How to mend a broken heart or how I learned to fly

I decided that I had to see my old friend today. Our relationship has spanned a quarter of a century. To call our saga "tumultuous" would be an understatement. She also happens to be the birth mother of my child. This also makes her my ex.

I have loved this woman since I was a young person, before I could even drive, before I called myself a lesbian, before so many tortuous roads unfurled.

Our breakup was the culmination of heaping betrayals, a profound lack of relational and spiritual tools and my compulsive overeating spiraling into an even deeper abyss.

The truth is: she doesn't know who I am.
The truth is: my heart breaks that we couldn't get it together enough to overcome the shattering of our family.
The truth is: It's been six years since our split up and I had to confront the fact that maybe she was either unwilling or unable to build a bridge towards healing.
So I asked her for a cup of coffee.

We, humans, are not the most evolved bunch. Mostly, we form bonds and when they disintegrate from the original map, we assume the wind will carry the fragments, the ashes. Rarely are we able to create a different map from which we could navigate with a stronger , better, but also familiar crew.

So, I had to know whether this was a conscious decision on her partor not. It was. This isn't the first time she broke my heart. It was, however, a time that my heart got to break more profoundly and I got to not eat over it.

So I went to tell it on the mountain.

I chose the reverse route that she had brought me on when I first visited California. As I started up the mountain, I placed my hand on my crumbling heart. "I am right here. I am not alone." The shocking orange poppies in the vast sea of green whispered "You are not alone." The turkey vultures dipping into the rolling, wavy hills insisted "You are not alone." I was crying into an ocean of Forget-me-nots "Not alone."

I realized that my question had changed in these years of separation. I no longer was asking "Can I climb this mountain?" The question now was "How long will it take to climb this mountain?" But she didn't know that. She never did get the best of me. That was what was so heartbreaking.

On this trail we had put our dreams in a nest, waiting for them to hatch. Some didn't get the longevity and nurturing to hatch and fly. Some fell from such heights and crashed, hitting bottom. And then I realized something. It wasn't just my heart that was breaking, it was my own transformation ready to break open. I was able to tell her that if letting her be right where she is, without remorse, expectations, desperate hopes, or the ability for us to grow closer, was going to give her happiness and serenity, then I wished her blessings and love and farewell. I was ready to fly. I was ready to leave the nest even if no former dreams were to ever hatch.

She may or may not be able to get to a place where she can see me fly. She may or may not be able to fly near me. All I know is when I got to the top of the mountain, the purple lupines, the yellow sulphur flowers, the pink sweet-pea shoots were doing a dance with the bumble bees and I wasn't about to stagnate as a wall-flower.

Tomorrow, I will bring my beloved partner to this place. She is able and willing to have the best of me.