Soulbbatical by Shelley Paxton

Author:Shelley Paxton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tiller Press
Published: 2020-01-13T16:00:00+00:00

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Unfortunately, my personal life was also in the shitter. The Chicago romance imploded after about eighteen months. Distance wasn’t necessarily the culprit, but it did expose the cracks in our foundation. We didn’t share the same values or vision for the future. But, I had fallen hard for his daughters. I didn’t want to leave them. I wasn’t their mom, but I got a taste for what it feels like to make a real impact in a child’s life. And I loved it. It surfaced a deep maternal instinct and longing I had never known. At the just-beyond-ripe age of forty-two.

Then, as if on cue, I met a man who rocked my world and almost became father to my child. He was many years my junior and yet the oldest soul with whom I’d ever connected. We spoke about Rumi and Hafiz and the Stoic philosophers. We dreamt about traveling the world together, creating a contrarian life. Our love was sacred and passionate and otherworldly. It was also an impossible fantasy. We used to jokingly end our conversations with the words “for now” as if we knew it couldn’t last. He lived in another country. He wanted marriage and kids. We got to see each other only four times a year, when work or a romantic rendezvous would bring us together. Taking a chance on our love felt too risky for both of us. It meant weighty career decisions, moving our lives, and, for him, taking a gamble on a relationship that might never bear children. We decided to end the affair. It was devastating, but it was our choice. Almost immediately, he became engaged to marry a much younger woman. At the same time, I discovered that I had been pregnant with, and miscarried, his child.

From that point on I associated love with loss. It was all I’d known. I believed that I was unlovable or, at the very least, incapable of creating a healthy relationship. I had no idea who or what I really wanted. I was simply lonely and attempting to fill a void. So I tried online dating (again) and even matchmaking services. I dated older guys and way-too-young-for-me guys. I dated brown guys and white guys, American guys and foreign guys, business guys and creative guys, faithful guys and unfaithful guys. I was sometimes the main course, and often the side dish. I was called a “force of nature” and “fascinating” and “fun” and “witty and brilliant” and even “sexy.” One asshole called me “thick” (as in heavy, not stupid). Ouch. But nothing ever lasted long enough to be called “partner.” I was intimidating and unavailable—always looking for the exit. My heart was shielded by the same armor I carried to work every day.

And I was attracting that same energy into my life.

It’s true what they say in business—that it’s lonely at the top. Even lonelier when you don’t have a partner at home with whom to share your wins and losses and dreams and fears and dirty little secrets.

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