is lost in the pleasure of his embrace, the tenderness of that kiss, the surreal transcendence of, for just a moment, having been assimilated into one being.  His step backwards sends you reeling through space, grasping for that moment of bliss once again.  You get so blinded, so confused that you keep on reaching for him.  Even as he twists your arm behind your back and makes you cry out in pain he reaches for you, and he kisses you, and you kiss him back.  You let him kiss you and twist you into knots even when you know the "look" is gone, when you hear him say you're stupid, not good enough, that you're not even worthy of him

He keeps reaching for you you, and you keep reaching back even though you start to realize that first kiss wasn't at all what you thought it would be.

He reaches for  you because you're there. Because he's afraid of when you won't be there. Because of the desire that resides inside him that must be channeled elsewhere; but without you, where will it go? Who will he control?

And you.  You with your constant hoping.  Hoping for that rush you had at the beginning when his lips first brushed against yours, when his kisses traveled lightly down your neck, his arms around your waist. You hope for the safety you once felt in his embrace.  You quiet the voice that speaks from your soul that tells you, you are not safe anymore.  You hope and hope for that moment to return when all that existed was the perfection of that kiss, the ecstasy of knowing you were wanted, craved, about to be ravished by him. You long for that time when he protected you.

You never once thought that from the very first glimmer in his eye, before your lips ever did that intimate dance together, the kiss was nothing more than a very long goodbye.

It was a goodbye with warm pretty days by the riverside tucked inside it. It was a goodbye with lazy nights on the couch watching movies, grilling on the back porch, and driving to the middle of nowhere for days of adventure,  all perfectly blended into the illusion.

It was goodbye with harsh words and hurtful behavior thrown in here and there, peppered all around the sweet happy moments. It was goodbye with confusion and anger and a lingering voice in your head that might never go away, telling you you'll never be good enough. It will sound like your own voice after a time, but it will always be his.

You never would have imagined that from moment on the doorstep when he picked you up for your first date you were saying goodbye.

It felt so much like an amazing hello, didn't it?

But then things got confusing, because one of you knew about the goodbye and one of you didn't.
And then both of you knew about it, but tried to pretend it wasn't so.
Then you, with all your hoping and praying and trying to understand, picked  everything apart and laid it out.  You started to untangle the moments, like Christmas lights to see if somewhere along the way you had really messed things up." Maybe" you thought, "this goes HERE, and THAT goes there, and maybe THIS, well this shouldn't be here at all."

And with all those unspoken fears and insecurities now laid out like a grandma's quilt, patched together with nothing more than confusion and pain, the only thing you could see that was out of place was you.

You examined it too closely.  You  spent too much time trying to understand it. You made one kiss into something much larger and more meaningful than it ever should have been.

For it should have been just a  kiss.  A thing of joy.  A euphoric moment in time, when nothing else matters except the four lips that are entwined, the two feet that levitate off the ground, the eyes that light for a millisecond, upon each other with the sensation that something big is about to happen that can likely never be adequately explained.

The moment he hurt you the very first time, well that was him telling you goodbye.

You couldn't hear the goodbye because his kisses were still passionate and you couldn't let go no matter how hard it hurt.  You couldn't leave him, because maybe he was counting on you to be there. Maybe he needed witness your pain as proof  of your love; as payment for the kiss.  Even after your feet were planted firmly back on the ground and your head started to descend from the clouds, you couldn't pull away from that long, long goodbye kiss, because something in your head kept telling you it was still hello. It was just complicated.  Love hurts sometimes. He needs you to help him.  He loves you in his own way He's just angry. He's mentally ill. He's been mistreated and you won't be added to the long list of people who have hurt him. You love him. Really, you love who you thought he was.

But he keeps twisting you up. Tying you in knots. Keeping you confused, lonely, afraid.  He bends you until you finally break. Then you, finally aware of the pain enough to pull away, start to realize that all along, this was never anything but Goodbye.

