That's What's Up

Maybe this won't matter in five years

My friends,

I’m writing to you on my former wedding anniversary. It’s an intimately familiar date that is no longer celebrated. In five years from now, I don’t think the significance will matter like it once did, as each passing day brings my former partner and I closer to an unknowing. But I made a commitment to myself to honor feeling all that rests on this heart within these letters I send, and so I’m here to say there’s still some feelings for this day.

A wonderful poem by Keetje Kuipers with my own collage. (previously shared in my letter titled Going at the Speed of Trust)

There’s a lot I don’t know about. There’s experiences I don’t have, memories yet to be made, blindspots from privileges I’ve inherited, and an ocean of grief that has yet to reach my shore. But me and my heart do know some joyous things about young love.

I know what it feels like to be in love for the first time. I know what it feels like to stay up all night, swapping stories that make my chest ache from laughter. I know what it feels like to be handed a mix CD with songs that remind someone of me. I know what it feels like to exchange love letters across a great distance. I know what it feels like to close that gap, to drive across the country, my future riding shotgun, high on the thought: I’m doing it, we are doing it, this is our dream! I know what it feels like to say “I do,” and with each vow, project a sense of forever onto a precise moment we want to celebrate over and over again. I know what it feels like to believe in love, and while they say change is the only constant, I do choose to believe that love in its infinite seasons can be counted on too.

And so my friends, on a significant day that continues to lose its shape, I am taking a moment to honor a period from the beginning of my former partnership by listening to Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ album ‘Here’. We loved this album and saw the band live at a traveling mini-festival. There’s some funny stories tucked into that concert that brings a goofy grin to my face. This album feels so specific to my experience of time and place in 2012-13. After many letters on grief and the darkness in my marriage ending, it feels good in my lungs to sing songs from a forgotten time of our youthful delight. I’m curious, what albums and concerts take you back to 2013? What does that year feel like to you through music? Who is with you, what sensory expressions come to mind? Whatever your answer may be, if you turn the volume up, you just might find tucked between each song two kids dancing with love’s long memory.

a little reminder of me here in the moment.

My friends, thank you for witnessing my reverence for love, especially the achey, faded bits. Thank you for holding me close while I make my way through this ending. Today, in the present, I know so much more about love. I can’t wait to share in future letters about all the beauty that has filled my life after loving someone enough to let them go.

With love & possibility,

Jordan