\n<\/p>\n
One ex is having a psychotic break. Rants about a child sex trafficking ring his family and anyone who cares about him is involved with. But everyone (the almighty \u201cThey\u201d) are after him and are following him everywhere because he\u2019s the Fighter for Truth. <\/p>\n
He spray-painted his white car in bright blue scraggly lines, with a big bleeding red heart on the back passenger side door. As if that will keep people from looking at him, looking for him. It doesn\u2019t make sense, because he doesn\u2019t make sense, because look at all the mental health crises going on in his life. <\/p>\n
After I broke up with him, he lost his job, relapsed, got in trouble with the law, got in fights with his friends, got banned from his favorite places for starting those fights and broke down into a deep psychosis. The bleeding red on his now-blue car I assume reflects the places where his heart feels broken. The places he refuses to look. <\/p>\n
As an ex, I\u2019m still moving on and away from him because this isn\u2019t my problem, but it concerns me. Consumes me. I\u2019m terrible at letting someone leave my heart.<\/p>\n
Another ex is deep-sea fishing today, with his bare, scarred, transgender chest showing as proudly as his newfound sobriety, his full heart beating steadily inside. His will to live after a suicide attempt. Music and friends helped recover him from himself. <\/p>\n
He\u2019s learning to love himself as much as he loves others, as much as I still and always will love him. But with him being an ex who broke my heart, I wasn\u2019t there to help him through the suicidal ideation. We weren\u2019t talking then\u2014just taking space from the heated, challenging emotions we caused each other.<\/p>\n
Now, two years after the breakup, I\u2019m cheering him on, messaging him hearts and exclamation points when he sends me a video of the boat churning through the ocean, of the wind I can hear whipping by, thrashing past this man who I love with all my heart. It\u2019s a different heart now, though\u2014a friendly one that\u2019s no longer tied up in the constraints of a relationship that wasn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n
My first ex from more than 25 years ago is packing up her double-wide trailer and moving 90 minutes south. As she\u2019s currently my best friend and living just seven minutes away from me, I\u2019m a little peeved by this move. But she has to\u2014has to move off the seven acres she shared with her mom for 20 years until her mom bled to death in my ex\u2019s arms six years ago. <\/p>\n
She\u2019s bringing only what will fit in the new house, including one roommate I might replace one day if I miss my best friend that bad. If I want the isolation of living in the country that bad, which is what my ex wants. <\/p>\n
I suspect she\u2019s moving because of the flood of her mother\u2019s blood, of the death, of her own heart that might feel hugged by a fresh start. I can\u2019t move her forward in her grief\u2014that\u2019s always been her journey\u2014but I can help her move. I\u2019ll arrive at her place tomorrow, armed with packing tape and cardboard.<\/p>\n
My 30-years-my-senior ex is 72 and has terminal stage four lung cancer. He also has a wicked will to live. Chemo one day, 12-hour workday the next. I want and don\u2019t want him to do this. Don\u2019t die, but don\u2019t kill yourself trying to live. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s not my place to tell him to slow down<\/em>. To let his cancer-filled lungs rest. To reach into that chest and pull out the paperclip-sized mass that\u2019s going to take one of my favorite loves out of my life for good.<\/p>\n But I can\u2019t do anything about this. Can\u2019t cure cancer, can\u2019t make him move the thousand miles closer to me so I can see him for these last two months, maybe two years if the chemo goes well. Because this is his life to live, to die. And the wisdom he\u2019s gained in this you\u2019re-guaranteed-going-to-die experience is bleeding into me.<\/p>\n With each two-hour-long phone call, each guttural laugh I hear of of his, each nugget of \u201cChelsey, that\u2019s not your problem\u201d wisdom he gives me as I veer away from the psychotic ex and steer more towards something like hope and letting go, I love this man\u2019s heart a little more. I didn\u2019t think that was possible.<\/p>\n A kaleidoscope of exes, of experiences, of genders and ages, and I didn\u2019t even mention the current ex-Navy Tinder-date-turned-friend-with-benefits whom I have a healthy crush on. Ditto for him. <\/p>\n He\u2019s black. I\u2019m white. We share an admiration for each other\u2019s bodies and what they can do, plus our double desire of not wanting to date. To let the other person hold their own heart, to just show it to each other with pride, because look<\/em>. It has survived.<\/p>\n These are the characters of my life, of my loves I\u2019ve learned to love and to hold in different ways. My heart has seen me through the crashing mental health of every ex (plus my own), the chaos of all our breakups and the connections with each that won\u2019t break from me.<\/p>\n I hold my exes dear, hold them with familiarity but also curiosity. We know each other so well, and yet, after the aftermath of each breakup finally settled, we got to learn about each other differently. <\/p>\n It\u2019s a new type of love found in the way life continues, the way people change, how I refuse to stop loving them all, refuse to give up on anyone I once deemed \u201cmy love.\u201d Maybe I need that bleeding red heart painted on my car.<\/p>\n \u00abRELATED READ\u00bb<\/strong> YOUR ATTACHMENT STYLE: Are you anxious, avoidant or secure in relationships?\u00bb<\/strong><\/p>\n image: Bru-nO<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One ex is having a psychotic break. Rants about a child sex trafficking ring his family and anyone who cares<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shop-cili.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}New types of love<\/h2>\n
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