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 always be that alone, always need to stay small and deeply hidden.

The girl was wrong. One day she woke up and remembered about her magical powers, but they lay out of reach beyond her walls. In order to reach her magic, the girl had to do the unthinkable. The walls she had thought were protecting her had to come down. She had to let the world in.

But how? The girl knew what she needed to do but did not know how to get there. She called to her magic, just outside the walls. The magic told her to open the door in her heart, that once she did this she would no longer feel alone or afraid.

The door opened. Two hands, a heart, reached in and walked with her through the door and out into the magic that always was there.

~~~

Last week I let go of something I wasn’t very good at and opened the door in my heart a little wider. I learned that by opening the door, what I received in return was exponentially greater than the small sacrifice of my fear of opening the door. I felt what partnership feels like. Opening myself to my man, letting him inside my walls, inside my heart, I felt safer. More loved. More loving. We helped each other by combining our strengths and walking together in the same direction. I have never truly had a partner before this, so it still scares me a little — will he go away? stop loving me? am I imagining this? — but also feels more Right than anything before now has felt.