It was a Goodbye of summers and winters. Of trips across country, lazy days at home. It was a long long kiss of hoping against hope.  It was a long, passionate kiss, filled with dreams of all that could have been if only...If only.  It was a long goodbye even while you were  sleeping side by side, talking about your dreams, making plans together. Imagining life without him felt scary and uncertain, even though life with him was becoming hell.

You held on even though you realized at some point that the passion in your kiss, the lingering hope in your every hug, the last thought on your mind as you fell asleep wrapped tightly in his arms was goodbye.

A sad, long goodbye kiss was all you shared.

Goodbye was all there could have ever been from the first moment when he kissed you on your couch, to the last moment when he kissed you in his bed.  He was never able to give you any more than the simplicity of a kiss.  There was nothing deeper inside him to share.  In that one kiss, you plunged into the very depth of his being, and in that one kiss you found out all you needed to know.  Only, you didn't know that yet.

You held onto hope even when you were moving your things out of the house. You hoped he would change even up until  the last day when he turned his back to you and walked away, closing the door behind him, finally revealing the shallowness of his kiss and all the time it engulfed.

 "Goodbye." He said, as he walked away as if he might return.  But you knew, deep down that even if he did knock again, the door would be forever locked to him.

You finally heard the only word you ever waited around to hear him say. You knew a long time ago that the long kiss goodbye was going to be a difficult one to end, and you knew all the same, that end it, you must.

The greatest kisses always start in the eyes. If only there were some way to tell which kisses were the hello kind and the goodbye kind. If only there were a way to know which passion to allow to lift your feet off the ground, and which one meant you should keep them firmly planted.  Which kiss should we run to and which one should we run from?

We merely take the moments as they come, and make them ours in whatever way we can. Until and at last, we discover whether we have said hello, or spent a very long time telling someone whose very soul we think we know, an excruciating, heart broken Goodbye.

My Old Pal Maybe

I am undisciplined.  I am a procrastinator. I am an over-thinker. These are the qualities that often trap me inside my own head.  These are the three things about me that make the words "I can't" creep into my vocabulary with increasing regularity. They are all true of me.  I do lack discipline.  I have a story rattling around in my head that I started writing months ago.  Bits and pieces of it sit here and there on my computer but I do not make myself sit down and finish the tale.  Instead I put it off for another day.  I tell myself, "I'll work on it when it's raining and I can't get out of the house."  But then we have two weekends' worth rain and I tell myself, "I'll save it for a day when I can take the computer outside and work in the sunshine."

As I procrastinate and refuse to force myself to sit down at this computer, I am thinking.  My brain never shuts up, even when I want it to.  It is constantly examining every little shard of my life, past, present and future.  I scrutinize myself.  I put other people under that same microscope.  Eventually I think myself into a slump.  I start to believe the flawed logic of unkind words that have been flung at me far too many times.  I sometimes find that I have absorbed those words too deeply, so deeply that they have indeed become a part of who I am.  I start to believe there are no more people in the world who are good, honest or kind.  I talk myself into feeling hopeless.

Maybe I am lazy.  Maybe I am unintelligent.  Maybe I'm insignificant, inferior.  Maybe.

That is where I was a few weeks ago.  I was in that "maybe" place, where nothing was absolute and everything was for certain; and certainly,  nothing was good.  Those were the things my mind settled on, and there my mind stayed for a spell.  Maybe trapped me on my couch for a couple of Saturdays in a row.  Maybe is not good company  Maybe whispers old words into my ears and tells me I'm not good enough, because if I were, my life would be different.  Maybe says I've only gotten what I deserved.  Maybe never speaks to me about what good might exist in the world for me and inside of me.

Fortunately there is definitely more in my world than Maybe.

Maybe's talk of my shortcomings got drowned out for a while, by the kind words of loving friends who reminded me that I am more than my imperfections.  I am more than a procrastinator, more than a mom who is always running late, more than even my own thoughts will let me believe at times.

