love school with sumi: bowing to the force
during the final days of my last relationship, i found god in a cheryl strayed essay—as we often do with words that unlock the door to our deepest knowing. i was in the 9th inning of a rapidly approaching life lesson. texted to me as photos from my therapist’s copy of the book, the essay satiated a hunger that’s probably familiar to anyone who’s been unraveled by, “should i stay or should i go?” and not able to make sense of or shake off that “go” feeling.
strayed says:
“if you yearn to be free of a particular relationship and you feel that yearning lodged within you more firmly than any of the other competing and contrary yearnings are lodged, your desire to leave is not only valid, but probably the right thing to do. even if someone you love is hurt by that.
“i didn’t want to stay with my ex-husband, not at my core, even though whole swaths of me did. and if there’s one thing i believe more than i believe anything else, it’s that you can’t fake the core. the truth that lives there will eventually win out. it’s a god we must obey, a force that brings us all inevitably to our knees. and because of it, i can only ask […] you the same question: will you do it later or will you do it now?” —cheryl strayed
over half a year since the breakup, i’m in a new kind of love life territory. i’m noticing the pure relief that being single affords me and how obeying the god of my inner knowing doesn’t cause the same kind of upheaval and hurt feelings that it did in partnership. not that there’s no ruckus whatsoever—i regularly navigate conflict with friends and in work partnerships—but there’s a way romantic conflict can look particularly unhinged on me.
being single brought me back to myself. i reconnected almost immediately with the miracle of listening and taking action from the core that cheryl strayed talks about. or as my therapist put it, i remembered that my primary relationship is with my inner knowing. i’m trying to train my cells to remember this under the pressure, seduction, and tbh mild delusion of romantic love. obeying that god has made me clearer and more alive in all other aspects of my life. when i think about all my previous partnerships, where at several points i wrestled with “should i stay or should i go?” my mind was like a house with certain rooms i just wouldn’t enter. i learned what it’s like to hide from yourself over stretches of time. that part where she says, “i didn’t want to stay with my ex-husband, not at my core, even though WHOLE SWATHS of me did.” i would live in the swaths for days and months and years on end—be that the sex, the spiritual connection, the ease of living together, the shared values, the beautiful home. they’d be like winds that would temporarily fog my vision from my core knowing—that i needed to go and not because i didn’t love the person, but because it was no longer right for me. listening when my inner voice says “go” has been the strongest test of radical self-compassion. it’s me whispering “i accept myself” and letting the sigh of relief guide me to do what i know i must do.
i don’t know myself to leave a relationship because of a fight or a slight inconvenience. i’m not so much afraid of ending the right partnership because there are small or even super muddy conflicts. my inner knowing doesn’t actually appear all that beholden to my survival strategies. (how many times did i ask myself if my wanting to leave was me ‘sabotaging’ a good thing? confusing my inner knowing for a trauma response.) what i’m learning is that she has a quiet power that steers my ship with the interests of my highest, wisest self in mind. she’s here to dignify the one of one vibration that is me. but even still, i am, like, kind of scared of this force that i must obey. she is so specific—she’s the only thing shaped like her that exists. (i think part of the reason i study astrology is because it’s a way to find the math in mine and other people’s energy.) i’m trying to get to know her through any window available to me. for example, i look at my recently liked songs on spotify:
she is so specific — corny, moody, strange — just a whole concoction i’m amused by. i see glimmers of my energy in the quirks of my closest friends, which i think you’d see too if i were to take a slice of their spotify likes (or soundcloud… there’s always one friend lmao), or to-do lists, or the odd reason they were late to our meetup. i’ve definitely been a lucky dawg who found a kindred yet different enough specificity in my friendships.
so this new love life territory is me basically saying “i’m not gonna lie to myself anymore.” i’m not gonna pretend to not know what i know, if or when it becomes clear that this isn’t it for me. it’s a cost too high—i crave my aliveness more than i crave another person’s love. my single days have been really good for getting to fully immerse myself in my own wants, needs, and aura without contracting them for another person. i now get those studies about single women living longer lives, on a more visceral level.
