Letter to an Ex-Lover

9 min readNov 18, 2019

I know you’re probably assuming I don’t miss you. But the opposite of that is true.

I miss you terribly (when I let myself), though I must admit that missing you shows up like an unexpected houseguest at inopportune times — and I don’t always feel like entertaining it for dinner.

I try, though, (when I can) to really just let myself feel the sensation of missing you

because it is a reminder of something more beautiful than I could have imagined…

it is a reminder of my own capacity to love.

I think to myself: Wow… I can love THIS big that it hurts THIS much?

That’s pretty magical. I mean that’s pretty fucking magical, isn’t it?

This whole ‘being human’ thing: It’s wild…

Ayahuasca showed me a lot of ways in which I was fucking up, playing small, and holding back.

There’s a lot of people I didn’t give the time of day to, there’s people I’d look down on or act better than,

But I would veil it so sneakily with this covert spirituality that although it was always kind on the surface —

it was a tool for keeping myself separate —

for ‘othering,’

for creating a hard, delineated ME,

separate from a YOU.

What I’m trying to say is that I was walking around doing the best I could to be kind and love everyone….

But you see,

I didn’t actually KNOW how to love… ANYONE.

I. Didn’t. Know. How. To. Love.

It’s because I’d never really experienced unadulterated, unconditional, unfiltered romantic love.

From the time I was 9 years old

and I lost the close relationship with the most important man and love in my life (my dad) —

some part of me curled up inside of herself in the shadows

and vowed never to love that deeply again so I didn’t have to feel the depth of pain from a loss like that. It wasn’t safe to love.

And it was like that, with every single man — in every single relationship I’d ever been in.

I’d have one foot out the door before it began.

I’d always be scanning for someone better — something better.

The grass is greener, you know?

I would grieve a relationship and process it before it even ended:

that way it wouldn’t hurt so bad when it finally did.

To my partners I’d appear cold; unfeeling.

Did I ever even love them? How could I seem so “OK”? I must’ve never cared.

I DID care, but — don’t you see? It’s so simple: I’d made a secret, forgotten promise in the deep recesses of my psyche — to my inner child, and promised to protect her.

I thought that by guarding my heart I was doing the right thing. I was being loyal to her. I was stepping in for the parent she’d lost touch with all those years ago.

It took incredible work to get to this realization:

I fell through trap doors and traveled through secret passageways,

descending infinite floors into dark basement levels of the Catacombs of Shadows I had buried decades before.

I had to follow my own thoughts

like breadcrumbs — without a flashlight —

diving into the darkness of my mind

without a map.

Unsure of where I was going

or how I would get out.

I was terrified.

You know, better than most, what I’ve been through —

and how my mind has almost swallowed me up at times.

I did NOT want to go down there in that basement.

I knew it would mean lying in a bed of broken mirrors,

sitting in a murky bog of my own self-hatred while dismal skulls bobbed and floated in the abyss around me.

I knew it would mean being tormented by the demons in my own head for hours until I cried out in exhaustion and begged for mercy.

But…

I went anyway.

I had to.There was no other way out.

Besides — I was no stranger to suffering. Some might even say I’d become quite good at it. But… it was love.

LOVE….

….that was the unexpected part.

That was the part that gutted me, brought me to my knees, cut me open,

cracked my ribs and pried my chest open until my heart thundered outside of my chest —

until I poured golden light from my ribcage like a flashlight 3 feet outside of my body,

until I shuddered and sweat and became nauseated.

LOVE.

Love did that.

It was such intense love that to me it felt the same as pain.

It was almost unbearable. I mean truly — my system was flooded

with so much love that it felt uncomfortable to be inside my own skin.

I breathed and said “This is a lot, this is a LOT.” “Yes…” I gently comforted myself, “It IS a lot.”

Suddenly all in one moment I understood why it was important to be here on Earth: why caring about life & living is important even though we know everything turns to dust in the end.

You see, I had — all this time —

been missing one VERY important piece:

I had touched the bottom of the well of suffering.

(In fact; I wore it like a badge.)

But I had put a cap — put a ceiling on love.

I’d been living life with a 60% joy threshold (safer that way) —

but once I’d punched the ceiling out — and climbed up onto the dusty roof

to let the sun kiss my face — I noticed a ladder of loving:

the loving capacity of the Universe

that stretched onward

into infinity.

INFINITY. Do you hear me?

That’s.

How BIG.

Love is.

I could climb that ladder forever and never find the end of it.

I am changed because of this, don’t you see?

It’s immense. What does one do with such information?

I cried for myself and for all the years I’d lived half an existence

with a heavy clamp on my heart.

I offered compassion to this tender place inside of me — this hard black bead of hate that melted in front of my eyes to leave me completely childlike and raw.

What else is there to do at that point but forgive?

The first person I fell back in love with was myself. And then?

The whole world, and I promised to be different,

I didn’t promise to be perfect,

but I promised to pay attention and care about caring.

