Reach Out and Touch

My ex-boyfriend is in town. We haven’t dated in six years. We haven’t seen each other in three. Jesse came into town yesterday, eager to get his hands dirty with this whole process, or at least understand my experience better. I was nervous, or at least really curious as to what would happen. Would old habits come into play? Would we even know how to interact with each other as more mature adults?

When we broke up years ago, a great amount of hurt and anger were present for me. It was my first big break-up; my heart was a little overwhelmed by the emotion. In order to process it, I covered the love I had felt for Jesse with anger. Over the years, the love has always remained tainted with the hurt. Is it always?

Last night, I took Jesse to a yoga class I like to attend for C-patients and their friends. It’s one of my favorite communities: me and the gals fighting breast cancer. We sit together for almost an hour, talking shop about cancer treatment. (Jesse had wondered at first if he’d be up for a ‘rigorous’ yoga class…silly boy). Last night’s topic of conversation was fear, and how fear can be the most pervasive emotion to deal with during an experience like this. Afterwards, the instructor had us enter some simple stretches followed by a relaxing five minutes or so of simply lying down on the mats. She likes to come around and rub essential oils into our temples. This is my favorite part of the class. As someone who has been dealing with disease, one of my biggest shocks is how timid people are to touch me. Nurses sanitize their hands and put on gloves before interacting with me. I’ve even noticed people close to me (no fault of their own) unsure of whether or not a hug is ‘safe.’ The instructor boldly moved around from person to person, giving each of us a good amount of time and attention—touch, beautiful, delicious touch. I had an impulse. I wanted to reach over to Jesse, lying next to me, and take his hand. The old fears returned: would I look too needy? Would he take it the wrong way? Would he reject the impulse? I remembered our conversation about fear and decided to reach. Jesse’s hand felt very warm and comforting. He didn’t hesitate, but wrapped my palm in his fingers. Suddenly, I was present to something I haven’t been in years. I loved this guy, like really loved him with all my heart. He and I walked together through some pretty intense moments in both our lives. The hurt, the anger, the need to ‘protect’ myself was gone, and all I could feel was the overpowering love that both of us were capable of feeling for each other. It made me wonder why, when things don’t work out in a relationship, my M.O. has always been to push the love (that is very real) aside. It felt nice to tap into that, to be touched, and to remember that I’m a person capable of loving deeply and expansively, and that it’s a choice to either push that aside because the love doesn’t look like what I thought it would look like, or to embrace it for what it is. I’m not as afraid as I once was of love changing. It will always do that. But it’s nice to know that even years later, regardless of what it looks like, love’s still there, if I can release my fears and give myself the gift of experiencing it.