This Ain't Your Average Fairytale

Beauty and the Beast, Image from deviantart.com

No, this is not some torrid tabloid-style affair, although that would have been bitchin' fun to write, and not so much to experience first hand, i.e. like a train wreck you can't look away from, but are glad you weren't sitting in THAT car. It's also not some epic surprise that would make those close to me want to hang their head in shame or freak at the revelation (*insert pause here for dramatic effect). Today's article is a love story. And it occurs to me that Love is such an inadequate four letter word, not even coming close to the sentiments it ought to convey. We paint pictures, write poetry, create songs trying to capture the essence of a word that falls flat of the nuances and depths we feel. We grasp aimlessly, endlessly to find ways that better express our messy human connections to one another. I am, however, going to try and explain the parts and pieces of the complex puzzle built inside of me, in an effort to do justice to the "story", because frankly I think it's a pretty good one.

I love the people who make up my tight inner circle, those my heart knows as my "Tribe", comprised of friends and family who fit into my world, my life in a myriad of ways. My love for them is not the "same", each person whose face I can quickly conjure to mind having their own unique mark on who I am, as well as who I'm becoming. It feels as if these people have been traveling, their soul with mine, on some plane of existence for countless millennia. My Tribe is made up of people with whom I am not afraid to be wholly myself. I don't have to wonder if they will judge me or accept me because I know when they look at me, all they see is my light (and vice versa). I know that the thread of a bond that connects us is so strong that it makes any of my flaws and/or short comings completely moot. They are my definition of Safe Harbour.

Several years ago I met a man, a former Marine, and upon that meeting my heart kinda went, "Oh, there you are. I've been looking for you" (*Note: The first four blog articles I ever wrote, from March 2014, are about that meeting, if you're interested in reading about it). He is one of those people you meet who become a defining moment on your lifeline, a before and after that marks a complete change that has occurred just in the meeting. Making him and all he loves a part of my Tribe was a bit like revealing their names that had previously been written there, just in invisible ink. I love him. It's as simple and complicated as that. Certain things about the man he is resonates with me at a frequency I didn't hear before I knew him. His presence in my life has healed old wounds that had been hemorrhaging inside me for many years. I spoke with one of my sisters not long ago, and she told me she keeps waiting for someone to come along and save her, a feeling I know well. I told her I'd learned that the someone we wait to save us, in the end, is ourselves. My Marine, however, taught me what that means. That being said, you can see how this could make for quite a complication in all of our lives. 

Every step of the way, those closely involved to this have maintained a steady, open dialogue...sometimes quite heated, but always out in the open. I share it with all of you now in such a public forum for two reasons: 1) I will not have this hidden in my life like some "dirty little secret" to be ashamed of, when the love involved on many fronts is so beautiful it absolutely takes my breath away; and 2) Never again will I apologize for how I feel or conform to ANY system that tells me what my love should look like or issue me rules in regards to how that love is directed. My mother died at the age of forty-six and in August of this year I will turn forty-six. She died alone and unhappy, buried under a mountain of pain, words gone unsaid, regrets. and so much life she never got the opportunity (or took the opportunity) to live. That will NOT be me. Every morning when I get up and put my make-up on, I say to myself, "Today we're going to love with reckless abandon, do no harm, and be true to ourselves." I remind myself of these three things because they represent the absolute core of who I am and what I believe. They are values written on my soul, as necessary to me as breathing. As for the love story, which includes all who are connected to me by bonds forged in love, may it never end, continuing to write itself long past our meager lifespans.."Till the last petal falls."

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