The Claddagh Ring

302 Marbles

I know what I have given you…

I do not know what you have received.

Antonio Porchia 

   Ex-man gave me a Claddagh ring one Christmas when I was pregnant with our daughter.  It was originally his silver ring that he had re-sized for me.  His aunt gave him heck for not giving me a gold female version of the traditional Irish ring, but I preferred his chunkier male version. 
   The Claddagh ring has two hands clasping a heart topped by a crown.  The hands symbolize friendship; the heart, love; the crown, loyalty.  The ring is used as a token of friendship or as an engagement/wedding ring and the way the ring is worn denotes the wearer’s marital/relationship status:
1. For engagement - on the left hand with the point of the heart toward the fingertips
2.  For marriage - on the left hand with the heart in reverse
3.  For singles looking for love - on the right hand with the point of the heart toward the

    fingertips
4.  For those in a relationship whose heart is “taken” - on the right hand with the point of

     the heart toward the wrist
   I always wore the ring on my left hand with the heart facing inwards denoting marriage, although at the time I thought that it meant that my heart was taken.  In hindsight, the appropriate placement for the ring would have been on my right hand because in our dozen years together, we never quite made it to the altar. 
   I haven’t been wearing the ring since the breakup.  The last time I went through my jewelry box, I knew there was no reason for me to hold on to it anymore.  Today, I put it in a box and returned it to him.  It was his ring originally and although he may never wear it again, it was time to give it back. This gesture was another step in the slow process of extricating ourselves from each other.  I do not know how he received it but I do know that I felt lighter after I did it.   

Breakups are all about extricating yourself from your ex, string by string.  The definition of extricate is “to release from an entanglement or difficulty; to disengage.” Are there physical representations of the entanglement that you are still holding on to?  Can you release one of these symbols of your connection? 

Heart Gifts

303 Marbles

If you have much, give of your wealth; If you have little, give of your heart.
Arab Proverb

    “This is the year of heart gifts,” I tell my friends.  What I don’t tell them is that my cash flow could be better and the heart gifts are a necessity.  A heart gift is the type of gift I made loved ones in elementary school when the piggy bank held only pennies but the love ranneth over.  So, I’m reapplying this practice and I’m marking birthdays with pampering manicures or pedicures (I give a mean French manicure) all wrapped in lots of heart. 
    It all seems good in theory but today my friend Fay arrived from out of town for a visit.  Her birthday got muddled in with Ex-man’s move out week so it was marked with a birthday song on her answering machine.  I let myself off the hook because I clearly couldn’t package my personal manicure and send it to her but today I aimed to celebrate her birthday.  I picked her up from the airport and brought her home to my freshly squeezed OJ with some bubbly then I set to work on her nails.  In the middle of her hand massage she jested, “Will you marry me?” Ha, everyone needs a good wife – part personal assistant, part housekeeper, part bartender/chef, part massage therapist and beauty consultant. 
    Mid-manicure, I noticed her new purse and commented on it.  She told me the story of how she would frequently go into her favourite department store and ogle the $500 purse that she felt too thrifty to buy.  Before her birthday, a friend of hers went in and asked the sales associates what Fay would really like.  They both pointed at the purse, so the friend bought it.  My immediate response was to marvel at what an excellent magnet she had become, but my verbal response was, “Some friends get you $500 purses, some give you a manicure.”  She looked at me, even I was embarrassed by my shame -  I was that little kid bringing my sparkly macaroni-shell necklace home to my Mom when I knew that there was real jewelry to be had in the stores. “And those are the friends who are important,” Fay answered.  

   She may be right, but the real question remains – just when will I feel what I have to give is good enough? If I could only truly take in what Kahlil Gibran wrote in The Prophet,"You give but little when you give of your possessions.  It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."

A breakup affects the status quo rippling into many areas of life.  Can you make peace with the adjustments you have to make to live in your new normal?  If needed, can you work towards changes to improve your situation?  