I didn’t know what to say to you when I got back… how could I even begin to convey the immensity of this?

I needed time and I didn’t call —

not because I didn’t miss you.

Not because I didn’t love you,

but because I love you SO much.

I love you SO much

and I’m still trying to figure out how to work this new heart of mine and this new set of rules I’ve been given for loving.

My work is to practice loving and being loved unconditionally.

The world needs this: I’ve seen it…

It sounds trite and I don’t expect anyone to understand,

but the vibration of unconditional love —

even from one person — can affect millions.

I’m not sure if there’s any chance I can affect that level of change

but I know I’m going to try

or die doing it.

It’s the only thing that makes any sense after what I’ve seen.

I know I’m going to fuck up a lot —

I was shown that too — but we’d all better get comfortable with that fact

as it is an important cornerstone of this entire human experience.

The only mistake we really make is in the resisting of the mistakes themselves.(The learnings take much longer that way.)

But the funny thing is — even when we DO resist and prolong the learning, and prolong our own suffering —

guess what?

We’ll get the lesson anyway.

Over

and over

until we have what we need.

There’s something so beautiful about that, isn’t there?

In truth, most of the time we are not present enough to know what we need. The mind attempts to steer us and stabilize this human aircraft that is being pelleted by asteroids, swirling around in the eternal abyss…

To gain control, we need to let go.

Let go.

We need to let go into the scariest feelings.

Lean into the sharp bits.

Breathe into the intensity.

Move toward the dragon and put our head

in it’s mouth.

It physically hurt me to experience love that deeply. I clasped my hand over my heart and audibly cried “Ow! It hurts,” and then I breathed into that too.

I stayed with the fear. I stayed with the fear of doing it all wrong

— of not knowing how.

I was told “There’s no wrong way to love.”

I said “I am afraid to love, love is scary! Opening up is scary!”

I simply FELT the fullness of this statement in within my body.

I relaxed into the pain and let myself be a container

for the delicious and terrifying feelings of vulnerability

to splash around inside me.

I sobbed out loud, angry, frustrated and desperate:

“I don’t know how to open up! I am afraid!”

I was told “Relax into love. Time.” And “There’s no wrong way to love.”

You may be wondering why I’m telling you all this but I felt like I owed you an explanation — of why I took the space, and how my heart has changed.

The truth is I don’t really know what the new way of loving looks like

in practice in the world,

and I’m quite certain I won’t get it right all of the time.

But I’m also sure I can’t go back to the old way of loving

(and of loving you)

even if I wanted to.

I’m broken over that, but also, free.

I can breathe more deeply and take in more air than my lungs have ever held before and this is NOT a metaphor:

physically I am different,

I am unlocked,

I am new.

Unconditional love extends beyond our physical bodies, beyond this plane, in an in incomprehensible way that cannot be fully articulated.

Have you ever felt this for something?

A love that at times doesn’t even make sense?

I imagine it is the kind of love that a parent feels

when a wriggling ball of newborn life takes it’s first breath.

Pure, unfiltered, unfathomable LOVE.

That’s the kind of love I want in my life.

That’s what I’ll continue to strive for.

There were absolutely moments where my heart exploded with this type of love for you,

and there were moments when we got very close to tapping through that ceiling I was talking about.

I’m sorry my fear got in the way.

I’m sorry my fear fed YOUR fear,

and that I didn’t have the tools to be braver — whether that meant helping to uphold the boundaries where they needed to be from the beginning, or whether that meant being brave enough to OWN my fear and bust down the boundaries altogether

to love you harder than you had ever been loved before.

Still, I feel blessed every day for the experience of your love.

Your love was medicine.

In a very real way

(even though I hid it the entire time — and tried to be tough,)

I needed you and you were there for me

and your love saved me:

your love saved me the way love has been saving men and women for thousands of years.

Thank you.

I don’t want to live in fear anymore;

I don’t want to love in fear either.

I don’t want to love anyone — friends, family, you, strangers

…in FEAR.

That may seem like an impossible task but that’s not the point.

The point, again, is that I am committed to trying — to trying this new way of radically loving.

I know… this likely changes the capacity in which we are able to be in each other’s lives quite a bit…

Please forgive me for the time I’ve taken to attempt to understand what all this means.

It would be too painful for me to try and go back to the old way of loving you.

I simply cannot box my love up in that way anymore. I’ve reached a point on my spiritual path where the lessons I’m being called to practice are ones that demand me to love boundlessly.

I fear that the rules that held our love together–by design — are foundationally at odds with the work I need to do right now.

I have suffered immensely over this. Grieving the thought of you has not been easy.

You are one of the most special souls I have ever met.

When my soul met yours “I” made more sense. My EXISTENCE in the universe

made more sense: it HAD to if there were people like you on this Earth to understand and belong to.

I love you,

and I will go on loving you as our paths

swirl

and dip

and cross

and diverge —

as we loop through the rollercoaster of this life;