You are your life.

The wizard told me that.

You are your life.

I repeated it to myself every five minutes or so. If I were my life then I was falling into pieces. If I were my life then … then there was no one responsible for me. The one responsible was leaving. He was leaving.

“I am my life” I would repeat to myself every five minutes or so. “I am my life” I would think as I looked for an apartment, handled bank accounts and fixing phone lines. “I am my life” I thought as I went over what money I had to see if I could live, on my own.

I am my life.

“I am my life” I repeated to myself every hour or so, then a few times a day, then once, as the strewn pieces of me rearranged themselves into a new patters — no, as I rearranged them into the new pattern. For I was the pieces, and I was the pattern as well.

I am my life, I thought, as my life opened and became just what I wanted it to be. Of course it did — it was me, after all. “I am my life” I thought as clients flocked to me and money flew and I quit my job and could work at home in my pajamas, just like I always dreamed I would.

“I am my life” I thought when my husband said he loves me and does not want to leave.

“I am my life” I thought as I realized, for the very first time, that it does feel really good to be alive.

“No!” we shouted together, Christopher and I, “absolutely not!”

“But when you get married, when you are with someone you have to compromise, right? You have to think of what the other person wants and give up some of what you want. That is what marriage is, isn’t it, a compromise?”

“No!” shouting again, “no, no, no!”

But …

Our friend was frankly perplexed at the heretical approach to relationship we presented, yet she could not argue with our 11 years of being together and still liking each other. We couldn’t argue with it either, so we didn’t.

“Do not compromise” we said instead, “do not ever let go of yourself. In relationship or not, this is you, this is your life and you have to have the freedom, the absolute freedom to do and be whatever you wish to be, in relationship, especially in relationship!”

“But what if I don’t like who he is, or something he does bothers me …?”

“Well, that is your problem, not his” we stated, “you choose”.

Relationship is a choice, your choice. You choose how you relate and, always, you choose if you relate.

“This is the way it works, the only way it can work, as far as I can see” I said to the dear friend of mine, “Christopher is free to leave. At any moment he is free to leave, at any moment he can leave. And so can I.”

It is not the structure of marriage that keeps us together, it is not the vows, the traditions, the culture, the promises nor the expectations. We are together because we are free to leave. Always.

It happened many, many years ago but I still remember it like it was yesterday. It could have been yesterday, too, for it was a cold winter night, just like the last.

The kitchen was a bright spot of light and warmth. I leaned against the wall as I sat on a stool reading a book, my boyfriend sat beside me working on his homework project. An artist, he was drawing a coffin, with someone’s face inside it. I looked up from my book now and then, peeking over his shoulder.

It was so peaceful, so quiet, so very domestic. I thought that, I remember. My eyes slid past the boy’s dark head, over the light blue walls, touched the stove briefly and…

“I will leave”.

I felt that, I realized that, suddenly I knew that. With an utter certainty, with no fear nor excitement, with nothing but a simple awareness of an unquestionable fact I knew that I was going to leave.

I had no idea what in the hell that meant.

I begun to wonder, look, question — was I going to die? It did not feel like it. Was I going to move out? Maybe. Was I … ideas, explanations came and went, but none of them explained anything at all.

I was going to leave. That was all there was to it. All I had. All I experienced.

I let that be. I allowed the experience to be what it was without reasons, without logic, without a story. I had little choice in the matter.

A few months later, as I was getting ready to leave Poland and move to California, having broken up with my boyfriend, the meaning of my experience came clear…

…but in the moment, that night, that cold dark nigh huddling outside warm, bright windows of my kitchen, all I had was what I experienced. And that was as it should be. And that was enough.

“It means you did not love him if you don’t grieve, if you don’t suffer. It means you are heartless, devoid of feelings, unnatural”.

“This is a tragedy, you should be in pain.”

This is what my mind said to me. This and other things, equally atrocious. It said that to me and I could not believe it.

I hurt, yes, I did hurt. Simon was dead, killed a few hours earlier. Yes, he was just a fluffy little dog but he was a friend and a baby and a little creature full of love and we loved him and he was dead. Crashed in the jaws of a pit bull, at my feet.

“You should have known, you should have stopped it, you should have … you could have …”. My mind said that as well but I ignored it off hand, that was obviously ridiculous. The other stuff was as well, but still there was pain.

Why?

I could still feel him, he was not gone — he changed, he shifted. There was no tragedy, nothing terrible has happened. Simon have graduated from one way of being to another. He was okay, why wasn’t I?

Why? Why did I hurt?

It happened so fast. In an instant. He was there — and then he wasn’t, only a moment later. The world changed, life changed, so quickly … ah! There! I had it! Life changed, by I haven’t. It was a different life now, a life without Simon in my house, on the couch, in his bed, but my mind could  not catch up. My slow, sluggish mind saw what it used to see, wanted what it used to have but it wasn’t there to be had anymore, and that hurt.

Not death. Not loosing him — that was not the source of pain. Death was not the source of pain, death was not the tragedy — it was my mind. It was my mind that hurt, my slow, sluggish mind that couldn’t keep up with life.