the end of my soulfriendship with Hannah
Some of you have probably figured out by now that my soulfriendship with Hannah is over. To put this into everyday terms, it is as devastating as divorce, because what we had was essentially a platonic marriage/partnership (you can read an outdated explanation of soulfriendship here).
I really don't know how to handle this. I feel like I'm in shock, even though it didn't happen suddenly at all. The relationship slowly died over the past year... I can't pinpoint where it stopped being a soulfriendship because I do believe that soulfriendship is supposed to weather times of distance and hardship -- but one person can't hold it up forever.
I think that I still had faith in the relationship when she came down this summer (obviously, or I wouldn't have gone to such lengths to make it happen). I believed that our spirit connection and our commitment to soulfriendship would overcome anything -- but it didn't. While she was here I poured myself out, did my absolute best to help her regain strength and hope, but my best wasn't enough. Our connection wasn't enough. I really feel that she gave up on it before she came to visit. Gave up faith in me. She says she tried, but I saw how much more receptive she was to Nick -- she didn't react that way with me. She somehow lost the ability to trust me or open her heart to me. I didn't lose faith until she came down this summer and I saw how she didn't, or couldn't, respond to my love. My love and my faith in us could stand distance and loneliness and lack of giving, but it couldn't stand against her disbelief.
I know that Hannah never intentionally hurt me, so I'm not angry. I just feel this intense loss.
When I became soulfriends with Hannah and experienced the full intensity of our spirit-connection, it was like I had discovered that faeries really do exist. I had a constant reminder -- a fae sitting on my shoulder, often singing or flitting about doing fae-like glittery things. But ze stopped singing so gradually I didn't notice, and slowly became more and more transparent until ze no longer existed. Now I wonder, was the fae (our spirit-connection) just in my imagination? I felt like I had PROOF that spirit connections existed, that magic was alive in the world, that people could create amazing intimate permanent relationships without the glue of sex or legality or even proximity. But now the faery is not here, and even hir glitter is gone. I can't even pull up the memory of that magic. And now I feel it is even harder to believe in spirit connections here on this earth, because I apparently can easily trick myself. (just to clarify, the faery is a metaphor for the connection between Hannah and I, not for either of our spirits)
Without my faith in spirit connection on earth, I feel like my life has lost its meaning. Right now I'm only here because Ben needs me -- he loves me, but that's not why I'm here. If he had someone else he could count on... He and I don't have a spirit connection; we are not alike at all. We have other things, but not that.
I don't want to live in a world where all the love I have to give isn't enough. I don't want to live in a world where I'm the only one who believes. I don't want to live in a world where the people I feel the deepest connections to don't believe in me or want to share their lives with me. I don't want to live in a world where the people I love decide that I do more harm than good and eliminate me from their lives. I don't want to live in a world where my strongest faith can be shattered. I don't want to live here.
and yet...
part of me desperately wants someone to come into my life and have that connection with me, and believe in it even more than I ever have, and hold me and comfort me and tell me that I make THEM believe in magic and love and spirit. Which I'm making impossible by losing that faith... but I most have some shreds of hope to even desire that, right? Right now I'm just holding on, surviving.
...Where I Stood by Missy Higgins...
Cause I don't know who I am, who I am without you...
And I won't be far from where you are if ever you should call
You meant more to me then any one I've ever loved at all
( comments screened )