right now my love school boot camp is training my specificity to jump out at me – to know the texture, style, and subtleties through which my core is trying to tell me something. by specificity i mean the ways i communicate with myself that “i don’t really want to move forward with this person.”* (cannot recommend pulling tarot enough for getting intimate with how “yes,” “no,” and “i don’t know” feels in you.) intuition, i’m learning, doesn’t always start as a clear “no.” sometimes it appears as this little hiding dance – noticing, what’s that uncomfortable feeling i’m having? am i avoiding making eye contact with that little thing in the corner of the room that’s doubting this? the part that, if i allow myself to be courageous about letting go, will reunite me with myself. i can either listen to it now or obey it later on, at what will likely be a harder juncture.
but don’t get me wrong, for even as bow to my own aliveness, i’m also fucking scared. i’m scared of lying to myself for the sake of connection. i know it’s really alluring, maybe even second nature, for me to get lost in the beautiful things that do work in a relationship, when i’m hiding from my core knowing. i’m scared of entering a relationship and doing that again. i’ve seen this tendency in friendships too. the friendship is no longer working for me, the other person is showing me what they’re capable of, and yet i find myself getting lost in the fantasy or idealism of what it means to me, how long we’ve been friends, our movement history, a montage of our greatest hits and Big Life Moments together, etc etc etc. the lesson i’m in has surely been: how do you respond to what is ACTUALLY in front of you, and not the fantasy of what you hope it can be?
it’s an incredible, raw, maybe even slightly feral way to experience the world through your core knowing. i feel incredibly powerful, sometimes even a little dangerous, which is a testament to just how much living outside of my deepest knowing had become the norm for me.
what gives me pause is that i think i’ve begun associating partnership with a deadening of self. and then there’s this subtle fear emerging of my inner knowing— that it’s gonna lead to a lot of letting go and endings. so now i find myself living with this competing desire. the me that wants expansive, transformative partnership that’s sexually fulfilling and rooted in true friendship. and the relief of not having to wrestle with the force i must obey, which could say at any moment, “in spite of all the good here, no.”
this entry started as a prompt from my therapist to write to this force that i’m beholden to about what i’m afraid of. here it goes:
i’m afraid i’m gonna get involved with someone and you’re gonna tell me i need to break up with them
i’m afraid you’ll be the reason i won’t find fulfilling partnership until i’m maybe 40+ because you’re such a specific creature
i’m afraid of hurting people i love
i’m afraid that you’re constantly changing what it is you want and that i appear like a fuckboy because of my uncertainty about what it is that i even want in a relationship. for example, i thought i was like solidly monogs for the last decade — which i learned through sum tough relationship endings — and now here i am thinking i might be subtly nonmonogs? thank you for giving all my friends a good chuckle
i’m afraid that you’re teaching me that love isn’t what i thought it was gonna be and that what i want out of this life is a much more alternative marrow
i’m afraid i won’t listen to you (betray myself) and i’ll miss this version of me that is so life-giving
i’m afraid of you cause you’re a hoe who wants a soulmate, but having the option to be a hoe is so lifegiving to us…so? you barely have the energy to make lunch every day so i don’t think poly is in the cards for us baybe
i’m afraid that if i do meet someone that my heart is firing on all cylinders for, i’m gonna ruin it by not doing the things that nourish me (ex. alone time, friend time) and miss being single and be unsure of how to simultaneously do partnership and do me
i’m afraid of the uncertainty that lives in the beauty of how rare it is to meet someone who you can self-actualize with over and over again
that’s just off the dome right now, but as i write these fears out, i come closer into contact with how listening to my core is actually never gonna betray me. even if it means making hard decisions along the way, it’s not trying to sabotage the good in my life. it only says no to what isn’t for me. it’s a patient teacher on the long way around. it’s doing that cell work of remembering that i belong to myself first. it’s perhaps breaking up some romantic notions of falling in love that i know deep down isn’t the sustained mutative fulfillment that i’m after. maybe it wants me to unearth a way of loving that i actually haven’t experienced yet, but that might bring me closer to the unique spirituality that lives inside me. i’d love to date her.
*there’s likely another blog post that needs to be written for the “this is a really good and miraculous connection that i want to keep moving towards.”