HAPPY VALENTINE’S: SOMETHING I WROTE ABOUT LOVE

On Valentine’s some are sad if they don’t have someone or if they’re relationship isn’t working. I wrote something about love in my novel “Stick Man” (Available on Amazon) and thought I’d share an excerpt with you for Valentines:

“Falling in love was once a spiritual quest for me. In your arms, I hoped to find God. I think for a brief moment I did. You were my Jesus. And maybe I was yours. I carried my cross. I gave up my life to redeem you. Dying and crying and bleeding and needing you.

I’m reaching for some sort of wholeness now, in which I no longer need something or someone outside myself, to make me happy or complete. I’m a butterfly, breaking out of the cocoon of pain, pruning away the past so I can leave the ground below and soar. I’m crossing over the border of Canaan, from who I was to who I am becoming.

First loves still hang on the walls of my subconscious like photographs.

You. Mom. Dad.

I wish I’d never lost some I’ve loved, but the people I’ve loved who are no longer here are still always with me. But now, sometimes when I’m alone, I’m aware of a love that preceded all of these. A first love from deep deep down inside, a love that brought me into being, a love within me that is unconditional and reflected back to me in other people. I’m learning to know the still, small voice. I knew a preacher in the past who created an abusive god in his own image. The inner guidance he taught me to be suspicious of, I’m now learning to trust.

That Reverend is probably praying on his knees for me to return to his way of thinking, and come back to home to his church.
I’m coming home. But home isn’t a geographic place.

As I turn out the light, I realize I’m a better pastor to my own soul than he could ever be.

I drift towards slumber, accompanied by the music of the traffic on Laurel Canyon and start my meditation. Maybe I can water my own soul, and the love shed abroad in my heart can heal me from within. This thought feels like a homecoming to me.

As the traffic on Laurel Canyon abates, darkness falls like a theater curtain. I close my eyes and I’m no longer afraid to dream. Of course, I want people to love me, but I don’t need everyone to love me anymore.

I remember dreaming of a half-heart, floating like a kite through a storm. A warm wind blew a matching half-heart to me. Like two pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, we fit together. The promising dream was ruined by a dark hand, clawing the heart to shreds. I knew now, two halves could never make a whole.

For as long as I could remember, a solitary pain, bleak and basic, made me terrified to face being alone. I notice, for the first time, I like being with you, but I also like being by myself. I enjoy the quiet of the apartment in a way I never had before. I listen to the sound of my own breathing and experience the magnificence of my own solitude.

I once tried to fix the world without fixing myself. When I poured out for everyone else, I had nothing left to give back. I had to get filled, too.

In my trapeze leap from guilt to grace, the net below caught me like a faithless flounder when I fell. I landed in a safer womb like the Prodigal Son.

Ta-dah!

Lyrics leap into my mind, so I grab one of the nearby legal pads and scribble them down: “Lose it all/In a great big fall/And there you find/Love was there all the time.”