Love
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He
He is a good, loving man. I have lived a long time in search of him, of the man who melts me, of the man who loves me like no other, of the man who is himself such a magical being that I weep from the beauty of his magic and from how magical I feel when I am with him. I have lived and I have loved and none of the life or love was like this. Destiny. This man, the one I see my sunset with, the one I see in my dreams, the one I felt and knew and received months before we were ever even in…
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One
One year ago today, my life changed. It happened in the evening. I was in Houston where a client had flown me to work with her and her clients for a week, Houston where it was still summer and still humid. I was in Houston still processing the recent formality to the inevitable slow painful unraveling of the previous three-plus years spent with a boy-man that morphed into ten teary shower minutes feeling what it might be like to be me if I had always felt loved. I was in Houston feeling my Self for perhaps the first time, my Self tall and pale among the Chinese community I stayed…
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With
He said the Fourth of July was a turning point for him. We lay there, completely incapacitated by something intense and immediate and awful that we had eaten earlier at the neighborhood picnic we had looked forward to for weeks. There were going to be fireworks later. We could just take our chairs down the hill one block and take in the view of Lake Union, the tens of thousands of people coverng the hill of Gasworks Park, and the hundreds of boats hull-to-hull on the lake, all festively lit by colorful fireworks in the summer sky. That was the plan. Instead we lay nearly unable to move. He was…
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Extraordinary
“Living with you,” he said, “has been extraordinary. Extraordinary.” His heart filled his eyes for a moment, then became playful. “That’s a highlight for you, me saying that.” Why yes. Yes it was a highlight, and in our morning coffee ritual the next day, feet on lap, I told him so. Extraordinary. 1. Beyond what is ordinary or usual. 2. Highly exceptional; remarkable. We have both lived with others. My experiences then were those of survival, maintaining, staying safe from being hurt, trying to assert control where I felt none. I wanted love but didn’t know how to ask for it. Or where to look. Or I stopped believing it was possible.…
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Integrity
I have been unfair. Specifically, unfair in my last post. Unfair to what is really in front of me. I wrote from the place I am in — which to me in this moment seems vast and unconquerable — but not from the place I have been. I have at my bedside a book containing now more than 200 elements of awesome, reasons for loving and living, and I forgot to look at it. Or think of it. No, in my inner emptiness I neglected to feel into the fullness of the Summer of Love, of my soulmate-beloved, and instead I saw the half-empty glass walls I had erected around…
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Soulmate
He is cringing already at the title, I just know it, but it is far too late — the word has been said, not once but many times and not just in jest but in the deeper truth that lies beneath the fear. Soulmate. Not only have I never used this term with anyone in my long and not-so-illustrious relationship history, but I use it now with such certainty, such abandon, such restfulness that I can safely breathe past the wild pounding of my heart that tells me I am walking in uncharted territory. Soulmate. Not only am I his soulmate but he is mine. (Does that go without saying?…
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Partner
Once there was a girl who learned not to trust. She was hurt by things — big scary dogs, loud people, being left in strange places that didn’t smell like home, people who tricked and lied — and learned to go deep inside. She thought that deep within, she could stay safe. The girl built walls and thought they would protect her, thick tall strong walls. What she built instead was an entire world that wasn’t safe. An uncertain world lay beyond her walls. Staying small and deeply hidden, she forgot about her magical powers caught outside the walls she built. The girl felt so alone. She believed she would…
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Pathway
There is a way through. In the dark times, all I can see are the walls that close in around me, the fears that fill me with dread, the gross inadequacies of my wounded heart and soul. In those times it is sometimes all I can do to take a breath, and another. Anything beyond breath is simply too heavy, too hard. I have been offered a path. A hand. A heart, tender and afraid as my own. And I am encouraged that this pathway may be the one that forever keeps the walls from closing in so tightly. This pathway, the one that is being created and crafted and…
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Loving
I think I am beginning to feel what love is. You would think, wouldn’t you, that after spending as many years on the planet as I have, I would have already known what love really felt like, but no. Not being loved like this. Not loving like this. Oh, I had an idea about love. Many ideas. An ideal. A dream. A destiny. And I loved, as best I could. With my whole heart, the part that was open. I really did. I loved and was loved to the best of my ability at the time. I also knew a lot about what love is not. My heart stretched across…
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Movement
There is something about looking westward into the waning light that makes me incredibly happy. Once I drove through Illinois under a spreading wide field of fluffy white that extended into infinity, cottony sheep drifting gallantly and with amused authority over the highways through a sky-blue background. Then, for a year, I watched purple merge with golden pink over the jagged silhouette of the Front Range, lost in Chief Niwot’s curse of the Flatirons. When the year was over I could still glimpse pinkgold over jutting mountains in my rear view mirror as I turned for east again. Then for a brief time I saw gold in the brilliant dusk…