The Re-​​Appearing Act: When An Ex Returns

At some point in many of our lives, we will find some­one to whom we are desperately attracted, and yet who end­lessly hurts or exhausts us. The stakes seem so high, the desire is so deep, but so too the pain.

In Fire: The Unex­pur­gated Diary of Anais Nin, Anais Nin writes of Henry Miller: "this love will either kill or save me forever." Which will it be? Will the love slowly eat at your soul as you fruitlessly con­tinue to search for the grail while suf­fo­cat­ing in its tomb; or will it give you the courage to cru­sade, to fight to the death, and to dis­cover some­thing truly sacred? One scru­ti­nizes each deci­sion, each ges­ture, each procla­ma­tion, all of which alter­na­tively inspire either trep­i­da­tion or hope. Just one detail at the wrong angle and it all becomes farce. One dis­misses the spec­ta­cle for an acci­dent of light.

I was recently con­fronted by an old lover of this sort, some­one whom I truly wanted to forgive. Our issues had revolved around a basic (and well-deserved) lack of trust, compounded by dozens of circumstantial issues. In the absence of such circumstantial issues, I thought it might be pos­si­ble to grow and reach a new under­stand­ing of each other. I decided to enter­tain his apol­ogy, promises of change and declarations of love.

Our attempts to under­stand each other quickly devolved into a toxic state of antagonistic sta­sis. We pushed and pulled only to sustain a pregnant storm that stran­gled itself with its own vac­u­ous iner­tia. Dur­ing these discussions, I real­ized that there are per­haps two types of paralysis: one that remains obvi­ously inert and one that sways wildly, falsely suggesting move­ment while remain­ing impo­tent. I strug­gled, wondering, as Nin had, if this was a love that would kill or save me.

Photo by Enrique Gutierrez.

My interlocutor could speak ele­gantly, could dis­course on the many lessons learned, but consistently failed to pro­vide any evi­dence of resolution. As I tried to sort through the incon­gruity of his words and actions which left me regarding an impen­e­tra­ble and ambigu­ous neb­ula, I expe­ri­enced an entire spectrum of reactions, rang­ing from rad­i­cal accep­tance to utter disgust. We wrapped our­selves in pas­sion­ate analy­sis, only to pull ourselves deeper into our own vain chaos, halt­ing before the abyss that would save us. Each time I pried, opened and untan­gled us from the brambles, he refilled it with red her­rings, diver­sions, evasions.

For us, it seemed, there was no reck­on­ing. Our irre­solv­able con­flicts were desolately attracted to each other. Our spir­its could flail at the impasse with such great vigor, but with­out some basic level of trust, no genuine movement could save us from this cycle.

The req­ui­site strength for me to dis­con­tinue this cor­re­spon­dence was perhaps greater than it should have been. Truly, I should have been stronger and more wary. I can be extremely roman­tic. I want to believe in the good­ness of oth­ers. But ulti­mately, these aspects of my personality, which I oth­er­wise con­sider strengths, left me excessively vulnerable in this spe­cific situation.

It is a strange thing, to mourn for an aborted possibility. It seems so easy to con­tinue toil­ing for what might be a glorious, beau­ti­ful vision of love when its death isn't a fact or event, but a resolution. To accept its loss with such intense sad­ness while celebrating the joy and strength it proved of you. To seek new things to love. To seek wealth, abundance, trust, and devo­tion in love instead of systematic suffering. In this heartache, I am left to re-​​assert how I believe in love, how I believe in oth­ers, and how I believe in myself in order to propel myself away from toxicity.

The re​​appearing act of an old lover isn’t nec­es­sar­ily a sign of weakness, because there are, to be sure, instances when some­thing good can be redeemed. But in any case, it is a time of questioning, exam­in­ing and declaring what one truly finds impor­tant and mean­ing­ful in one's life.

Dawn Kaczmar is an English graduate student whose primary interests include British romantic poetry, 20th century American poetry, aesthetics, postmodern philosophy, feminist philosophy, photography, 17th century paintings of Dutch tulips, and theater. You can follow her on Twitter as @semperaugustus.