Superhero of Love. Bridget Fonger
You experience the gentle flow of love in and out—no matter what the circumstance.
Crazy firestorms and the Mighty Flame are opposites, yet they both require the same vigilant attention. Firestorms spark repetitive negative thoughts, frenetic energy, confusion, hopelessness, mental chatter, reaching outward, and anger that won't quit. The Mighty Flame, on the other hand, encourages peaceful centeredness, calm, clarity, hope, mental quietude, reaching inward, and joy.
CRAZY FIRESTORMS
When I was in the middle of the crazy firestorms that followed my breakup with Mr. X, I couldn't imagine relief ever coming. Many of my girlfriends experience insomnia when they're in the throes of these firestorms. I don't. But, while I could sleep through the night, I often woke up exhausted from working so hard in my dreams. My days felt like crazy mountain-climbing expeditions in which I first trudged uphill against the sadness, then ran back down into the valleys aflame with anger. Up and down, up and down, always running away from some uncomfortable emotion.
One evening, I went out with my (at the time) ninety-six-year-old friend, Adelaide, for a little respite. Adelaide is my dear friend Beanie's grandma who has been a source of Love League wisdom since I was eleven. She loves to give advice regarding relationships. She earned it: married over sixty years until the death of her husband. The first tidbit she gave me, when I was in a long-term relationship in my twenties, was always to have my own secrets. I still want to try out that one. Sounds juicy.
Adelaide loved Mr. X, so she was upset about the breakup. I saw her right after it happened and told her that I couldn't imagine ever falling in love again. She responded: “Well, of course not; you've been singed.” She was right. It was then that I realized how those little singes can re-ignite old firestorms from the past. In fact, a recent loss can ignite a full-blown inferno if you haven't healed the wounds of your past. One of Adelaide's greatest gifts to me is being a grounding force in the face of my drama-queen perspectives. The loss of Mr. X was a singe, not an inferno. And it was my job to manage what I had let grow into a crazy firestorm.
In the days after the breakup with Mr. X, I knew I had to deal with my pattern of seeking power outside of myself. Even though I felt confident and mighty kick-ass when I was not in a relationship, as soon as I got into one, my sense of self-worth became dependent upon my partner. I used the love from my partner to light up my heart, rather than relying on my own Mighty Flame, which was patiently waiting to be discovered. But when you are engulfed in a firestorm, it's easy to lose sight of that flame.
What flame? What fire? All I know is it's hot in here, and not the good kind of hot.
When one of my friends was ghosted by a man she had been dating, she found herself deep in the frenzy of a firestorm, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Why had he suddenly cut off all contact with her? What had she done to cause his sudden flight? She couldn't have a conversation about anything else, and wanted everyone to help her figure out this conundrum. How? Why? When? What?
None of us had any interest in figuring it out. We just wanted her to realize that she had dodged a bullet. Who wants to be in a relationship with someone who would do this to a potential mate? From the outside looking in, it was a blessing. From the inside looking out—well, there were a lot of flames obscuring her view.
I was no different at the beginning of my journey. After my breakup with Mr. X, firestorms plagued me with two kinds of negative feelings: one directed outside—anger—and one directed inside—sadness. The angry thoughts were easy to understand. I knew when I was mad and I knew why I was mad. For a while, the anger even made me feel righteous and empowered, as if I were better than Mr. X.
Some anger can be genuinely helpful. It can give us the gumption we need to take action that might otherwise be impossible to take. I know women who had to experience dramatic infidelities before deciding to end their marriages. One friend found out that her husband was not only cheating on her, but had taken their toddler on his escapades. Imagine her fury and the fire that catapulted her from this marriage.
In many cases, the anger builds over the course of the relationship and is not fully managed through all its incarnations. But righteous anger can spur a righteous move. Sometimes God has to hit us over the head with a frying pan! We can almost be grateful for the theatrical end, because we might not have left otherwise.
I didn't really get angry until after the breakup with Mr. X, when it all came crashing down in an avalanche of lies. Several weeks after the breakup, a few different people came forward with confessions of what they had known. I discovered that the lying was even more pervasive than I had thought. This hit me on a new level.
What? More lies? Impossible! I can't even . . .
And then, the mother of all lies: He. Was. Married.
Married. The many times he used the words “divorced” and “ex-wife” were merely shiny distractions to keep me moving forward. To be fair, his wife had had a boyfriend long before we met, and he had had at least a couple of relationships before ours. But the blood drained from my body when I heard the two syllables: mar-ried. They seemed to drip out of our mutual friend's mouth in slow motion. I repeated the word out loud to confirm, tagging on the most enormous question mark so she knew to take extra care in her response.
“I assumed you knew,” was her reply.
I didn't know. And I hadn't spoken to him since our parting. I had only heard that he had become involved with someone new immediately after the breakup, and thought I might hear of a quick marriage to that person but never expected this about the woman I knew as his ex-wife. Needless to say, I had a very dramatic reaction to this news. Sometimes some serious acting out is warranted. I think I spent several days on the phone. I needed everyone to know. Every. One. If I could have, I would have hired a skywriter.
After my dramatic, days-long performance, I was ready to get back to superhero business, to take a deep dive and come to understand that the situation was really nothing more than Mr. X being Mr. X and me being me, each protecting ourselves. He wasn't brave enough to tell the truth, and I wasn't brave enough to hear the truth. I had to forgive us both—myself for putting on the blinders and him for lying.
Days after learning he was still married, I had dinner with a friend who owns the best little dress shop in Old Pasadena. She hesitantly told me that Mr. X had recently been in the store with his new girlfriend. While she was in the dressing room, he had asked if his girlfriend could use my discount. To add further insult to injury, he had whispered to the salesperson, so his girlfriend couldn't hear, that he had broken up with me because I couldn't get along with his daughter. I hit the roof! That lie was somehow even more egregious than all the others, if such a thing were possible.
The lid that I had been struggling with all my might to keep on the pot flew off. I kept myself together at dinner, but only because I was in shock. My girlfriend and her husband did their darnedest to buffer the blow and soothe me. The next day, however, my anger seemed to take on a visible, monstrous shape and send slime everywhere. Slime all over my house. Slime on the phone lines leading to all my girlfriends. I called one girlfriend, spewed ugly thoughts and feelings, then hung up, my heart barely relieved. Soon after, I needed to call someone else. Each time I hung up, I was embarrassed that I had tainted yet another friendship with all this anger. But I couldn't let it go. Anger had taken the wheel and was driving the car of my life. It had summarily thrown me into the back seat. I realized that the first thing I needed to do to regain control of the car was to have my anger heard—not by yet another girlfriend, but by Mr. X.
I wrote a letter. Not an email or a text. An honest-to-god letter that I put in an envelope with a stamp on it. I asked him to stop lying about me, about how and why we had broken up. And I told him that his friends had admitted other lies they knew of, and that I was more informed than he might think. I let go of all that I was struggling to keep inside.
The act of writing a letter like this can make you feel like a wizard. When I wrote it, the anger transmuted to acceptance—not apathy, but acceptance of what was so. Things happened between us. I was angry and I needed