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'Tis Better to Have Loved and Lost (Twice) Than Never to Have Loved at All

7/15/2012

1 Comment

 
"Marg ~ Thanks so much for your loving thoughts. It's been a tough week for us Little Honey kids, hasn't it? Hope you are finding ways to soothe the hurt and bask in peace. She would want you to.

Love,

Char "


It’s been a year since Little Honey died. She was my favorite person on the planet, and these past 12 months without her has felt like a lost year. It’s as if I have misplaced my identity, and don’t know who I am anymore. I keep thinking something will click into place, but so far: I’m still lost. On the one year anniversary of her death, when I should have been taking my foster brother Char’s advice (above) I was salvaging my broken heart after being kissed off via email by my ex love from over 20 years ago: Mat Smith.

We reconnected through an old friend after a 10 year silence. We talked on the phone like we were teenagers again,  lost in conversation for hours at a time. He is in New Mexico where the economy is taking a harder hit, so we made plans for him to come here to live. I created long lists of all the fun stuff we would do together when he got here: go fishing, smoke the fish we caught, play guitar together, etc. Needless to say: I fell in love with him all over again.

I met Mat in the autumn of ’89 after I got out of the Peace Corps. I immediately bought an old Ford van and hit the road to follow the siren song coming to me from the mountains of Colorado. I knew no one there, but had friends in New Hampshire who had acquaintances up in Nederland. Ned is 17 miles up the canyon from Boulder, and often has very different weather patterns than in the flatlands. Such was the case when I drove up for the first time. I left Boulder on a sunny fall day. Halfway up I was braving a blizzard and barely made it.

Nederland Photos
This photo of Nederland is courtesy of TripAdvisor
In spite of the storm, when I finally arrived in town, it felt like my heart had come home. I wanted to live in that quirky little mountain town before I ever knew a soul. After meeting many new and wonderful folks, I was all the more convinced that Ned was where I belonged. As I headed out of town that day with a smile on my face, my van broke down. I went to the pay phone to call work, and Mat was playing guitar at the bus stop next door. I sat down to listen to him play, and we started talking. He gave me a friendship bracelet. (which I still have!) It was love at first site.


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Within two weeks, I had quit my job in Boulder and moved to Ned to live with Mat and his roommate, Michelle. I took over her job at the donut shop and started getting up at 3AM every morning to make the donuts. Mat and I fell deeper in love, which required more privacy. We got our own place, then I got pregnant and we planned to get married. On Valentine’s Day 1990, I lost the baby. All I could think to do was run. As long as we were moving, our troubles floated like balloons behind us. But when we stopped, all our problems hit us in the back of the head. We lived on the road and kept moving, doing odd jobs here and there to get further down the road. Meanwhile we saw most of the United States and shared many amazing adventures. I learned some of my biggest lessons in life from Mat. Things like “It’s better to give than to receive” and “Never, ever give up.”  I learned that life goes on, even after the largest of losses. That is a lesson I continue to learn…

It’s been so long since I have had a broken heart that I almost forgot what to do about it. In the process of trying to make myself feel better, I realized that a broken heart is just another kind of grief. I have been asking myself: “what would feel good right now?” and doing my best to provide those small comforts for myself. That’s all you can really do for a broken heart: try and be as self soothing as possible. You still have to go through the agony of the phone no longer ringing for long conversations and checking 100 times a day to see if there’s an email from him saying “I miss you.”

I miss him, and my heart longs for him, even though my head knows that we can never be. The heart wants what it wants. But I’ve gotten through much worse than this, and I know my heart will miraculously heal like it always does. Hearts are very resilient things.

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    Hi! I'm Marguerite Bryant, but most folks just call me "M." This blog will be a place to share my musings and inspirational ideas.
    You can email me at: artlovin1@suddenlink.net.

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