The Burden

A reflection on love, loss, grief, and growth.

Love is a burden.

This is what I’m thinking as I scroll through Facebook Dating the way a scavenger might look through the debris of what once was a landfill, hoping to find some untouched holy relic that might give him hope. I don’t expect to find anything of value, and yet there is a part of my soul that yearns despite knowing better. You don’t find something sacred in a garbage dump.

At my age, statistically speaking, I’ve avoided my first divorce. I never got married because I was always too scared to bother looking. Hated myself. Hated how I looked. Took years to get to a point where I was comfortable in my own skin enough to put myself “out there.”

And it worked. Once.

If it worked once before, maybe it can work again.

Did it now? If it had, you wouldn’t be here — again.

It’s been a little over a week since I made the bravest but stupidest decision of my life. My greatest gamble. My worst mistake. My finest hour. My weakest moment.

A heart that breaks doesn’t always break clean. Sometimes it happens all at once. In my case, it happened over the course of months.

I distracted myself the best way I knew how: work. I threw myself into creating a new hire training program. I took two new hires under my wing and tried to teach them the ins and outs of my job. I worked long hours, swapping shifts with people, working overtime.

I played video games with my friends. I took pictures, read books. Did everything I could to ignore the absence of the woman I loved in my life.

I didn’t want it to end. But she had her mind set. If I wasn’t in Ohio by the end of August, I’d lose her. And I did. Even when I told her I wasn’t sure. Even when I asked for understanding. I still wanted to go there. I just needed more time.

More time. That’s all anyone asks for, in the end, isn’t it?

I remember the salacious texts to me after the breakup, recounting the ways I used to make her feel, even at a distance. I remember the vain attempts to provoke jealousy in me. I remember when I would try to defend myself to her for needing more time, only to be met with “these are issues we keep going in circles over, there’s no point.” As if she wanted things to remain broken, but only just enough to where she could keep reaching out to me.

Until she didn’t.

I think it was around Christmas that I noticed she stopped texting. She sent me your usual holiday well-wishes on Christmas Day, and we talked a little. I had thought about sending one back on New Years, but thought better of it.

Two months passed. Her grandmother died. I reached out to check on her, she said she was okay. No problem.

Reached out to her again a few weeks later - two weeks ago now, and asked how she was holding up. Said she was doing okay.

Then I made one mistake that set in motion a chain of events that… in hindsight, perhaps I wish I never had.

I said “I miss you.”

And I had. I had missed her.

“In what way?”

I miss us.

I don’t remember what happened next, except that she said she was sorry I was hurting, and she was talking to someone, and that she had to go to bed for work in the morning so we couldn’t talk about it.

I said goodnight, and ruminated.

The worst part about night shift where I work is that it’s just you, by yourself, and at 1 am no one else is awake. No one else knows. No one else can catch you as you stumble and drop to your knees — except for one person.

I turned to God and asked him to help. I wish I could say that when I prayed, everything magically got better, but it didn’t.

A day went by. I fluctuated between bidding her farewell and wishing her luck and trying my best to put on a brave face. I couldn’t. I lashed out. I voiced my frustrations, telling her about all the ways I felt like she didn’t care enough, or didn’t give me enough credit, or took my contributions to the relationship for granted. I said she gave up on me, because — in hindsight — she had.

I was so close to sending one last letter, a reprimand, a closing statement, to her, including the promise ring I’d been given by her a year and a half before. I was going to write the letter by hand and lay out all of my disappointment, send it to her, and be done with her. Let her go.

But it was through talking to a friend of mine that I hesitated.

He told me of a woman he knew in high school that he’d dated once. He told me that he had lost her, but had gotten a chance to get back together with her later on. He had rejected her then, and then experienced turmoil and divorce before the end of his twenties. He said he thought about her every day since, and while he loved his wife, he could never quite get this woman out of his mind, wondering where she was now.

Wondering if he had done the right thing to reject her.

He told me, if he could do things differently, he would have. And I hesitated.

With my friend’s advice ringing in my ears, I tried to call her. The call went to voicemail. Again, I tried. I had to tell her. I had to lay it on the line.

I texted her. I told her the truth, that I was wrong to let things go, to give up. I said if she gave me the word, I’d be in Ohio with her by the end of the year.

And then I did something incredibly brave and incredibly stupid.

We had been working towards marriage — I was moving to Ohio with the intention of proposing soon after.

and on this particular Saturday night, I asked her to marry me.

Like an idiot.

Don’t ever do that. Ever.

