Giving You Good-bye


It is so perfect, this moving on.
He will give you now what I would not,
You could not, for all our same page, find in me,
What you needed, asked for, begged, pleaded, there to be.
All I can give you now is good-bye, and this, please don’t write,
Don’t phone, let me give you that, this ending for your new beginning,
All your love, your lips your smiles and fingertips and warm cashmere words,
Give all to him, hold nothing back for this memory, oh my god My Love, good-bye.

Is AAD “Real?”

Today I was asked if Adult Attachment Disorder was “real.” When asked what was meant, they responded by asking if AAD had a definition within The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association.

Yes and no.

Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) was first defined in the DSM-3, according to a review for the DSM-5 (an update due for release in May, 2013) written by Charles H. Zeanah, M.D., and Mary Margaret Gleason, M.D. for the American Psychiatric Association.

RAD is the name given to attachment disorders as they appear in children. The review by Dr.s Zeanah and Gleason will update the definition of RAD in a number of ways that reflect current research.

So the DSM does not have a definition of “Adult Attachment Disorder” per se. However, there is a substantial body of work relating RAD to adult behaviors (see: A Brief Overview of Adult Attachment Theory and Research by Dr. R. Chris Fraley).

The assumption is that behaviors around attachment developed in childhood impact relationships one is capable of forming as an adult, and possibly result from biological survival mechanisms.

Walking away

From hereRan into somebody who had read the short verse I wrote in January about a relationship that had just ended with a wonderful woman because our paths were not converging. That’s a hazard of falling in love later in life. I had forgotten I posted those personal emotions but was grateful this person enjoyed the “poem” and was moved by it. Had even read it.

Sometimes it is too easy in moods of “terminal uniqueness” to forget we share so many of these emotions and experiences. A friend, also a writer, talks of the universal nature of what brings us joy and heartbreak. That is part of the value in art, that ability to share experience. And to feel not quite so alone.

It took me a while to understand that, plus words from a friend going through a tough time who has recognized that “letting go,” while exquisitely painful, is sometimes the only path toward fulfillment if not self preservation.

That is one of the themes in Chalice and something I am trying to convey in It’s Nobody’s Fault. Sometimes one has to walk, or let our love walk. Because after enough break-ups and make-ups we know the pattern if not the causes, and we have to make a cold calculation that it is what it is.

That’s not to say there isn’t hope, only that change sometimes requires that … we make a change.


On Ice
holding only in my heart whom I’ve held in my arms,
distance great, time short, this is life’ sorting,
souls skate near to brush fingertips to lips,
momentum’s past push/pulls us apart,
your cashmere warmth my memory.