Draw me a Heart

304 Marbles

Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry, "The Little Prince"

    My blond, curly haired little prince came to me today with a pen and a piece of paper and said, “Draw me a heart.” 
    I drew my son a heart then he wanted to know if he could learn to draw a heart.  We practiced several times but it’s tricky to get the heart looking like a heart when you’re little.  So I showed him how to cut one out: We folded the paper and drew the half-heart shape.  We decided that this shape looked like a whale sticking his head out of the water.
    My son was happy to see a heart when I opened the paper.  He tore the heart in half and said,  “I’m going to give this half to daddy so he knows that you love him.” 
   The heart connection that I still have with Ex-man is now invisible to the eye but it hasn't gone unnoticed by my littlest prince. 
    
My stories have been mainly about how this breakup affects me, but of course the breakup with Ex-man has transformational effects on our children.  One of the things that I've done to support them is to make sure we make regular visits to our homeopath/naturopath.  She helps their physical bodies and emotional bodies and continues to be someone that they can talk with about the changes in their lives. 
   

The Diving Tank

305 Marbles
Every orientation presupposes a disorientation.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger

    There's a device that's used in naval aviation training that stimulates what happens when an aircraft lands in water.  The trainee is turned upside down and submerged and must find his/her way out of the cockpit and quickly make way to the surface.  Sometimes this breakup can make me feel like I'm in one of these devices, like my job is to find which way is up so I can reach the oxygen at the surface. 
   My friend, Lisa P, told me a story of how when she was 5, she was at her Grandma’s swimming pool.  She fell into the water while she was carrying a big beach towel and the weight of it started sinking her to the bottom.  She couldn’t let go of the towel because she thought she’d get in heck, so she clung to the towel despite it being what was pulling her down.  When she realized that she was drowning and she couldn’t tell which way was up, she decided to follow her air bubbles to the surface (even as a five-year-old she was incredibly smart).  This is how she saved herself.  By following the bubbles.
   This breakup feels disorienting especially since Ex-man and I have such a long history together.  He has been one of my frames of reference for over half of my life.  In addition, I often feel like I'm diving into my past, the places where I first learned about love, and I'm being asked to untangle the truth from the misunderstandings about love.  Then my job is to follow the bubbles of truth to the surface because that's what will save me.  That's what will save my family.  

Can you identify any metaphorical wet towels that are pulling you down?  Can you let them go?  More importantly, if you're feeling like you're overwhelmed, like you're drowning, can you follow the bubbles to the surface?

He said, She said

306 Marbles 
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.  
Jan Glidewell
 
    Ex-man and I have so many stories about each other - at times I find myself doing a reality check.  How much of the stories are true? How much are embellishments? 
Recently I went to a family dinner where Ex-man told the story of how when we were reunited in our twenties and had a long distance relationship, my eldest son and I would get so upset when he left to go home on the plane.  Eventually, we couldn't even take him to the airport because we were so distraught so his friend had to drive him.  As a result, he ended up, in his words,"selling my multimillion dollar business and becoming a gardener."  
   I sat there fascinated at his rendition of "our" history as it bore no resemblance to my own recollections.  Sure, I used to be sad to see him go but I always remember driving him to the airport.  In addition, his story shmacked of a person who didn't want to take responsibility for the choices he'd made in his life.  
   What's the point of arguing whose story is closer to what actually occurred?  We both have an investment in our own versions - his investment is that he didn't have any other choice but to get out of a business that was financially successful and find another way to make less money closer to home (this is another version of the victim theme).  My investment in my story is that, despite my feelings, I can handle my emotions and, like a good girlfriend, I continued to drive him to the airport even if it made me sad.  Yet I sat there as he told his story and bit my tongue because I knew that somewhere between what he says and what I say, there is the truth of what actually happened.  At this point, however, the past is a moot point.  My job is to let it go so that I can embrace the present. 

Do you waste time and energy in "he said, she said" debates with your ex?  If so, know that you will probably never remember the past in or see the present in the same manner.  Whenever possible, disengage your energy from this struggle.  Sometimes this type of engagement can ease the feeling of losing someone in your life by maintaining a negative connection.  The tension can also give a sense of relief for "not having the person in your life anymore".