Because You Had To

Scenario: New love comes into your life. It feels sooo good. It has everything you asked for in it. Actually, that's not true!

The Real Scenario: An old love re-enters your life. It has gone away and grown up since its first time around. It is everything you suspected it could be so long ago. It says, "You wanna jump in with me?" You whisper, "yes." Then you shout, "YES!" And you jump! And everyone in the crowd becomes so afraid that you won't make the landing.

You're the blind girl diving off the platform on her horse into the pool below. And your love, so thorough and private and perfect, is a circus. Everyone is too afraid to look away. Some afraid for you. Some afraid for themselves.

She must be crazy to love like this -- to love so soon. She must be blind in love. She's gonna jump and kill herself. But you're not blind.You just see differently and sometimes more than. You see clearly through the fog of their disbelief. And you're not going to kill yourself. You're more alive than you've been in years. You know what you're doing. You feel it in the reigns. You feel it more surely than you ever have. There is peace in your plunge.

In mid-dive you consider stopping time, explaining it all to them detail by detail. What are your intentions? Would you have them understand you better or themselves better? Or would you have them better understand love? Is it their approval that you want or is it that you want them to be free?

They won't understand you. It's the circus that they come for. They are waiting on the next (horse)shoe to fall. They think you have issues, that you don't know yourself, that time will tell you what they already know. But what they don't know is that time is illusory, and the only thing its absence will tell you is that you have living to do. And that living has to be done NOW.

You'll make the landing. It will be a grand circus. You'll ride away on your horse. Your love will be intact. You chose it because you knew that to be true before your feet left the platform. You had nothing to prove but the ridiculousness of approval itself. You only did it because life would not have been fully lived had you done otherwise.

"Nothing can cost you someone you love. The only thing that can cost you your husband is if you believe a thought. That's how you move away from him. That's how the marriage ends. You are one with your husband until you believe the thought that he should look a certain way, he should give you something,he should be something other than what he is. That's how you divorce him. Right then and there you have lost your marriage. ~ Byron Katie

I did that. I had lots of beliefs and I moved away from my husband on the paths they made, even before the marriage began. I wanted him to fill me up -- hard to do for someone full of holes they're patching up with bubblegum. Not his responsibility anyway. I regret putting that demand on him in all the forms and guises that I did. I was young and brought my childhood baggage with me to the courting, the engagement, the alter, the home. This was just one aspect of an often wonderful relationship. But it was like a leaky faucet that flooded into other rooms and soaked us.

I also wanted him to be something other than who he was -- more. I wanted him to be more. It's a lot of stress for a young man to carry. (He's not Atlas, for God sakes.) Plus, he could think and be for himself. He didn't need me to do his thinking and being for him. So many women make these mistakes. Hell, these are the foibles of all people in relationships.

I regret these two things. I see them as transgressions against a beautiful spirit who came into my life and impacted it forever. Lucky for me, I forgive myself for them. (Our humanity will get us every time. My husband's got him, too.)

I do not, however, regret my marriage. It contained the most vital learning curve. Even in its separation and eventual divorce, it is teaching me, making me a better lover for the journey. What a gift. I hope my husband sees the same package wrapped at his door.

I like my Sundays dark & stormy

I'm writing about love. Why not? We're all novices here. I've experimented with it like anyone else, and I've yet to meet an expert in the field. I want to understand, though -- how to love, how to love well, self included.

I couldn't take the ear buds out of my ears today. ("Ear buds" are the new headphones, you know.) It's a new trick I discovered to manage living alone. The voices in the songs help to soften the destitute nature of loneliness. Music is often the key that unlocks the cage door -- lets the birds in the head out to bat around the house more freely.

Today is Sunday. I'm seeing how Sundays are difficult for the newly single. People snuggle up together in their houses on Sundays. Even if they aren't a true pair during the week, seems they typically come together on the 7th day. The streets empty out. Partners stay at home and cook for each other, watch T.V.. I know, I used be "a partner" and we used to do that. Maybe one person watches sports. The other lingers on the computer all day. Things don't get cleaned as was planned. Love-making in bed for hours doesn't happened as planned either. (Only in the beginning, if you're lucky.) Yard work? Maybe next weekend. Stimulating conversation? Been there, done that. Not likely to keep repeating itself. Arguments? Shit happens. Comfort? Probably lots of comfort.

Seems like Sundays always made me restless, though. Dark & stormy -- the only cocktail that ever went down smooth on the Sabbath. Maybe for me the difficulty of Sunday doesn't have that much to do with being single after all. (Is "single" even the appropriate word for being separated, as in not yet divorced, from one's husband?)

Sometimes in the afternoons I become a little startled when I realize I haven't talked to him all day. Doesn't seem correct to not think of my husband until twilight, even if we are somewhat estranged. Ain't right, I think to myself. Ain't right attall. "It is what it is," says my inner Eckhart Tolle.

So I write. I write because loving well is sometimes very hard. And being loved, well, that can feel hard, too. Now, being Love -- that's something worth sinking into on a Sunday afternoon. On that note, I trade in the writing for the sinking.

(Still wish someone was sinking with me. If there's no bottom to Love, isn't there someone who could just go on with me forever without one of us getting bored or hateful or lazy as dirt?)