The Fortunes of Love

I feel like I’m stuck in a room alone, even though there are people all around me, I have not ever felt so alone in my entire life. People probably say that a lot, that they feel alone when there are so many people around them, sometimes even when they’re with a close friend or family member. Right now, I’m not with a close friend or a family member, I feel alone. It’s not an ominous statement, to me being alone is an essential element required for the knowledge that you may peacefully exist independently. Earlier this year I had trouble with my heart and the focus of it. I felt like, I was in love with someone, but earlier today I realized something while a song was playing. Several songs played, songs that used to pluck at my heartstrings, songs that reminded me of the love that I had once potentially had. I would hear these songs, and something inside of me would become so vulnerable. I felt so deeply earlier this year. I cried so much for a love I had lost.

When the songs played earlier today, the songs that brought me back to the memory of an old feeling, I did not feel the same feelings as before, although I remembered those feelings, I did not feel them. Then there in that moment I realized everything was going to be amazing somehow. I was not feeling sad, I was not feeling bitter, and I was not worried about if he would return, when he might, or how I might be able to create something for him to love me again. I was comfortable in that knowing that it was over and I finally for the first time since I had fallen in love with him, felt a quiet, contented, nothing. It is so much like the feeling of being alone, and being okay with being alone; but even more exciting seeking solitude within the unconfined spark of your own soul. That’s where I found myself today, listening to a beautiful love song, and not feeling like my heart might fall out of my chest, but that it might stay with me and for once in my life I could finally just belong to myself and not worry about whether or not someone else loves me.

There came a moment in my life where I just couldn’t keep doing it. I had to figure out how to stop feeling what I was feeling. I was in love with someone who did not ever learn how to accept love from someone that really loved him. He looked for it in empty places, empty and willing to completely fall in. I didn’t want to fall in, ever. I wanted something more powerful; I wanted to ascend in to it. So I kept my distance, and I hoped that the best possible outcomes would find us both. He said, “We can’t spend time together, I am afraid if we do you will end up getting pregnant on purpose and I am not ready for that.” A little over a year later, he finally found the courage to tell me that he had been blessed with a child of his own. He said, “I need to be alone for a while, you should do the same, I want to be able to provide everything for my future family and lover.” At the time I did not understand what exactly it meant when he said that, I didn’t need someone to provide everything for me, and I was unaware of his new family for over a year. I didn’t need someone to take care of me at the time and I guess even now, that’s not what I want or need. I just wanted to love him, and to be loved by him in return.

I had my dreams of what I hoped for love to be like. The whole adventure of it made me feel like I could fly away to heaven. When he held me I felt so much love, I felt so safe, I felt like our love was stronger than any love that had ever existed. I created the dream of a whole world that we might live, traveling, making music together, building things, dancing, laughing, praying, growing plants, and making plans for the future together. I believe in love so genuinely, and at the time, I was so innocent. I truly pictured love to be the way many innocent love stories in folklore are depicted. The whole, “And They Lived Happily Ever After” bit. Our relationship wasn’t what people might label as your ordinary high school sweetheart story. We never lived together; we never went out on a special dinner date. I wasn’t his prom date, we didn’t ever cuddle up at a film in a theater or slow dance at a ball. Sometimes I do wonder if it was even love at all. Maybe I invented this whole idea of what love was supposed to be like. I put us into an idea like a snow globe and I hoped for our future.

What I do know is that I felt love for him, whether it fits in to the books of what love is and what love is not. I would not know how to dissect it or define exactly what it was that I felt, his voice soothed me, and his eyes, when I looked in to them, I felt like for the first time in my life I was home. When I looked at him, I felt so much belief and so much love, I can remember the innocence of what we felt and how precious it was to love someone like that, regardless of what others thought. I felt what I felt, and I called it love.

We were more so friends than lovers. We talked for hours, about everything and anything. We would fall asleep talking to each other and when we would wake we would talk about our dreams. Our relationship was not based upon physicality or sex, it was very spiritual for me, although when we were together we would hold one another, whether that be holding hands or holding deep meaningful conversations. We held one another every time we were together, and I continued to hold him long after our moments in the present were past. We were inventive and imaginative together. We laughed, inspired, and finished each other’s poems. There came a time where we swore to one another we felt like we were once one, twin flames, Adam and Eve, the whole two bodies’ one soul ideal. Even if it wasn’t true, it felt good to at least pretend with someone. Sometimes I still feel like that is possible and that’s why being apart always felt okay, it never hurt as much as I thought it could have, even though at first it felt like hell. At first I thought the pain of being without him might kill me. Especially after we did make love for the first time.

Being young and never have experiencing physical passion with the person you feel that connected to, it creates a lot of new emotions that you only dreamed you might feel, and then when you start to feel these feelings, the physical feeling of being connected to the person you love most in the planet. It changed my entire life and how I viewed love, sex and connecting my body in any way with a man. He and I met when we were in middle school. We dated for a short period in high school, broke up mutually, remained friends for many years, and in due time, we found our way back to one another. We waited seven years before we made love to each other for the first time. We had personal trials and experiences always scratching the surface of love but never quite being able to surpass our imagination for what love should have been or could have been.