Then one day I sat across the table from my friend, an 82 year old Korean War veteran, a father who raised two daughters on his own, a former salesman for American Tobacco who never smoked a day in his life. He is a widower who took care of his second wife through dementia and health woes that would have sent a lesser man running.  His love left this world in January of this year and I met him in February when I started my new job.  We ate our chicken in relative quiet, only interrupting the silence with a word here and there.  Then in one sincere moment, this man, this sweet, treasured friend shattered Maybe all to bits.  I took a sip of tea and looked up at him to grin when I noticed the slightest glisten of tears filling his eyes.  Before I could say a word he spoke.  "I'm really glad I met you." He said.  "I needed a friend, and you have helped me so much.  It's nice to know someone cares about me."

Maybe?  Definitely, I care.  I am definitely more than that girl who was torn apart by words.  I am more than the woman who walked away from the people who tried to tear her to shreds by ripping at her spirit with their talk of how inadequate she was.  I am so certainly worthy of more than the kind of treatment I received from them.

I am kind.  I am understanding. I am accepting.  These are the things I try so hard to be that I sometimes become careless with myself.  These are the things about me that keep Maybe floating around in my head.  Maybe will never let me be, because I wanted so badly to believe the best of you.  I wanted to give kindness and feel the joy of giving it, expecting nothing in return.  I wanted to understand your motives, your fears, your insecurities.  I wanted it all to make sense so I thought, "Maybe I should give it some more time."  And then I thought, "Maybe I'm crazy." And finally, "Maybe I should leave."

Definitely.  I had to go.  I'm glad I did.  It was definitely the right thing to do, to save myself from the savagery that is you.

Maybe still fills my head with doubts.  It still eats at me sometimes, using your words.  It tells me all that is wrong with me, it tells me nothing is right.  Maybe sent me to see my therapist one day, just to ask her, "What disorder do I have?"

When she looked at me in disbelief and replied, "I don't think you are disordered at all." I thought she was full of crap.  I told her so.

"You," She said, "are a wonderful person."  She could see in my eyes that I didn't believe her.  How could I be wonderful if I am all the things you said I was?

"But what about this?" I asked as I, with my own words painted the picture for her, of my life.  I laid out my mistakes and misgivings, my faults and fears as if I were setting a table for a feast.  I fully expected her to dine upon my spirit the way you always did.  But instead, she smiled and shook her head at me as if to say, "no, you've got it all wrong."

A few seconds of silence fell heavily upon us in that tiny room as I fought back tears and she searched for something to say that would send my Maybe packing.

"In the short time I have known you, you have experienced more adversity than any other client I have ever had.  You have overcome it all, and you are still overcoming.  If you were 'disordered' you wouldn't even have the insight to wonder whether something was 'wrong' with you.  You'd just assume everyone else was to blame.  You are strong," she said.  "You are a good person."

I let the tears, just two of them, loose, and felt them run down my cheeks, drip off my chin.

"I am broken." I said.

"And you are strong enough to rebuild." She answered.

"Maybe." I said.  "Maybe I am."

I'm so profoundly grateful for all the Definitelys in my life.  Those people who are Definitely there for me. The ones I know I can depend on to lift me up when I am fallen.  I would be lost without them. They are the weights that keep me balanced, the life-force that gives me strength, the truth that gives me power.  They make me MORE of what I want to be, and care less about who I am not.  I'm so glad there is an opposite of Maybe, and that it is all of the people in my world who love me into my own transformation.

I will survive this bout of Maybe, because Definitely, I am blessed with the fullness of  Grace and Understanding that only a loving God could provide for me.  He sends it wrapped in packages of all different sizes and shapes, different colors and shades.  He sends his grace most definitely in these small moments, when someone sees some good in me and takes the time to show me I am more than my Maybes would ever have me believe.