In silence, I spent the rest of the night in prayer and reflection. I had never prayed so hard before in my life. A prayer for love. For forgiveness. For mercy. For her.

And then I received a text message back.

There were three paragraphs. I don’t remember all the words she said. Only that I was supposed to be there last August, and nothing had changed.

And that she was seeing someone.

I think it’s best if we no longer have any contact with one another.

In one instant, my world — such as it was — cracked in a place that I had built for her. I had placed all my cards on the table, face up, with every single one of my chips in the center. I bet it all.

and I lost.

I texted back to ask her to call me, to let me explain, but by that time my number had been blocked. Our social media ties were gone.

Not only did she cut me off entirely, but she had left me with the sting of knowing she was gone. She had seen me pour out my entire heart to her, ask her to marry me, and she didn’t just say no — she walked away. No explanation. No words.

Some might say “well, you couldn’t let her go after she let you go.”

She didn’t let me go. We broke up in July of last year and kept in touch until two weeks ago.

If anything, I would say she kept me around for validation, something to fall back on when things didn’t work with the men she was talking to.

Think of me what you will. I’ll only offer this in my defense: I was trying so hard to pick up everything I had, to leave everything I’d ever known behind, for her. I was going to move to Ohio for her, leaving my entire life behind, for the promise of a happy ending to a story that was still only just starting.

I comforted her at every turn. Every time she doubted herself. Every time she needed a loving word. Every time she needed help with something. I gave everything I could, prepared to give up everything I had, to be with her, and it wasn’t enough.

I loved her. Deeply. Truly. I didn’t care what she’d done or where she came from. I loved her as she was. And I would have died for her if it meant she would’ve lived.

I was willing to do it all again for her in an instant. But, for better or worse, she said no. And oh, the pain that followed…

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Emptying yourself for someone leads to a hollowness of spirit that often leads one to ask questions. Examine the void. Take stock of the damage and what needs repair, and what needs to be cast away. There was an emotional outburst at first — crying, shouting, begging God to explain why. Clinical coldness followed. Paths opened up.

For some people, they become angry — hard, mean, aggressive. There’s an entire industry dedicated to making dudes into “alpha males” with muscular physiques and a “grindset.” These men take their pain to the extremes and cultivate a fortress mindset. There can be no weakness, only unrelenting pursuit of personal satisfaction, no matter the cost.

For others, they wallow in their self-pity and sadness. She’ll always be the one bro. Depression sets in and never passes. Grief becomes apathy and apathy rots away the foundation that the person has built their life on. They become less than. They become shells of themselves and stop living.

Whatever path a person chooses, the path leads to transformation. Whether it is good or not is subjective, and exceptions exist in each case. You can only grow what you plant the seeds for.

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Love is a burden we bear.

My ex was… is a children and worship’s pastor at a church. Given that I am an Orthodox inquirer, I know the idea of a woman leading a congregation is considered heretical. But, in my mind, I falsely assumed that her position in a Christian church meant she was a godly woman.

When she and I first began, she told me about her history. She had been divorced once already, but had no kids. Fine, I can accept that. I’m not perfect either. She admitted that in her past she had been promiscuous. Fine, but she’s changed now, surely. She had admitted to me that she had inappropriate thoughts while with me. Me too. We could act on some of them, but there had to be limits.

My, what a slippery slope this is…

I am not here to talk about her sins, nor judge her for them. I am just as culpable and human as she is, and at any point I could have refused. I could have ended things. I could have taken responsibility and walked away.

But oh, the longing I felt. To be seen. To be understood. To be loved by someone like her. She did such a good job convincing me she did. She asked for comfort, and I asked for affection. Transactions take place in relationships all the time. It works until something interrupts the arrangement.

In my case, it was the move to Ohio and my reluctance to do so without being in a better position — financially, professionally, spiritually. When we made the plan for me to move in August of last year, we weren’t even a year into our relationship. We were moving at mach speeds, and she was the one in the driver’s seat.

Love is patient. It always protects, it always trusts, it always hopes, it always perseveres.

These truths were what weighed on my mind every single time I wanted to speak up, and didn’t. I made excuses for her. I tried to reason with her. But it was always, always about her.

I was supposed to go up in early July of last year (just before we broke up) to look at apartments, but I was financially strapped still from the last visit I had with her in March. I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of spending money to go back to Ohio for a week, find an apartment, go back home, and then spend myself further into a hole trying to move all my crap up there. It was either a trip up to look, or a trip up to stay.

She had taken the full week off for the time that I would have been up there. When I gave her the news, her reaction was telling.

