An Atrophy of Being

I have been avoiding posting a blog because i wanted to have something substantial to write. However, my delay in writing brought no revelation or any story that i could tell. In fact, the past few days have been horrible, almost as if the breakup were yesterday. The insomnia, the dreams, the anxiety - all were back again in my mind. I felt almost like i made no progress at all. Being here in Canada is hard for me, I am extremely grateful to have my family close by, but at the same time i have no friends and true alliances that would take me out to drink and distract myself with some good old crazy fun. Most of my time is spent in isolation, reading, writing and just over all searching for answers to life's mysteries.

These past 3 weeks, i have been getting advice on the numerous trials and tribulations of marriage and kids. Both my sister and her husband have discussed with me the lows and highs of marriage. They have been married for over 10 years now and been together several years before that, so they do have some mileage and experience under their belts. I have to admit though, none of their talks have made me feel any better about losing kevin. They both have told me that marriage is difficult, and with the wrong person it could be detrimental. This is usually followed up by the assumption that perhaps kevin was the wrong person for me. However, i just dont believe that. Maybe i should change my beliefs and change my mindset to "kevin is wrong for me" rather than the opposite. It all is just so difficult to work through in my mind when my heart truly doesn't believe what my mind says.

I had a discussion with my sister today about marriage and kids. I said naively "If I'm not to be with kevin, maybe i should just forget about the man altogether and go to the sperm bank to have my kids". I later on then told my brother in law my desire for cutting out the man completely from my life. I think this must have jarred him a bit because he later came to me with his thoughts on the subject.

Now Roger (my brother in law) is a very worldly man, and he waited until very late to get married to my sister. He is now in his mid 50s and is more than 12 years older than my sister, they have two young kids 9 and 6 years old. So Roger has been around the block more than a few times, and experienced full the joys of bachelorhood. He came to me in his very open minded sort of gentle approach and he spoke about the ups and downs of marriage and kids. He understood the joys of being a one man show, and he understood the joys of being a family man. In summary he said, the trouble of marriage and kids is worth the joys it brings and he would never go back to being solo. He must have been really worried that I would completely never seek out man to get married because of my expression of hopelessness at present, so he may have felt he needed to offer some advice on the matter.

The truth is, as much as I have these feelings of hopelessness, i truly do want to get married and have children with a man I love genuinely. I do want the whole marriage and kids and stress and shit that goes along with it. I do want it, I want all of it. So i didnt need much convincing. I had these hopes to be with kevin, but i have to change my mindset a little now as much as it pains me to do so.

There was one thing that Roger mentioned that did resonate with me. He mentioned that these pains, and hurts, and stresses, and despairs, and traumas that we encounter along the way is what allows us to truly grow in our being. He said we need the pains that we face through the relationships that we build and the relationships that we lose in life because it is what makes us grow. Without them there will be an "atrophy of being".

An atrophy of being is a great way to describe it. I don't think i can put it any more eloquently myself. As the days go by, and my pain gets less and more at the same time. As my emotions go up and down at the same time. As my heart breaks and beats at the same time -  I can only hope that this is a way to exercise my being, to keep it from failing and completely stagnating into atrophy.