Myself at this station

Once when i got off the phone with my sister, F commented that I had a sort of nest of people who cared about me that he lacked. It was during one of the not infrequent weekends where the space between us seemed to conjure up violent and sudden storms, spring on the prairies -- and he dipped into a fairly rare moment of a kind of regret, noting the way I seemed to pass from hand to hand among warm configurations of people.

I think I've always known that, but deep in the heart of yearning for a lover, the emotional impression of people outside that centre is a pretty thin watermark. But in the last couple of weeks, I've really felt those hands in a new way. Suddenly I trust the constellations around me, feel anchored in them in a way I don't know if I ever have before.

When B and I broke up, I stumbled through an orbit that felt more like the breathless gravity of a black hole. The people around me were really holding me up -- D, Suzie, B, my online community, J&S, R, M -- the many people who gravely and patiently listened to me howl with angst, with fear, with deep sorrow, nodded and encouraged as I patched life together. Then, I gulped at them, wanted to feel like there was something mutual going on, but I was voracious and endlessly needy. That certainly got thinner, but it continued to stretch itself out as I strived to find my feet in work, meaning, writing.

Ending a nearly 3 year relationship with someone you've never lived with is obviously a massively different thing than stumbling in tears out of a 14 year relationship your life is scaffolded around. But even so, I'm bruised, I'm sad, I'm a little lonely. But my world, my night sky? It's complex and unbelievably profound. Multiple constellations, each one signaling love, caring, endurance. Beams of light in silico from my people across the continent, the ocean. Warm chaotic life around tables, food, music, arms around me. Dinner and narratives and hilarity and new lives. Just... all there, all in orbit, keeping me in gravitational pull.

If I flick back through this blog 3 years, I realize that I nested a lot of emerging identities in the push/pull with F. The passion pulled into being first by a Leonard Cohen song years before I met F that formed the underthrum. The StraightCate persona who could navigate and hold the cultural warmth of the dyke community and the hand-in-hand couple across a table, heels of hot boots tucked neatly under. The academic with purpose, drive. Work that comes from someplace bigger. And I think what I've realized is that I found a way to live into those stories that was enabled in the dance with F -- but not shaped by or limited to him. Recognizing that the emotional self of me isn't separate from those parts of me.

This week has been wearing. I flurried my way through decluttering, getting my place into the crisp template of desirable locale. LIsted it. Hoped to sell quickly, resigned myself wobbling hope and disappointment through my fingers like trying to carry too many wineglasses by their stems with every viewing. Fled the place while people tried to imagine themselves here. Planned the business life with D & J. Worked. Hit walls of fatigue. Felt the whiplash shock as every night at bed I faced again the complete disappearance of the person I'd processed my days with for 3 years. Found sleep, imaginative dreams. Launched new stories, a co-edited book, kayak lessons.Felt loved.