Old Pain Being Rediscovered.

Darcy is an athlete, and a traveller, and I love the freedom and focus and spirit that gives him. But it's become a problem.

Well, a challenge. He 's going away for a month to traverse ice caps in Greenland, and he's leaving in 2 weeks. He's going to miss my birthday (and his, for that matter). But I've come to terms with that, and fuck it, it's only a month. I'll find something to keep me occupied, like, my life. But he came home the other day and told me he's going away in January as well for a few months to the Tasman Ocean to row across it in what is essentially, a 6-man dingy. Turns out this is immensely fucking dangerous, and nobody's ever done it before. In fact, the first man to even attempt to cross from Tasmania to New Zealand, Andrew McKaulay, was washed overboard. I can't stress this enough - it's bloody dangerous, and no-one's ever crossed the Tasman Ocean (nicknamed 'The Ditch') successfully.

Now, it might have been the fact I'd been ill and in bed all day, or the shock of it, or the fact that he couldn't understand why I wasn't jumping with joy, or just the alarm bells in my head, but when he told me this, I panicked the fuck out, and I'm pretty sure I broke up with him. It's all a bit of a blur, but when he told me he was going I just knew that he was going to die, and that I was going to have to survive it. I know, it's selfish, but literally that's all I could think, I felt like a 1940s wife whos husband had been drafted to go to war (I'm aware of how ridiculous that is, but it's how I felt, ridiculous or not). Except that suddenly I was raging mad at him, because he hadn't been drafted to go anywhere, he'd chosen to throw himself into the jaws of bloody death, and I'd be damned if I was going to sit around and wait for him to kill himself because of some latent boyish desire for adventure. But then he's looking at me with these big brown eyes full of confusion and hurt, and I feel like a complete looney bitch, and I realise that I am in fact being completely ridiculous, and that it's just another expedition of his, and it's a whole year away, and that I love him and we're happy, and actually he's an experienced rower who knows what he's doing. But then he says to me "I'm an experienced rower and I know what I'm doing", and I feel my eyes turn to flame, and I laugh scornfully in his face, informing him that if he's that keen on death I'll wring his scrawny neck myself. Then I burst into tears.

And now I'm at home, completely confused as to how I feel. There is literally no middle ground - either I'm freaking out like some sort of crazed lunatic because evidently loving somebody means you don't want them to get hurt. Or I'm freaking out like some sort of crazed lunatic because he's stepping on old ground, fuck it, he's stamping all over old wounds - I've watched one man I love die, and I'll be damned if I sit around and wait for another. It's just the worst pairing of issues ever - he is just so reckless with his own life because he's so free, he taunts death because he just doesn't have a tangible grasp of its' relevance to him. He doesn't feel it breathing down his neck, and as such he doesn't spend his days wasting time. He does things with his life - he is fucking alive.

And I love him for that. I envy him that. I breathe it in when I'm near him, and hope some of his spirit will awaken life in me.

And it does, it has. Because I'm not the child I used to be, I'm a grown woman, and I've dealt with my own issues these past few years, I've healed myself. I was my own saviour, and I don't need to be saved. I finally, for once in my life, became my own person who does not want to be anyone's saviour, or to be saved. I do, however, want to be inspired. And loved. And to love, and inspire, in turn. And above all, have a fucking laugh along the way!

Which it's been with Darcy, until now. It's a crossroads (sorry for the cliché) in our relationship, and in my heart - because it's such familiar ground, but such new territory. I know part of my reaction is perfectly normal, but part of it comes from some place deep inside that I still don't know whether to fight til the end, or go with what it's taught me.

When Ash, my first love, died I was destroyed. There's no way of describing the pain of losing someone you love without being clichéd or understated, because there's no way of expressing it in phrases or words that haven't been bandied around and hackneyed in the melodrama of everyday life. Hurt, pain, depression, desolution, emptiness, terror. I tried for years to find a word, any words, that did justice to the mind-numbingly complicated impact of losing somebody you love. But to this day I've not managed it, so I'll just leave it at - I was destroyed.

Several years down the line and I'm not any more, thankfully. These days I'm possibly the most light-hearted person you'd meet, with a twinkle in her eye, and a smile to match - I like to think. I've managed to shake the various chips from my shoulder, and put the various heartbreaks and internal dilemmas to bed. Or at least to rest. And it's not been easy, but I'm a firm believer in mind over matter - and if you want to sort your life and your head out, you bloody well can. And you bloody well should.

But this one is different, losing Ash had enough of an impact on my world, and happened when I was young enough for it to form the very fabric of my being, and as such will be with me til (ironically enough) the day I die. Which isn't entirely irrational - the impact of death is not so easily cast aside. I am a girl who has felt the touch of Death, heard the beating of mighty wings, and I know - it stays with you. And somewhere in the depths of my soul there is a continuous prayer that when Death next comes into my life, she's coming for me. At the end. And I will greet her as a familiar friend, and take her hand. As long as she's just come for me.

And I know, I know. I'm being morbid. And that Darcy isn't dead. And what is happening now, with me and him, is nothing to do with what happened with Ash. But thats the thing with emotion - you get to a certain point, and there is no such thing as new pain. It's all just old pain, being rediscovered, re-hashed and reapplied to new situations. It's how you deal with it that changes.

(If you're lucky.)