I hadn’t really thought of it until a few days ago. I looked at the calendar tonight and saw that it had been four weeks, one full moon, since something so beautiful, so tender, so difficult, passed out of my life.
Maybe forever.
Maybe not.
It has been a very challenging, sometimes beautiful, and sometimes agonizing 28 days. Not just for me. I’m not alone. Another shares this sorrow. But I can only write of my own journey, it’s the only I know. Even though that knowledge is so imperfect.
“What pattern is this teaching you about?” I hear Dan’s voice in my head. It was just this week that he brought me to the brink of tears – likely sobbing tears – in the middle of the Royal Roads Café. Loving bastard.
What patterns?
That my challenge is to stay. My challenge is to stick it out. Leaving would be easier. By no means easy. Just easier. Leaving would mean some short term pain, agony, but it would pass in time, and I could move on. There would be scar tissue. Some things simply don’t heal any more. But in a month, or two, or maybe three, I could move on. That’s my pattern. When the going gets tough, I walk away. I’m choosing to stay this time. As long as I can.
Sometimes the right thing to do is stop. Sometimes, things aren't right and the only thing to do is stop. "Know when to stop," advises Lao Tzu. Fine. Right now doesn't feel like the right time for me to walk.
Patterns....
That I fear fear itself. It is ice water in my veins. Fear closes my heart. Fear is the opposite of love. Fear kills love. I dread the cold hand of fear on my chest, on my throat. When I feel it taking its grip, I do anything I can to not feel it. But I am learning to invite fear in. Instead of running of late, I am learning to “sit through” fear’s icy wash. What’s the worst that can happen?
I guess I could die of fright….Likely not.
That I like quick fixes. I remember one morning receiving an email that released the icy wash of fear through me and before I had finished reading the note, I was reaching for the phone, making it worse. The thought of sitting through my day with the intensely uncomfortable emotions that the note, my own stupidity, and the uncertainty it evoked was unbearable. But my haste to try and fix the problem only made it worse. Lao Tzu advises restraint as one of the three pillars of the Tao te Ching. Step back, he says. Wait. Sit through it.
That uncertainty and vulnerability are also my nemesis’s, and that I seem to attract them into my life.
So what are these patterns teaching me?
I’ve been pretty focused on the notion of self referral of late, and that my attempts at staying completely centred in my own soul, my own spirit has lead me to some pretty sophisticated forms of self loathing. I’m in the middle of one of the most emotionally challenging situations of my life, and I’m beating myself up because I can’t stay detached from its ebbs and flows! One day I’m high as a kite, and the next I’m whale poop, and brow beating myself for not staying “at the centre of the river” as Deepak Chopra advises. Well, it might take a little practice to master the whole self referral gig. Go easy.
That I’ve got to love myself before I can really, honestly love anybody else.
“The object of your practice should first of all be yourself,” says Zen Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Han in True Love. “Your love for the other, your ability to love another person, depends on your ability to love yourself.”
I still don’t really. I still don’t really think that I deserve to be loved. I catch glimpses of it, where I know that I deserve, but I’m not quite there yet. Sit through that too.
That being said, I’m starting to learn more about love. Tonight, my two year old Silas learned how to say love. He’s felt it since the moment of his birth, I’m certain. He is love. He is made of love. We all are. But tonight as we wrestled on the couch, and I told him over and over again that I loved him, he repeated it, and then wouldn’t stop saying it. He would throw his meaty arms around my neck and kiss me and say “I luv you dada.” And then he would try it out on his big brother Rio. And then say “Luv you momma. Luv you An[d]y.” There’s a lot of that energy to go around.
(Love manifest)
I’ve always maintained that love is really the only thing in the world that mattered. Now I’m beginning to believe that matter is really nothing but love, as energy, combined with the imprint of information that has existed since the beginning of time, taking shape in the material world.
That means I am love manifest.
I’m good with that.
I’ve learned how deeply I am loved. So many friends. So much joy. So much love. This life, these friends, this love. I am humbled by the mystery.
I’ve learned a lot about joy, and about sorrow in the last 28 days. “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain,” says Kahlil Gibran.
I’m ready to be filled up with joy.
I’ve learned that I can be pretty fucking selfish. I get caught up in my own pain, and forget to consider that someone else is in pain too. It blinds me. It feeds my insecurity.
I’ve learned that I can run from all of these things: sorrow, pain, vulnerability, fear, but that I can’t really. I can run, and fast, and hard, especially when I’m not loving myself as much as I deserve, especially when I want to feel physical pain rather than emotional or spiritual pain. Then I can run for hours, and let the ache in my body, and the numbing flood of endorphins mask the ache in my heart, but its always there the next morning.
I’ve learned that I can, in fact, sit through it.
I’m going to have to continue.
Because I have no idea what’s going to happen next.
And I’ve learned that if I run towards love, and not from fear, that I can run even farther. And that it doesn’t hurt nearly as much.
I’ve learned that it’s a bad idea to drink when I’m feeling pain, or sorrow, or uncertainly, or fear. There’s a pattern there, in my family, and its not a good idea for me to fall into that deep rut. Its a better idea for me to feel the pain, and know that I can endure it, and move past it.
And just yesterday I learned that peace might in fact be the most noble goal I can strive towards. Not for me. But for the woman I love. It may be that more than love, what I can offer her is a chance at peace.
But I don’t know if I can do what might be needed of me in order to allow peace to have a chance. Because there is no guarantee.
Its been 28 days.
One moon.
I am still in love. And often it is bliss. And often it is joy. And often it is very hard, and I don’t do as well as I wish I might when facing my fear, my vulnerability, and the impenetrable frustration or uncertainty. But I’m learning to be gentle with others, and with myself. And I’m learning what true love is.
One moon, come and gone.
Tomorrow is the 29th day.
