Ex-Communication

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic church instituted the practice of excommunication, whereby a person who was doing something that was deemed inappropriate by the church could be excommunicated by the pope. Excommunication essentially constituted being cut off from God because anyone who had been tossed out of the church could not receive absolution from a priest through confession and was therefore damned to Hell. I could go off on a whole tangent about the arrogance of humans presuming to deny someone access to God based upon their own judgment, but that would be getting away from the point. The point is that excommunication was intended to deny salvation and a relationship with God until the censured person repented, and in a lot of ways communicating with exes can be a very similar experience.

For instance, some of you may remember me talking about an ex in my “Forgiveness” entry. Her method of communication is either to have none whatsoever or to heap a pile of vindictive accusation upon my head and then immediately withdraw, preventing me from earning my “salvation” by addressing her unfounded attempts to play the victim. Another ex will happily talk about the weather, or the animals we had to separate in the break-up, or work, but if things get too emotionally intense she retreats into silence, denying me the ability to “absolve” myself of my feelings of loss and sadness or blessing me with the holy gift of a moment of vulnerability on her part. Some exes are C & E (or Christmas and Easter) exes. They show up on special occasions and go through the motions of friendship, perhaps rehashing old times, bringing up inside jokes, and making veiled references to previous sexual escapades, often making your "current" (if you have one) feel extremely uncomfortable, and then vanish back into the woodwork. There are “deathbed” exes who keep you as a back-up plan in case they can’t find someone better or until they’ve had all their fun and they need an emergency Hail Mary to settle down with. They usually call up when their "current" goes kablooie to tell you all about what a huge mistake it was to let you go and how they always knew you’d be the one they would spend their life with. I’ve even had some honest-to-Goddess deathbed exes who wanted to marry me while they thought they were dying but had a sudden change of heart when they began to recover. Hallelujah! It’s a miracle!

Whatever the type of ex, being “ex-communicated” can be extremely painful because at some point in time this was someone I cared about. We had hopes and dreams together. Sometimes we made major purchases together. Sometimes we went through losses of jobs or loved ones together. Sometimes we went through major health issues together. The key word here is “together,” and no matter whether the cease in communication was my choice or hers, or who broke up with whom, it is still hard to let go of this person who was at one point a very intimate part of my life. Time and space makes the loss feel less deep and intense, but the loss is still there. The deeper the love, the longer and more difficult the letting go seems to be. When do I stop feeling like there's a part of me missing?

© Sarah Ultis 2011