Claiming My Voice: From the darkness, the light emerges.

You know that feeling when that person you thought you’d spend the rest of your life with has decided they changed their mind? Yep, that is heartbreaking. In my youth, I thought I’d loved. My heart broke more times that I can count. I will admit that I was often delusional and that the ‘relationship’ I thought I was having did not often agree with what the other was feeling. I was only acutely aware of my own thoughts, ideas and perceptions. To make myself feel better, I had to tell myself stories about what could be if only…If only…

Him: In my early 20s, I was a pretty active alcoholic and drug addict so I get that my thinking may have not been exactly clear but love is still love. I fell in love with this guy I worked with and for a couple years I pined for him from the sidelines. He was married for a while and then I was with someone else but he was the one I wanted to love. Eventually we got together and between our youth and drug use, it didn’t work out. In fact, it got pretty ugly. But for all the craziness, I always loved him. Just before I moved to Oregon, we agreed that we would work on having a baby. I knew no matter what, I’d always love him and I wanted to make sure that my child was conceived from love. Predictably, we went our separate ways but he was always the father of my son and “the love of my life”.

I compared every relationship and feelings of love against my feelings for him. Every new boyfriend I would ask myself “Do I now or do I think I will ever love this guy as much as much as I love him?” The answer I almost always came up with was “If he came back today, I would break up with this guy in a heart beat.” There was one that I would have been hard pressed to answer that question. I’m pretty sure I broke his heart.

I can’t even count the hours I spent alone in the middle of the night sobbing because I was either spinning about how he didn’t love me or how I would never be able to fall in love because he was the only one. Oh sure, year after year those midnight crying sessions got farther between and became shorter and shorter but that idea that I would be alone because I couldn’t have him always remained. And part of me always hoped that someday we’d get back together…some day when we were healthier and wiser.

Dad: If you have read some of my other stuff or you know me, you know I am pretty clear about my daddy issues. In short, I never knew my dad. When my mom was pregnant, she left him and moved 1500 miles away and he didn’t follow. For much of my life I held the belief that he didn’t want me and that I must be unloveable because he never came for me.

As an adult I would sometimes pour through Idaho phone books and call all the Bergs in Idaho since I had been told that is where his people were from. When the internet became a thing, I paid sites to help me find Bergs and I continued to call strangers asking if they were my dad or family of his. Always to no good. I had a couple of moments where the dots started to line up but invariably there would be some detail that wouldn’t match and I’d move on to the next person in the list.

Sometimes friends would ask what I might do if he didn’t want to know me or if he were dead, and I always took those thoughts to heart and braced myself for those possibilities. I thought I did anyway. Honestly, I had some cliche romantic ideal of us meeting and him telling me he’d been looking for me too and he would be cheeky and wise and his love would make me OK. I knew his love for me would fix all the parts of me I saw as fucked up.

2021 taught me more about heartbreak than I ever would have thought I could handle.

In 2019, my son’s father and I got back together. It was bliss…for a hot minute. It wasn’t long before I started seeing the signs that the image I’d held for so long about that man didn’t exist. The man I had pined for for over 25 years was only in my head. The man in front of me could never compare to the one in my head. Although we had grown and wisened, we were no more compatible than we had been in our 20s. Sure, we removed the drugs and alcohol, but we were just different people. We tried for 2 years and it just didn’t work out. In February 2021 we gave up…we stopped fighting for what could never be. For months I grieved. I grieved the loss of the fantasy man I now knew I could never have. I grieved the 25+ years I’d wasted waiting for him. I grieved the loss of the love that DID exist between us. The dream was dead and my heart broke and I would have told you that my heart could bear no more.

In August 2021 I came home from doing something and as I pulled in, all I could think about was that when I entered my house, I would have to clean up the mess that my beloved Hunny dog had made. Hunny was my beloved Brown Dog for 16 years. In the 9 months or so before this, her health had been declining and the vet and I were doing everything we could to make her comfortable. On this particular day, I knew it was time. I came in and she seemed to sense my decision and she was just sweet and happy to see me and I called the vet. The next day, we went to the dog park for one last romp before we went to the vet. We weren’t there 10 minutes when she laid down and wouldn’t get up. I carried her to the car, tears streaming down my face and we went to the vet and I got to be with her as she moved on to the Big Dog Park in the sky. I wept that day in a way I never had. My Hunny girl was the only living creature I believe I have loved purely and she loved me back the same. My great hope became that I could find some human I could love like that. Hell, I wish I could love all humans like that.

Within a few weeks, suddenly and without warning, a cousin from my dad’s side connected with me. I have done DNA testing and we matched as cousins and she and I talked. Finally! I got to talk to someone related to my dad. That first phone call I made with bated breath hoping she would tell me where my dad was. (I realized that the old fantasy of him being my dad and us living some blissful father/daughter life had morphed. I knew he must be older and maybe I could take care of him in his old age and we’d learn to laugh together and love one another). My cousin had not seen my dad since she was a child. This did not bode well. Within a week I was connected with my nephew and his mom…a sister! While I am deeply grateful for the relationship I have with my new sister, those first conversations tipped me over. My dad (our dad) died in 1977 of alcohol overdose.

For weeks I waffled between numb and in excruciating pain. Due to a physical issue, I was laid up for 2 weeks and all I could do was obsess about my father. The pain he must have been in to drink himself to death and the loss of another dream: Not only was it final and I would NEVER get to have a dad, all those hours of looking for him were in vain.

2022 was pretty dark. In my pain, I stopped being able to feel my God. I felt pretty alone even though I continued to do all the things I do: fellowship, service, work. I had to come to grips with who I am really. What does love really mean? What does it mean to love and be loved? At a new level, I had to look squarely at my beliefs about the world and myself.

I have come to understand how much I lived in fantasy: In stories I created so I didn’t have to face reality. It is only by having my heart completely ripped out that I can start over. Now is my time. I get to completely reinvent myself. Who will I become? How can this new me serve humanity?

Time will tell I suppose.