This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
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Dear Sara,

I’m not writing you last minute, as I intended to in order to make sure any new (medical) developments were included;
But at a sunny, calm Sunday where it’s noon and I am still in bathing robe behind my computer, having done nothing productive nor memorable, aside from watching a documentary Mr.Big and me watched on what in hindsight would be one of our last real dates.

Before he turned away and let the promise of another life, one more fulfilling for him, take over.
There I was, alone after nine years that had left no traces. Something I found both sad, to not have it acknowledged, as well as a thing of beauty.
The invisibility had been painful during the affair, and that was definitely something I had to come to terms with really quickly in order to not be swallowed by it;
But now, in the end, it was a blessing to have our affair not be grounded on the material or relational plane, in any way.

The substance from which it had been made, did not leave marks. Unlike what I have experienced to be true from relationships I have witnessed, ours had not contained any aggressive ingredients.
It’s tempting to say this was because there was no power play, but there was a lot of that.
But in a way that enticed us both, we were always in a game together. We knew who had lost and who had won a day, or a conversation.
There was an unnamed game of power, perpetually going on.

But we never fought over resources, not even over time.
And when it ended the material, visible side of it, was painless.
There was not even a fight, not even a proper breakup.

The invisibility of the affair, and how it ultimately helped me and kept me from any harm happening over the breakup, was not the whole story.

Forced by the violent nightmares of December (“Dark and Unknown Forces“), the heart complaints that started quickly after the breakup, and the awareness that dark forces were starting to find their way into my life at a speed I could definitely not afford;
And all that after having been left in the dark, figuratively, for eleven months in 2023, the eleven months after the date where we watched the documentary;
It all urged me to give up my resistance much quicker than expected.
Including my resistance to him, or that there was anything to discuss or to get back on.

I am not saying it would not be possible to experience new levels of separation, of grief, of shock, should certain things occur, or if he would actively do certain things.
I am just saying;
Those things have not occurred.
They are not here.

All that is here now, is an affair that has ended without leaving a trace (not counting my heart, which is now under doctor supervision).
And a question of how to “move on” with my life, in a peaceful way. A loving way, that not only does justice to how I have behaved in those nine years, but also how he has behaved.

Not counting the first six months, when I had not found my way yet at being a secret mistress and he had not found his way around having a mistress either;
I have always been on his good side.
Which took effort from us both.

To let an affair die out over the course of 11 months, dismiss all opportunity to talk about it, and to pretend nothing has changed and that there is nothing to discuss, is both annoying as hell, not to mention terribly time-consuming;
But it was also very “Us”.

In a way, the eleven months were part of the same game we’d been playing all those years before, where I never confronted him, nor did I make him responsible for my feelings;
And he never picked a fight with me, or did ugly things.

The ending was as respectful to each other, as the whole affair had been.
And as could be expected, after nine years our game had ended in a tie 😉

So when then this month of January, my health deteriorated quickly, and the darkness set in, of course there was a brief moment when I thought I should toss everything out that reminded me of him, draw a line, move on.
Make space in my life for a new man or a new lover.

An understandable phase, but it was inauthentic and I was mimicking what others would have done. For me it was not a healthy, but a vengeful scorned woman mindset.
So I threw nothing out, of the rituals or the tiny objects or items of clothing that reminded me of him.

Instead I made my peace, embraced everything we had had, and expanded it to the lifestyle it had represented for me.
Not only were the dates we had, my peak performances – no one has ever seen me like that, nor would I know who would ever see me in such a state of power, competence and of sexual confidence – but I had always had the ambition to uplevel my whole life to those few hours I occasionally had with him.

My body, my home, my life, my business;
They were all to be drawn from that blueprint.
An effort I made halfheartedly at best, when we were together. Before I got distracted, and my daily life fell back to being a shadow from what I knew it could be.

And so inner-peace came, much quicker then I expected.
And I realized that although he is no longer here – and although yes if he wanted to or if certain things happened, he could still hurt me- I do know what I want now.

Not another man, not a life that is built afresh, independent of the past nine years.

But the body, home, life and business, I had hoped all those years to magically click into, now that I knew what I had tapped into being that version of me, with him.

That it is time, now, to fulfill that longheld promise.
To myself.

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~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living