A non-conventional love story.

...and it all started with boots.

Yesterday was one of those “one of those” days.

You know, the kind where one minute you’re moving through the time and space of your day as usual, minding & tending to your own business, focused on your to-do list, and then something happens that pops you into a whole new dimension.

In an instant, the alchemy of your internal chemistry shifts- starting in your gut, it quickly spreads through your emotional veins right up to your heart-space. Yep, it was one of those.

My internal shift started with boots.

See, about a week ago I ordered myself a new pair of winter boots from a site I’ve used often over the years. Yesterday morning, during a pause from my work, I thought I’d check the delivery status to see when I could expect them to arrive.

“Your package has been delivered”, the screen told me.

“Oh YAY!” I thought, as I ran down the stairs to go collect my boots from the porch.

Upon opening the front door, my expectant high turned to confusion as there was no package there to be found- nor any delivery slip. Hmmm….?

A little annoyed that I’d now have to hunt down a human inside the machine to help me get this problem sorted (and we all know how frustrating that can be) I went back inside, rang up Canada Post and waited. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait for too long. Steven quickly solved the mystery of the missing package. My boots had been delivered to my old address…

…where I lived for 10 years with a man I loved dearly. Love dearly.

A man who I haven’t seen in person for nearly 3 years. Or communicated with at all in many, many months. So much time had passed since our last words were exchanged that I was believing our chapter had come to a natural completion and that there would be no more interaction going forward.

Now here I was faced with the realization that I’d have to make contact with him.

My morning my bliss twisted into an anxiety of a kind I haven’t felt in ages. My gut felt punched. And my eyes cried tears I didn’t even know were there. Ouch!

It wasn’t just that it felt weird to have to message him- it felt WEIRD that it felt weird.

---

beauty in the breakdown

Having enough life experience to know that this kind “momentary lapse of alignment” is never about the dishes (or the boots) and believing that this was happening for me and not to me, I took a deep breath and dove in. I was determined to turn this ‘mistake’ into a gift I was meant to open…and to learn from.

Some context: our relationship was a casualty of all things Covid-related. Over the decade we were together, we suffered the normal trials & tribulations all couples do. And with each breakdown we always found a way to breakthrough and grow into something greater.

But this was the thing that broke us.

I moved out. And have since started a new life in a new city. I have found my kindred community, my sense of purpose, my freedom to express, while healing, reflecting, learning and deepening my connection with my Self.

Most of my days now are lived inside my beautiful sanctuary of a Home I call the Kindness Nest. I wake up, create throughout my day, and go to sleep again with a sense of peace and contentment, unlike any I’ve ever known. I attribute this hard-earned peace to my conscious choice to appreciate all of my past, as every little bit of it has led me to here.

And I love where I am. Who I am.

Love.

Love leads me to the rest of the story.

---

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out”

In my particular society (it’s possible this is not a ubiquitous belief across cultures) we often use the above phrase to describe the end of a romantic partnership, implying that a couple that parts ways somehow failed at making it “work”.

Being the unconventional weirdo I am, I’ve never resonated with this assessment. To me, a successful relationship is one in which learning and growth occur and in which love is born, regardless of whether or not those two people continue to exist as a mated pair.

When I fall in love with someone, I love that person forever. My love is permanent even if the partnership is not. To me, love is the goal. And to love is to become fully accepting of who someone is and who they are not. This achievement of a love without conditions is what defines a relationship as “working out”, a true success.

In addition to being a weirdo, I’m also a romantic- in every sense of the word. I’ve always found it confounding and heart-breaking that two people can go from laying beside each other, heads on pillows, giggling about inane things to becoming complete strangers again…just like they were before they ever crossed paths.

After sending out my first message explaining the delivery mishap to him and as I sat in anticipation of his pending reply, I took to examining what my state of anomalous anxiety was reflecting to me. As they say, your trigger shows you where you need to grow. So what was the message here? Why did it feel so damn scary for me to penetrate and disturb the comfortable silence that had grown between us? What exactly was I so afraid of?

It’s an understatement to say that the divisive and polarizing rhetoric over recent years has been destructive to many relationships all over the world. After so much time now spent apart and after years of exposure to MSM narratives coaxing him to other “people like me”, I found myself faced with the possibility that this man who was once my favourite companion could now view me unfavourably, with disdain, possibly even with hatred.

I found myself caring what he would now think of me or if he even thought of me at all. Would our conduit of connection still be paved with love as it had been not so long ago? Or would there now be an energetic barrier erected on his behalf to block out who he might think I am? I knew that my heart was open and my love would flow towards him- but would it flow back?

My fear was showing me how deeply I care that our time together was not for nothing; how I very much want that thing we created together to be TRUE love and to know that we gave birth to something real, to something ever-lasting. I hoped that whatever ‘we’ were had enough integrity to weather the stormy waves of propaganda and the gusty winds of change.

I knew I would be ok no matter how he reacted to my message. I would take all day, if need be, to soothe myself back to my centre. But this was new ground. After a decade of life lived side by side, it felt odd (and so sad for this romantic heart of mine) to be treading this territory as estranged soul mates.

My body chemistry was indicating to me that I was truly afraid to feel the pain of what his response might be.

---

….and they lived happily apart ever after

It was upon reading the first word of the first sentence of his reply that my tears of anxiety turned to tears of relief. There was such kind gentleness, open receptivity and familiar humour in his message that I cried in a celebration of victory.

He was happy to hear from me, happy to help me by re-routing my package. More than that, he let me know that he wonders about me. About my new life. He told me he wishes the best for me and that I deserve to be loved.

I could feel that he meant every word.

It’s odd to say that I feel closer to him now than I ever did living under the same roof. There’s a profound sense of intimacy between us despite the greater distance of space and of time. When I think of him as I sit at my kitchen table today writing this, I am smiling on the inside…filled to the brim with appreciation for the gifts he gave me, warmed by the lifeblood of love pumping through me.

Our ten years together plus the three years apart and all of the countless hours devoted to healing and growing, learning and unlearning has been successful. It was not all for nothing. Our relationship worked out.

We did it.

---

Thank you for reading my personal story. Please let me know in the comments if you can relate or if it moved something in you that you want to share.

be great

love Jacqueline

---