As I sit here in the Detroit Metropolitan airport and type these very words, I watch as one passenger after another walk past me with bags in hand, some heading to their gates, while others head to baggage claim and beyond. As each stroll on by, I imagine what their lives are like, especially those evoking strong outward emotions. And as I silently observe my outer world, I begin to reflect inward, becoming aware of my own inner state of being, one that is feeling so incredibly sorrowful right now in life.
Processing out a 10-year relationship that just isn’t able to work anymore in its current inception has been feeling so incredibly painful to my heart. While my partner Chris and I truly love each other still, and probably always will, he’s broken in his own way, and so am I. And two broken people just can’t function together in a relationship, especially when the reasons for their own individual’s brokenness clash almost every single day.
What I need most in a relationship is affection in non-sexual ways, something that has been absent more than not in most of my adult dating life. It’s taken me a long time to figure that out and now that I have, I’ve tried very hard to seek that more in Chris, but unfortunately, he has demons from his past that he’s facing and has been for a good while, demons that cause him issues with showing those forms of intimacy. What this translates to is simply me pushing for more and him pulling away more. It’s a pattern that has become well established for years now with us and one I can’t handle anymore, because my heart hurts, immensely, and needs to heal by being around those who will embrace it more with those forms of intimacy.
I’ve spent an entire life not having my heart embraced and instead accepted more than not my body being embraced instead. I’ve allowed myself to enter into one sexual encounter after another, some lasting for moments, and others lasting for years and beyond, where affection came mostly through carnal experiences but rarely through those deep forms of intimacy I’ve longed for ever since I was a kid, when I never got them back then either.
I’m doing my best now to embrace that little kid in me who never got those forms of intimacy and have been giving him the love he needs right now as I process out this relationship and deal with my inward brokenness. This may very well be the first time I’m not numbing that broken part of me with any addiction and instead just sitting in it. And man, it’s painful. So very painful. I’ve sobbed so much lately that sometimes I profusely shake in the midst of it.
So, as I process through all these painful emotions and this vast pit of emptiness I feel within from the end of a decade of life spent with Chris, I find myself silently observing all these people walking around here at the airport. With each of their smiles and frowns and empty gazes as they press on forward, I press on forward myself in faith and trust that God is finally able to heal me in all this stillness, allowing my heart to finally heal for what very well is probably the first time ever in my life…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
