Arriving in Zana, I was approaching full circle. The imaginary meeting at a place she had been, and still wore her sweatshirt from stopping at the coffee shop there while on a road trip, at approximately the time of my first coastal visit in my new state, more than a decade prior. Maybe we had crossed paths that day and not known it, we had wondered a couple of times, over the course of our nearly 3 committed months.
As I drove into the small town, the coffee shop was closed, but the ice cream shop was not. I parked, entered, and emerged with that long-awaited, often-promised ice cream we never got in Nova Scotia, as she kept changing her mind about where we would go those last two days, with ice cream promised, but never delivered. It was exquisitely delicious, a coffee-caramel and dark cherry double scoop, in a waffle cone. I walked a few blocks peering into the tourist shops, both ritzy and tacky. For good measure, I took a picture of my ice cream cone with a splay of rainbow flags in the background.
I continued to the trailhead, driving through the state park filled with tents and camper vans, kids on bikes, like the sites we’d stayed in for six days on the island just two weeks before, in high summer. Hiking, kayaking, beach-walking, napping together in stunning coastal surroundings with deep history and culture, as love deepened.
I took the short path to the beach, the ocean and length of the beach obscured by dense mist. It was chilly. We had meditated every morning together in the sun on the beach, followed by Qi Gong, then long beach walks. I did not stop to meditate today. I simply walked, listening to the ocean, noticing the broken shells, washed-up jellyfish, pebbles, strands of kelp feeling my own body striding, this time alone. Feeling myself moving, the invigoration, gave me a sense of control and direction. The mist provided a home to my confusion, the impossibility of penetrating the why. I could only walk the ground beneath my feet.
It had been unilateral, no prior discussion attempt to resolve anything or share her growing ambivalence about our relationship on her part. Still pondering the reasons she cited, new to me that she had even been thinking about them (attachment theory, the long-distance suddenly impossible to navigate given the attachment theory), talking them over with her friends on her long drives, while I rebalanced from our difficult parting, my gut telling me something was amiss. Her ongoing anger about my need, that last night, to temporarily evacuate the hotel room when I couldn’t sleep and she was in a deep REM state that I gently tried to rouse her from but couldn’t bear to interrupt with further effort before kissing her cheek and going. Her belief, which I had tried to quell in every way, that I had rage-left her after she didn’t want to make love (“not after last night,” she’d said), that I was leaving without saying goodbye. “No, I said, I couldn’t sleep and was feeling hurt and just needed space, I didn’t want to wake you knowing you had such a long drive ahead.” I had answered her panicked texts from the lobby when she awoke in the early hours to find me and my luggage missing, telling her just that. She came out of the room, shoved a goodbye gift at me, and turned to go. “Can I give you a kiss”, I said. It was a good kiss, but then she turned and went back to the room. “I can come back if you want,” I had written before she had come out to the lobby. She never replied, but there was a green dot on Facebook an hour after she returned to the room, indicating that she was awake and online. Long travel days – 13 hours of flying with heartache for me, 18 of driving for her – kept us from being able to connect much in the immediate days following. And when we did, her rage was still white-hot. I apologized – a lot. But it seemed to do nothing but make her angrier. Discussions went nowhere. Communication fluctuated wildly. Finally, she was ready to schedule our next visit, and I could rest in a trusting peace. She inquired in the morning 5 days after we’d parted about date and budget ranges. Heart emojis to me while I was out biking. Two hours later, a Zoom in which she ended it all.
I walked the 2.5 miles to the jetty, and at the end of the rock line penetrating the ocean on the opposite shore parallel to the one I sat on was a figure in orange, probably a fisherman, but the orange immediately reminded me of her fiery jacket, the high chop between us of the new emotional distance, the separation. Made it real, visceral. I started back, stopping to sit on a dune where I had been prepared to spend some time writing, but it was too cold. A small group on horseback passed, the first people I’d seen on the beach the entire time.
We had first connected in the consciousness-raising group I began to attend a couple years before while recovering from surgery, then a broken collarbone, with time on my hands. I was almost two years out from separating from my partner of 14 years, which had gradually evolved into a sweet, stable friendship.
For more than a year, I attended her online workshops weekly, admired her clarity, facility and intellect, developed a crush, and enjoyed her attention, the ways we torched on each other during role-plays, the way she always welcomed and lofted my commentary. It reminded me…. and privately, I inspected and finally reached a state of reckoning, completion of my academic trauma, parsing the intellect from the feelings. I ultimately shared it with her. She responded very positively, in a smart, long, caring letter of recognition.
My heart was newly open and ready. I was more grounded in myself. The cobwebs swept clean. I had clarity and my own fullness rising to the surface.
We met in person and I joined her morning meditations at the retreat in Palm Springs, coming gradually closer and noticing the many women who talked about their crushes on her, approached her like moths to a flame, only to be turned away. It was a bloodbath. I saw that the personal sharing she did in the workshops could create a false sense of familiarity and approachability for the attendees. I wondered if it was intentional. I saw her often looking at me. On the last day of the retreat we did an exercise where we had to look into someone’s eyes for a solid two minutes. She sat down next to me, and we shared that moment of apprehending one another.
The retreat, though disorganized, was more than I had expected. Having more of a sense of supportive community, finally, again, was wonderful. It had been the big missing piece in my healing, that relational part of belonging. My friendships in that group began to bud.
