Before and After
I was a certain age, and still am. Yet so much has changed since I wrote this. In that time the things I said have become untrue and true again one hundred times over. I wrote it when I knew the truth deep within my bones, before my brain got the memo. That love is not a promise for proliferation but an invitation for examination of the deepest darkest parts; the fateful regrets we carry as baggage and it begs for forgiveness when all is said and done.
This passage, a gift that keeps on giving because it reminds me how soft I can be in the face of pain and adversity:
Oh my darling
It’s your birthday today, and I want to take this opportunity to tell you how much I love you.
Like the moon loves the earth is how much I love you. In the way she orbits steadily, and constant. At times so close, and others just slightly out reach, but always in circulation, devoted to her destiny to praise that which she has deemed holy.
Like a lizard loves the sun. Waiting for daybreak to bask in its warmth, I like the lizard, await the days I get to be with you when I am gone.
Like the ocean loves the shore, waning in and out, contracting and expanding, yet always returning.
Like these things, I love you.
And I love you for all of these reasons:
The way you see the world, in all of its expanse….
Your steadfast commitment to developing and maintaining your creativity and character.
Your reliability and timeliness, and simultaneous ability to relax and enjoy the leisure and luxury of a day off.
How you set a goal and set out to achieve it, with passion and persistence, not to prove, but because you are moved.
Your love for the ocean, and the way you let her hold you, like a child, rocked by its mother. Vulnerable and willing.
The beauty of you, your chiseled edges and your skin like maple wood. Yours eyes like galaxies that speak sonnets of ancient mysteries and futures yet to be revealed.
To be with you has been the greatest gift. In all of its trials and tribulations, joys and exuberations, I have unveiled the greatest mystery of all. Love. Love at its best, love at its worst, love in the shadows, and love in the light. Love where pain goes to be healed, even when it hurts.
You my dear, a healer and a heart of gold, deserve the very best. And I know you will have it. Through all of your efforts, life will give you what you seek.
I love you dearly and hope that you have the best birthday week, month, year, and an abundant and joyful lifetime. “
and now
except some days I accept that I don’t wish you the best. Some days, even if just for a moment, I wish you the feeling of regret. Some days I wish you death. Some days I wonder if you ever breathed a true and honest breath or if your bones are built on fear and loathing. On these days I turn to hold my younger self and forgive her, and in that I forgive you too. The concepts of anima and animus ring and allow me to see these parts and honor them as holy, no mater how ugly.
that is the truth of my love as it lives on.
even in its imminent death my love breeds life and depth of understanding. Yours too in a way. Amongst your unprocessed pain and false narratives, you carried with you in all of your questions a subtle gift. A curiosity anchored in a knowing. False or not it fed me. It gave me that which I had been seeking. That solace of exploration into ‘other’, knowing my roots lie within.
The amendments I might make, would be that your heart was not gold, but titanium, silicon, lithium. Cold and burning. You had a warmth but it was not in your heart. It emanated from your working and trying. In your stillness, in your plain existence, you shivered. Because you were not held and loved as a child in the ways you needed. What went wrong in your becoming was that you didn’t blame the system that designed it so, but your own mother. So you dedicated your life to that which crafted such a design, and at the end of her time you vowed that precious window to them instead.
This, ultimately, was the way I knew you were not deserving of the love I was mindlessly pouring into you. You were wasting it. I was working my hardest to create mother centered culture and here you were using my good graces to discuss bombs and technology and have sex with someone else. Shame. I felt it for you.
Because, despite every opportunity, you chose calamity.
Fragmented, this analysis, still so my view of you and the story of us.
Pointless this passage, still helpful in some way.
maybe one day I’ll wish you well again. As it’s published you have been gone for days, fighting a war for wages in which you are unlikely to see. I wonder if you’re scared. You should be.