There You Are

Remembrance. Recognition of one you've felt and in some realm been aware of and when they reach you in this plane there's a spark. C. S. Lewis summed it best (as I've experienced it), "...me too."

The conditions are...

From time to time I like to look up quotes on a variety of subjects. Love being the most prominent cause for those searches springs a wealth of expression. Most consistently, of late, when asked my position on the subject of love (being in it, around it, the receiver/giver of it) my response is that love evolves. I take that position when love is shoved into the construct of marriage. I have been asked by my closest friend on more than one occasion over the course of our relationship if I love my husband. The response has unhesistantly been yes, but with a qualifier added...kinda how Kool-Aid comes pre-sweetened but isn't it's best without the sugar I put in it myself.

I recognize that some things I say may come across as though I am against marriage and would vehemently advise anyone not to marry. Contrarily, I think marriage is a contract that should be entered into with eyes (not so much the heart) wide open. In general, I think people should know what they are getting into. I realize that using the words "contract" and "marriage" in the same sentence erases the romance and even commercial appeal pledging to spend the remainder of your days with one person can evoke. I do that because that is precisely what marriage boils down to in my opinion.

Marriage is a contractual agreement between two people who vow that only death will part them. They promise that they will remain loyal, steadfast and long-suffering through sickness and health, riches and poverty. For all practical purposes marriage is a business partnership, a merger of two profitable entities to form one lucrative conglomerate that from the beginning of the negotiation of terms seems equitable for both parties. Over time, from my experience, the marriage of assets and liabilities, ebbs and flows of matriculation become cyclical constant incongruent compromise for one (usually the woman). So one can be become embittered enough to claim breach of contract and dissolve the contract (ie divorce). But why a contract? Because contracts inherently have conditions. They are supposed to have them. How else do those involved know how they are expected to conduct themselves in order for the agreement to remain in force?

So then that brings me to love...just in general. Quickly, people boast of how condition-less their love is. I counter with a question of the measure of their compassion. Family members are exempt from this discussion because we were born loving them it would seem so they are obsolete. I will use myself (as not to make you too uncomfortable). I love my spouse. The way I love him today is concretely different from the way I loved him almost ten years ago when we first exchanged vows. I have more compassion for him than love. I say that because, as stated to my closest friend recently, there are things that coincide with marriage that don't necessarily fit with love. One allows what the other would not dare tolerate. Thus, the need for compassion when tempted to sing-a-long with Tina when she sings "what's love got to do with it". Furthermore, my love toward him is not, by any stretch of the imagination unconditional. It can't be. I have expectations. He has expectations. We all have expectations of those we choose to love. We can play semantics all day. Love is conditionally condition-less.

70 x 7

I have eff'd up. Wait! Let me make it plain. I will call a spade a spade. I have fucked up. I can take that. Admit that. I was arrogant in thinking I would never be "that woman". I am gripping more handily the fact that I have now, after 31 years of living, a single regret. I have vaccilated in describing what that is. Is it that I have lost one of the most treasured individuals in my life? Is it that I have pained that person? Caused the very thing I wanted most to alleviate and shelter them from? I have settled on the latter as it speaks to the person I thought I was, rather who I never imagined I could or would be in any spanse of time.

I lament the state of things. Truly, I do. Rarely is there an idle moment that is not occupied with a thought or memory centered on this person. Love remains. It hurts. The part of me that wants to insist on equity as if I am in any position to negotiate terms and such was supported by a post on Twitter that said (paraphrase)"if the good outweighs the bad, forgive and forget". Honestly, I don't anticipate amnesia. A clearer picture of forgiveness is my hope. Though I am not much on complex mathematical equations, I am pretty efficient in basic multiplication. To the point where I don't need pen and paper or even a calculator to know that 70 multiplied by 7 gives me 490 times to sin, miss the mark, mis-step-- shit, fuck up.

I won't belabor the point. I realize that a resurrection would not make for a regeneration of what we had before. Simply put, shit would change. I get that. I just want the memory of me in this individuals mind to not be summed up by the pain I have regretfully caused. Love abounds!

My lesson...among other things is that “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi

Humbled...

