"Congratulations to meet you!"

It's the second morning this weekend that I've woken up early but stayed in bed, stretching to reach my book while remaining under the warmth of my blankets. Here I lay for a while longer, finding a path of my own by reading about Liz's (in my head we're on a first-name basis). Though we are different, as any two people naturally are, there are common threads that bind us. And I love to wake up to her words, encouraging me and making this real.

Somehow she and the "characters" she met in her travels have a way of articulating things that I have been trying to say. Things that have so far been nebulous thoughts that wouldn't fit into letters. So here are a few of my favorite passages (and yes, mom, I am using sticky tabs instead of dog-eared pages):

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Liz: "I seriously believed that David was my soulmate."

Richard: ""He probably was. Your problem is you don't understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is you just can't let this one go...You can't accept that this relationship had a real short shelf life. You're like a dog at the dump, baby --- you're just lickin' at an empty can trying to get more nutrition out of it. And if you're not careful, that can's gonna get stuck on your snout forever and make your life miserable. So drop it."

L: "But I love him."

R: "So love him."

L: "But I miss him."

R: "So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, and then drop it."

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"I look at the Augusteum, and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all.  It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated.  The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve.  Yesterday I might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough --– but tomorrow I could be a fireworks depository.  Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.”

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"This is what we are like. Collectively, as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost one hundred years old, and she told me, 'There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history: How much do you love me? and Who's in charge?'  Everything else is somehow manageable."

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In daylight hours, I refused a certain thought, but at night it would consume me. What a catastrophe. How could I be such a criminal jerk as to proceed this deep into a marriage, only to leave it? We'd only just bought this house a year ago. Hadn't I wanted this nice house? Hadn't I loved it? So why was I haunting its halls every night now, howling like Medea? Wasn't I proud of all we'd accumulated — the prestigious home in the Hudson Valley, the apartment in Manhattan, the eight phone lines, the friends and the picnics and the parties, the weekends spent roaming the aisles of some box-shaped superstore of our choice, buying ever more appliances on credit? I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life — so why did I feel like none of it resembled me? Why did I feel so overwhelmed with duty?

I don't want to be married anymore.

My husband was sleeping in the other room, in our bed. I equal parts loved him and could not stand him. I couldn't wake him to share in my distress — what would be the point? He'd already been watching me fall apart for months now, watching me behave like a madwoman (we both agreed on that word), and I only exhausted him. We both knew there was something wrong with me, and he'd been losing patience with it. We'd been fighting and crying and we were weary in that way that only a couple whose marriage is collapsing can be weary. We had the eyes of refugees.

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"Destiny, I feel, is also a relationship --- a play between divine grace and willful self-effort. Half of it you have no control over; half of it is absolutely in your hands, and your actions will show measurable consequence. Man is neither entirely a puppet of the gods, nor is he entirely the captain of his own destiny; he's a little of both. We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses: one foot is on the horse called "fate," the other on the horse called "free will." And the question you have to ask every day is --- which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it's not under my control, and which horse do I need to steer with concentrated effort?"

Comments

[Cheryl Moore]

Great post. I especially liked the definition of a soul mate. It kind of explains Glen's and my relationship. We are as opposite as two people can be, but that enables us to see the other for what they really are and sometimes too often, to point out that reality to each other. This sometimes makes it hard, but believe me the lines of communication are WIDE OPEN in this marriage and I think that is why is has lasted during times when others would have given up. There are days I would like to kill him,(and I'm sure he feels the same way.) but on most days, I wouldn't trade him for the world.

[Cousin Amanda]

I like this part:
"In daylight hours, I refused a certain thought, but at night it would consume me."

But I have no special insight about soul mates. I don't believe in them, I guess. And to do so, maybe, is dangerous, because chances are you will meet many soul mates or others that would have been a better "match."

[Cathy]

Thanks for the insightful passages! They make you realize that no matter what you are feeling at any point in your life, that there are others out there feeling the same way. They are right about "night consuming me". I think that is why I stay up so late and make myself go to bed right when I am sooooo tired, that I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. That way all the things floating around in my head and all the little lists I make for myself over and over in my head, don't have a chance to "consume me" as I lay in the dark waiting for sleep.
Have a restful day with Kitty and take care! Love ya Cathy

[Tammie]

When I returned from traveling, I was regularly surprised by the people who came out of the woodwork to let me know they were reading my blog... friends of friends, grandmothers of people I barely know, freelancers with whom I had little contact at MGH. So surprise... I stumbled across your blog after not reading for a loooong time. For better or for worse, I have not kept up. I'm just writing to say that I read E,P,L soon after Ed and I separated. The book chose me at an airport bookstore... I liked the cover and didn't even read the back before I bought it. What struck me about your blog is that I tagged some of the same paragraphs. Reading the book made me feel a tiny bit less like a "criminal jerk" : )

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