I’d become leery of butches and skeptical about the possibilities of a dynamic flow of power between us. Most of my girlfriends had been more femme or AC/DC. A little less to lose for me, less threatening, safer. Who I would be allowed to be in a butch/femme dynamic? A little afraid of the parts of myself that I knew would also thrill to it, become ensnared. Watchful of the ego. The last couple of times I’d been with butches, once in Berlin (I was a rebound, abandoned at a Christopher Street Day event when she encountered her ex) and then in the German university town (I ended that, then she stalked me), had been short-lived.
After getting home from the desert, I stepped back and gave up on the realization or reciprocation of my big new crush, realizing I was one of many.
A month or so after the retreat, she got in touch. One Zoom turned into two, then into a 4+ hour one trading dating profiles and assessing compatibility, resulting in my plane ticket to Montreal. I “graduated” from the workshop she led, to avoid conflict of interest, although I missed it. It was the least bad option of all of those we discussed. I was buoyed by her tenderness. She opened the car door for me each time, took me to the countryside, into the city, for long walks along Lake Ontario. I wore my dresses almost every day, more than I usually do. She loved them, and I loved it that she loved them. But I also felt a little… was I sidelining myself somehow. The visit went so well, that we scheduled the next. We Zoomed and texted every day. We fell in love. We sidebar flirted incessantly and obnoxiously via text during the Zoom consciousness-raising classes we both attended. We could not wait.
In conversation with her, I changed my rental agreement to month-to-month, began to clean out the junk. Thought through what it would take to possibly relocate within a year. She was clear that she would not come to the U.S. at all, given the political realities and her activism. My bike friends despaired. I hoped I could live happily apart from all the nature I so treasured, or find enough of it there. I wasn’t totally unhappy about the possibility of leaving the trashy politics of my country behind. Everything had seemed so perfect, just until those last two days.
My body in such a new place, entering perimenopause and not having been with another person since separating from my former partner; it had been almost 4 years since then. Surely, I had thought, desire and love would see us through, we’d be able to explore. She would be open, given her 17 years on me and wealth of experience and knowledge. I allowed her to lead, trusting and believing in the mutuality of our honesty and openness with one another. But the time constraints made our intimate time together feel increasingly pressured and rushed. Our mutual desire for each other and for sex meant that we had jumped right in during each night after the first of my first week-long visit to see her where she lived in Montreal six weeks before. We jumped back in again just after I disembarked the airplane when she spirited me off to her room in a hotel attached to the airport when I first landed on the island. But now, after a week of beautiful, intensive time together, teased along by desires that could not be actualized during the week we had stayed in campsites with too little privacy, (except during small moments like where she thrillingly pushed me up against a rock to kiss me on a vacant beach but stopped just after making sure I was wet, or her hand on my my leg in the car) things had become more serious. The deeper feelings, higher stakes. My newer need for a slower build. The way, the second-to-last night, I couldn’t seem to reliably be able to fully release to her in spite of my desire, her frustration when my body and being simply shut down when, after I had first been enjoying it, she had accelerated and was suddenly simply moving too fast on top of me, our clits sliding together, the way her concern and inquisition about that incident and my disconnection spilled into the next day (“I’m afraid to touch you now,”), although we had made love again, fulfillingly, the following morning. Her upset about that sudden disconnect, and the general criticism and distancing and even suggesting I get therapy, as our precious time together dwindled into hours without another visit yet solidly scheduled. “Maybe I’m just afraid that if I release to you, I’ll find that I need you, and you won’t be able to be there because of the distance,” I had wondered, though the issue had seemed largely physiological. “Maybe we should try tantric sex,” I supplied, “…but that needs patience,” I added, looking inquisitively at her. Maybe it was a barb; she was not a terribly patient person.
With about a mile to the trailhead remaining, I stopped, still nobody in sight and the mist still dense, though starting to dissipate. I put my pack down on a small sandy rise above the tide line, and took off my dress, everything. I walked into the bracing water with the strands of kelp, the floating jellyfish, and let the waves sweep and stroke my skin, every crevice. Twinges of arousal, that belonged only to me and the sea. I emerged feeling cleansed, like something had been restored to me, my own aliveness. I pulled my sundress back on, deciding to go commando. As I completed my walk, the mist truly began to dissipate.
Back in Zana I ate fish tacos at a Mexican place then went to the nearby, populated beach to see the sunset. So many of ours on the island had for one reason or another been stymied, by location or weather. I felt the longing to be with her. Though I had intended to release her during this visit, a week after the break, I couldn’t fully yet. I had done enough that day. I drove home in the dark, alert, on the winding, hilly coastal roads then again winding over the coast range, a drive she’d not have enjoyed. And I slept well.
It’s been easier to pull myself through the eye of the needle this time. I’m so much more secure in my own power and worth. Clarity comes more easily. The feelings flow through and are seen. My senses are honed, my needs more established, what needs to be communicated, or not, more apparent. The scar tissue yields better. I don’t resist. I just am.
Though for fuck’s sake. I again lost a sense of community I treasured along the way. She still gives workshops there, and, just after a little over two weeks of our breakup, has announced publicly that she’s single. Some of the members had seen the pictures of the two of us together on Facebook as we traveled. But maybe the loss of community is more temporary this time, and in a shorter while than I might believe, it won’t sting. FAFO, I guess.