To know who we are now,
we have to know
where we originally come from.

Not just the superficial exterior,
the laughter,
or the bright moments
that touch our lives with light.

To know who we really are,
we have to understand
what kind of pain
brought about our journey
to compassion and empathy.

I had, over recent years,
made the inaccurate assumption
that my most difficult experiences
had passed when my marriage
to Peter ended.

But that was just
a violent blast of pain
to prepare myself,
and our family
for what was to come.

I can see now how much of this
I have actually brought on myself.

I broke my own coveted law

"Never let them ' in ' ".

Not since the single most vivid day,
when I had just turned 18
had I experienced such emotional pain.

My boyfriend, Dana,
had returned from Las Vegas
after a move that had been
emotionally devastating.

He was not the epitome
of a healthy relationship for me,
but it didn't stop my heart
from aching everytime I thought of him.

I thought it was love,
it was need,
which was a very different thing.

He had been gone for months,
and on that particular day in fall,
he came back to see his family,
to see me
and I gave myself to him.

We made love with wild abandon,
as one does in youth
so freely before we realize
how much of ourselves are lost
to such fleeting moments of passion.

In the moments afterwards I lay in his arms,
and he whispered almost indiscernibly
that he had met and fallen in love
with another woman.

He was going to marry her.

He packed up the last of his things,
I sat numb, unable to move.
And then from the corner of my eyes,
I saw as he reached for his robe...
the last item left in the home
we had shared for close to a year.

I suddenly felt rage,
and pain,
and ripped it from his hands,
wrapping it around my body,
shaking but running barefoot
out of the apartment to
a destination I did not yet know.

I didn't feel anything
but the heat of the pain,
ignoring the physical cold,
or the glass in the street.

I ran until I was breathless,
straight into traffic,
and sat down in the middle of the intersection,
shivering,
nearly naked...
while I sobbed waiting for relief
that I knew deep inside could not exist.

I had just given myself to him again,
and he had deliberately waited to tell me
until he had finished using
the purest essence of what I had to offer.

That pain gave birth
to a self flaw of enormous proportions
a co-dependency
that would take years to dissipate.

I vowed that day,
never again
would I let someone
come that close to my soul,
that quickly.

Your pain
is the breaking
of the shell
that encloses
your understanding

- Kahil Gibran
The Prophet