What About Yo' Friends

can you heal me, remove my pain, mend what's broken...I need a healing someone to wipe my tears, even the ones that can't be seen...that's what I say when I'm weak, when I've surpassed being vulnerable...when I am overwhelmed

damn if i ain't been hurt and betrayed, smile like it ain't nothing (not really the word I wanna use, but I'm tyrna stop cursing so much). i see you judging me like you know the whole story, like the entire picture has been painted for you, like you are fully aware of the going's on...maybe i should be more like that friend. Let me protect you, you say. don't do me no favors. I don't need your arms around me sheltering me from the eyes that hold the scales, checks and balances...justice wasn't blind when it came to me. It saw perfectly what you wanted it to see. perhaps vilifying me was the ointment for what ailed you. never mind the friendship, I was your sacrifice. saw fit to set aside the love you said you had for me to allow others you thought were your friends to sit in the seat reserved for Jehovah. for what? to perserve what? were they there to listen and console when your family treated you like you weren't there own? or when your love for ol' boy went unrequitted yet again and you were desperate to know you were lovely and loveable? guess i shoulda known better. shoulda known not to trust your shaded truths over my own mama's intuition..."Stay away from that girl, Lisa. Something about her I don't like." did i listen? naw. "Ma, that's my friend," I said in your defense...in all my fortelling I never saw that you wouldn't be mine, content to be my accuser...ain't that who the devil is supposed to be to the "saint". convenient truth was your ally. perhaps too afraid to test the unconditional part of the love your "friends" said they'd have for you...fearing it'd be like yours for me, conditionally unconditional. can't blame you for the way I love. arms wide open...as open as the universe. I'm built that way.

you speak of god and purpose and will and testimony. what of choice? i own mine, don't you think it's time you own yours? I expressed a thought. I debated telling you, but I did cuz you were my best friend, thought I could tell you everything/anything. it's squashed. You push up on me. when confession is good for your soul you make me the aggressor. did I rape you? (please understand I am speaking figuratively) I loved...and it pains me that I loved you at all...let me be real and stop speaking in shadows...

I hate that you blamed it all on me and even now you refuse to acknowledge your role. I detest the fact that certain friends view me thru the tainted lenses you offered them...i should probably thank you because REAL friends love me regardless. I deplore your arrogance and the fact that you can't even see it. I am infuriated that I lamented the ending of our "friendship"...damn if I didn't mourn you. I am disappointed that parts of me live in fear that the ones I cherish now will leave me because I may suddenly become not so irreplaceable. I detest the fact that you, at a time, made me feel like my "feelings" for god weren't adequate because they didn't mimmick yours (I realize now it should have, possibly, been the other way around). I know that I shoulda never tried to embody, for you, what you could not see in yourself. I never should have allowed you to make me feel less "godly" because I chose the path of the "rebel" and you were the "zealot". There was a time when I thought you would be the godmother to my children. Then that memory is chased away by the remembrance that they could not exist had your malicious attempt to sabotage my potential happiness (sans you) worked. How audaciously selfish!

I suppose I should put a dedication to you in the book about my life I know I will write one day. Perhaps it should simply say, "Thank You". Perhaps I'll allow you to ponder what on earth I could be thanking you for. Sure if you think hard enough and ask yourself the right questions you would figure it out. You'd figure that I would be thanking you for the test, the fire to my iron. I'd be thanking you for teaching me that I should probably guard my heart a little more closely. I'd probably be thanking you for showing me what it means to truly get my heart broken. I'd be thanking you for showing me that in the midst of extreme vulnerability I can endure...battered and misunderstood...I can come thru. I'd be saying thank you for being my lighthouse on the shores of my enlightment to really understanding that there is freedom in truth (fact, not perception...I was there when Pastor Carlton preached that a person's perception is their truth). I'd be thanking you for making room for my closest friend. I'd thank you for kicking the door down to my having a forced disclosure with my husband before he became so (thanks for telling him how selfish and inconsiderate I was, among other things). I probably wouldn't say all of that because I believe that a little mystery should remain, so, I'd open and finsh by simply saying, "Thank you."



Sidenote: I think I am content to let this one be raw, straight from my gut. No editing or re-wording. I apologize for the lack of cohesion, but so it goes. Later!