It was the first time I’d seen a red flag in our relationship, though looking back there were plenty that I willfully ignored.

Corinthians came up in my mind again. Love is patient. Is she patient? Am I not moving fast enough? Am I overpromising things to her?

She spent that entire week reminding me that I should have been there with her. And every time, I apologized, over and over again.

These two moments were what convinced me that I couldn’t fight for our relationship anymore when it came to an end. I couldn’t convince her to compromise. I couldn’t find a way to please her.

And so we ended the relationship.

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In the months that followed, I never quite moved on. As I said, I distracted myself through my preferred means — work, play, reading, sleeping. Perhaps it’s a uniquely male thing. But I never really allowed myself to dwell on the fact that we had broken up. What I felt mostly was relief. I could play with my buddies without worrying about needing to handle a call about yet another crisis at church, or having to sit through another agonizingly terrible episode of Friends.

I still loved her though. Loved her enough to answer every time she texted me. Every time she told me she was sad, in a bad headspace, or feeling lonely. I thought if I showed her I still cared, she’d have second thoughts and we could fix things. But she never wanted to fix them.

I see that now.

I think it was in September that she said she’d tried to look for someone new, but couldn’t find anyone that measured up to me. I played it off. After all, I wasn’t looking. She could look if she wanted to.

They say that whenever there’s a breakup, to know which person was committed and which one was just in it for attention, look at what they do after.

I ignored that sign too.

Around that time she and I still engaged in what I’d call risqué conversations. I still longed for her, but even in the midst of our conversations, I noticed the tone was different. It was no longer about us, but rather what I could do for her.

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Love is a burden we choose to bear.

In the aftermath of the final separation, I realized that the woman I loved most had not loved me, but rather wanted validation. It was this understanding that led me to spend my nights diving deep into the ashes and try to make sense of who, exactly, I had loved.

In the interest of preserving her integrity, I don’t feel it’s required to share all of the insights I gained. It wouldn’t do any good to air out her deeds or the contradictions between her public life in the church and her private life that I witnessed, and frankly, I’m too tired to do so.

The two paths I mentioned stood open to me, both choices having their own draw. For a couple of days I felt anger, and that anger provided a degree of clarity and sharpness that I actually truly enjoyed. Turning on loud music, exercising hard, shouting lyrics at the top of my lungs in my truck on my way to and from work, it all felt good. Intoxicating, even.

But deep down I knew I was hurt. Depressed. I wanted payback. I wanted to write a letter to her church and tell them all of what she did and what kind of person she was when she wasn’t behind the pulpit.

It was through my good friend Phisto Sobanii and my friend John that I realized it wasn’t the right thing to do. It was anger and grief trying to find an outlet and wrapping themselves in the robes of justice.

So, I have two letters I wrote, but never sent. Why?

In my grief, I turned more to God than I ever have before. That night when I prayed harder than I ever had in my life, I realized that the answer to my prayer, despite not being what I wanted, had given me something else.

Instead of getting her back, I received new vision and understanding. I saw her for who she truly was. And I saw myself in a new way as well.

I am not a perfect man, not by a long shot. I struggle with lust, anger, and so much more. But I realized that there was another path through this pain that didn’t require me to become weak or hardened to the world.

Love is the cross we choose to bear.

Orthodox Christianity, as I understand it, teaches that we must pick up our cross and bear it daily. It doesn’t look the same for everyone, and right now, my cross is this: to die to self, to let go of hate and anger, and carry the burden of loving in spite of loss.

I choose to keep my heart soft, but guard it closely. I choose to embrace my pain and hurt and shoulder the weight. I choose to be discerning, knowing that not even someone who claims to be godly will be what they say. I choose to hope for the day when I find the right person for me, sent by God and in his timing.

This doesn’t mean I’m hoping for her to come back, not even close — I don’t want anything to do with her ever again, having seen her for who she really is.

But it does mean that, through all of this, I have grown as a man and as a Christian. Despite life’s best efforts, I have not become a cold-hearted person, and I refuse to. I will not be a doormat, but I refuse to become a stone as well.

And that is a reward in itself.

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I had wanted this to be a more carefully-written sort of essay, but I felt it was best to let it flow naturally, while it’s still fresh in my mind.

I don’t intend to make a habit of talking about my struggles, as I feel these types of things tend to veer off into self-pity rather easily and quickly.

Rather, I consider this a way to keep myself honest and accountable to my future self. Remember who you are. Remember what you’ve been through.

Don’t forget it.