We both had been hurt pretty bad before we made love to one another for the first time. The last thing either of us wanted was to ruin things for good. I remember he let me read some of the things that he wrote about a past lover and some things he had recently written about me. I loved reading his works, his mind fascinated me, his ability to love so deeply and his belief in the cosmic energies, humanity, and the state of the world. He deeply inspired me, beyond words. I had been in love with him for seven years before I ever opened up my body sexually to him. In the past, we had experienced other empty acts of sexual passion and expression with other people. He may have even felt love as deeply as I did for someone else. At the time I was not really ready to be that in love, and when I started to feel it in my heart I ran away as far as I possibly could at the time.

When he stopped talking to me, I felt insane, I felt like my best friend had died. I lost my sense of closeness with everyone. My heart felt like it was expanding and contracting, like when you see a butterfly slowly dying and her wings are moving slowly, opening and closing. Physically it felt like my heart was being clenched in the fists of love, and my mind couldn’t make sense of what my body had done wrong, what words I could have said more articulately, I wondered about my beauty, about my worth, about the reasons of why I couldn’t be enough; not knowing I am more than enough. I realized my true worth and value within the years of heartache. These factors of insecurity and uncertainty came from my inability to see things for what they truly were. It was hard for me to see at first that the flaws that I blamed for the reason he might do what he did, were also the very flaws that make me the beautiful human being that I am.

I wallowed in my sorrow, and I felt devotion so intensely hoping that he would see that I could be what he needed, hoping that my skills would grow in such a way that one day he’d wake up and wish for me to be there too, but those days never arrived and sooner than I thought I ever could, I realized we were not meant to be together. As time proceeded that tender love that I once felt emitting from him grew into drunken disrespectful phone conversations, being hung up on when I was at my most vulnerable and broken points in existence.

The voice that once soothed me and lulled away my nightmares, became the very voice of the terrors that would wake me from a sleep so divine of the love that he and I once knew. I felt like the world was spiraling on top of me, more than anything I did not feel alone, I felt the impact of everyone that surrounded me, and the potential heartache of every human on the planet fell upon me. I felt the feeling of love dying, I thought that when love was real, that it would not ever truly die, and soon I did realize that the love I felt for him had not died; it could not die. I found that I had merely changed; I won’t ever be able to say that I did not love this person. He is the very first person I have ever loved, and I have loved him with a love that has been such a great lesson, a love that has strengthened me, a love that has shaped me and helped me to grow into the passionate, artistic, nourishing woman that I am here and now.

To me it wasn’t just some high school romance or a summer fling; it was not simply named as my first childhood love. We met when we were very young, and I had other boyfriends in between knowing him. I know that whatever it was that I had been feeling, it was strong, it was pure, it was innocent and it was so very true to the core of my being. Sometimes I still will feel his fingertips brushing gently across my forearm, like I’m his guitar strings or he’s the phantom wind. After a while the wind became very cold, and I had to find a way to shelter away from the memories. I had to learn how to take it all on my own. To light my way through every dark cave and defeat all of the demons on my own. I had to go away, I knew the further and further away our love and closeness grew, the less I would hurt inside. The memories reside in the spaces in which they were made.

So many of those memories were made in the space between us, what remained apart from there, is here in very special places on the planet. Places I have grown away from, places I have not been to in many moons. I watch the time collecting, and even now, there’s other love to be had for us both. He has a whole new family with his child and who ever her very brave, loving and beautiful mother must be. I always hope that he is good to them: both the child and the Childs’ mother. It is hard sometimes, for women to love one another through all judgements and all odds. Some would question my ability to have compassion and love for the woman who was lucky enough to be able to carry his child. But that’s just it; envy shouldn’t surpass your ability to love. For me, life is meant to be shared, and whatever arrives, and proves loyal, positive and nourishing; I think it should stay for as long as it possibly can. He has a whole new family; he has a whole new perspective on life that I know nothing about. My life didn’t revolve around this love on an outward ambition. My ambitions arise from an intuitive expression. I didn’t know exactly why I would take the course that I have, but it feels good to finally be able to listen to those songs and not want to completely crumble.

Most nights I thought it was going to be impossible to sleep and wake up in one piece, and on nights where I would dream we were together again, I would wake up feeling like sand falling through my fingers. I felt like no matter how hard I would try that I wouldn’t be able to retrace my steps or find myself there again. I would wait sometimes to fall back to sleep, my heart was so broken. I wanted to go back into my dream where we were together again, even if it were scary and we were in the midst of a night terror. It felt like, he was really there for a moment, and I felt like I was exactly where I should have been. There hasn’t been another person that makes me feel those things. I don’t know if there ever will be again, but I do know not everyone gets to love their best friend like that. Not every single person gets to experience love in any way, and I do think that if you get to love someone, whether it is forever or just for a moment, you are indeed brave and blessed. Love is there waiting for everyone to feel it and open up their hearts, minds, and arms to it. Love comes upon those who wish for it with deep reverence and respect. I wished for it all of my childhood and well unto this present moment, I still wish for love and I wish for the wellness of the heart of life and love existing here and now.

It takes many minutes, days and hours to build a long lasting special connection with someone and just seconds for everything to fall apart. But life in total has those moments, the good and the bad, the light and the dark. This is going to flow toward both sides in the face of love. I’ll leave it up to you to calculate your fortunes and misfortunes and hopefully find in the end the experience of being in love is totally worth it either way.

“The Fortunes of Love”