From Rage to Unknowing

A lesson in Physics

The thing about living life, whether we live it small or large, is that we do it even though we don’t know what’s going to happen next. Typing those words feels ridiculous. Of course we don’t. I always say, “You can walk out the door and get hit by a truck.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all know that, Linda, what else you got?

I recently burnt down a relationship. Don’t get me wrong, it needed to be burned down. It was getting to be a fire hazard. All it needed was a spark to make it go kaboom and blaze. I gave it a bit more than a spark though, because I don’t like to half-ass things. In retrospect I know there were better ways to handle it. But at the time I didn’t have the tools. So BOOM!

As the relationship was burning, I full-out raged. My anger and frustration at how things were––how I thought things should be, how I wanted them to be, my inability to change the situation or make the person be or do or act the way I thought they should act––poured out of me.

Then I started to burn, too. I was furious that I had allowed myself to be vulnerable, to open my heart, to show up as my true self, in all its messiness. My fury roared so hard I felt consumed by it. I didn’t do this part half-assed either. It lasted for over a week. That might not seem like a long time when considered in a whole lifetime of days, but let me tell you, burning that hot, walking around in flames, is pretty... fucked up.

Until finally there was nothing left. The relationship was incinerated to nothingness. I had annihilated myself with my anger.

Only nature doesn’t work that way. It’s physics. The law of conservation of energy says Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. Relationships are made of energy, right? There’s attraction, good or bad energy between people; magnetism and connection. Albert Einstein wrote laws about this stuff.

My relationship was ash. My fury was burnt out. What was left was grief, sadness, hurt, fear. Anger is funny that way. When you’re brave enough to peek underneath it you always find soft feelings. These feelings are primal, essential, pre-verbal. I was spent. Spiritually exhausted. I couldn’t put up the walls and barriers that I usually do to not feel those painful feelings, to try to protect myself.

Energy changes.

I live in a hippy town and have been hippy-adjacent for most of my life so obviously I had a bundle of sage in the drawer with my incense and candles. I lit it, let it burn, blew it out, and it started to smoke. I went room to room in my house, waving the smoke in the entrances and egresses and into the corners. I named, acknowledged, and banished. This is the room where we watched tv. It was the cozy place we loved. That’s gone. Be gone.  It was easy to name things and acknowledge what they meant in the relationship, but not always easy to know what I needed to be rid of or ask to leave. So sometimes I just said goodbye. This is the room where I cooked you food. It’s where I expressed my love. Goodbye. Sometimes it was more pointed, like “No more, get out of my house.” I didn’t know that I was going to do that or what I was going to say. As I went room to room though it just poured out. And each time, I wept copious, snotty, hiccuping sobs. I let myself feel it. I let myself cry. Something shifted.

When I was finally done I felt lighter? Maybe emptier.

Then I packed up and went to a place where I often go to write. They feed you and you’re surrounded by other writers. Usually when I’m there I’m sociable. This time I embraced seclusion. I took a journal and filled it.

I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I wrote about growing up and how my brain works and what I’m afraid of. I distinguished what I want and need.

I wrote until I could see the difference between independence, codependence, and interdependence with crystal clarity. I wrote what that looks like in real time, for me.

I wrote about existentialism, absurdity, and living authentically. I wrote about anxiety. I wrote about my body.

I looked for understanding in visual images when words failed me. I drew a couple of flow charts to work some things out.

Where my attention stayed the whole time, in everything that I wrote, was on myself. I looked inward. It was the most meaningful gift I’ve given myself in a very long time.

Then I went home.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I know that relationship is gone. Over. Finished. The other person is still there though. And I’m still here. Whatever it looks like, we’ll be in some other kind of relationship with each other. Strangers or friends or lovers. Or I could walk out of my house and get hit by a truck.

What I do know is that energy can’t be created or destroyed, just changed. Love is that way, too.