… the sound of crickets chirping on calm summer nights…
Answered prayer and dream come true. I am so glad I asked and stayed out of my own way. Thank you Universe, it’s absolutely perfect. Beautiful creation, divine manifestation… Moist eyes ablaze with joy, breathless with amazement and near disbelief: he has arrived, he is radiant, he is present, and he’s here with me…
The last year has been one of ups and downs. It has blatantly been filled with many opportunities for growth. Strangely, it’s like I hit a peak and went backwards in life, retracing events as they came, yet taking into them a new knowledge, an awareness of things learned in life. I feel like I’m seventeen again, revived, all of the chips off my heart and soul have swooshed back up from brokenness on the ground to form a magnificent translucent shield of light.
This did not happen in a vacuum. My growth has been great in the part a gifts from others. Yes I’ve done the work, these blessed others just showed me what I already and always have had within. Like a cosmic mirror. We’re all in this together. This is not to minimize what I know about myself that has not been revealed through any external agent. I have been open, and I have gone forth into the world, and into the depths of my subconscious, to a place of union with the heavens and the earth. I know that I am a vast continent, I have always known that, though not before ready to admit it. I cherish my friends and my love for them will never fade, but I have reserved a place in my heart for the man of my dreams. I enjoy time with others. For most of the time I have been single, enjoying much freedom to simply be with myself. Hanging out does not always have to have a romantic projection. However if there is something there, I’ll explore it.
The end of my only committed relationship two years ago opened up a freedom to know other men again on more intimate levels. Each of the unexpected liasons was unique. Some were more sexual than like-minded, others more like-minded than sexual. Each brought feelings of attraction on one hand and also some kind of aversion on the other. The aversions are easily explained by me as simply, it wasn’t the “right” person to be with. By “right,” I mean that perfect mate for me in my life. Obviously, nobody is perfect and one learns what personal deal-breakers to relationships are. Some of the unhappiest times I’ve experienced is the times when I have had both an intense sexual attraction to someone simultaneously with aversion. Sometimes I have ignored the aversion and continued in the pursuit of being with somebody simply for the reason to be with somebody, as long as there were kisses involved. Of course I was attracted to these people, but I knew that it wasn’t right and that I was still looking for the man of my dreams. I had a hard time of letting go once the whose moments had come and gone. I struggled with being able to be in the present moment once the lover was gone. My mind liked to go and drift there, which I believe to be my biggest sin, an obsession, a compulsion. But apparently people can perceive the love one feels from other places separated by physical distance. I don’t want to taint that all up with a sadness, a grief that the moment is gone. Every moment, inexhaustible Love is present, and all is right. To forget this, and being frustrated with what simply is had been my wounding, I have seen it, and I’ve resolved bring in something better, and let old thought patterns go.
From before I can remember I have always had a proclivity to falling in love… even at times I didn’t know exactly who. Maybe this is all a mistake. Instead I should focus my inexhaustible love on God and be celibate cultivating my spiritual life. Maybe I should lead the life of an ascetic like Nietzsche. A part of me sees myself doing that, but the other loves people. What feels right to me is to be open enough with myself to open wide a channel of universal love, a love in life that gets unleashed as in any act like dancing, yoga, music, it lifts me up to glorious heights. Aversion makes it sticky, thinking too much and worrying…
It’s not about doing or not doing, it’s about being. There is just one moment, this one. Nothing is right or wrong, it’s how we are with it, in my opinion this evening.
In opening up oneself to love, whether it’s self-love, and love for another, there’s nothing to lose but weight and everything to gain. Love, knowledge, freedom, lightness, baggage tossed to the wind. Healing, I’m told, is aligning oneself with God. Then everything that appears is from God and channels back to God. We all have something divine to share with each other, whatever message that may be and whatever form that takes, positive or negative. I am surely not going to run from beauty, purity, profundity and love. I am confirmed by synchronicity, and the message on the wall: There is no way to peace, there is just peace. There is no way to happiness, just happiness. There is no way to love, just love. Our prayers are being answered… Love, healing, is here. Right here.
So, I’ve been working through some residual hurt feelings. I know it’s unfair, but tonight, I was angry at Love.
When I feel romantic love, I’m out for the real thing, baby- the fairy-tale romance, the white knight on a dark pony. A contradiction in terms, perhaps, but I have an idealized version of the idea of love in my head when my heart’s fires go up in flames ignited by the object of my affection. Up into heaven I’d go, swirling away, with visions of grandeur, love, and passion.
I’ve always been terribly let down. Eros and longevity never went hand in hand. That to me was always so, so sad.
Maybe I’ve gone about love the wrong way this whole time. I’ve always carried around this idea of romantic love I’d received as a kid. I can’t seem to think that all the fairy-tales and love-songs in the world had nothing to do with that. I’ve begun with the idea of the ideal, and applied it to the few great loves that have dotted the landscape of my heart. I loved each of them, at least I thought I did. Did I? God knows… They all have a piece of my heart. It’s theirs to keep.
Just like how some people get angry at God for letting certain tragic things happen, tonight I was angry at Love, at my fate. As suddenly as it came, the anger melts away. Only I could actually deprive myself of love, tell myself the story of my abandonment. It really is all in my head.
From before I can remember, I’ve felt like I’ve had a hole in my heart. I’m sticking my finger in it to poke around in there. I’m taking the light of the Love of God in there to help me see.
I’m looking for seriousness, sincerity, and emptiness.
I’m thinkin’ the hole actually may be in my head.
Right now I think that we don’t actually fall in love with people, instead we fall in love with Love. These dear objects of our affection are spectacular, wonderful vessels bringing out these feelings of love within us, yet that is where these feelings originate, within us. 
It has little to do with them, actually. They can’t help the irresistable things they do. We love them despite all of the torture they put us through. We love these people ideally, with all their flaws and imperfections, unconditionally, for however long the ideal lasts, matched up with them. It could be for months, years, maybe lifetimes… time and the events of earth test this ideal.
And yet I am not cynical about romantic love. I think all this because of my observations in this world, and because I am hopelessly, hopelessly in love, with all of my loves from the past, with nobody in particular. I carry around an ideal that I would lay my life down for. I know my soul-mate is out there, somewhere, and I’ll scour the earth looking for him. The irony of it is, he’s probably already within.
I’m so in love with the Idea of romantic love
The practical matter sailed a bit
and then sank with the sunset at the end of the day.
Mourning for the disconnected Ideal
Peace comes behind closed eyelids swollen with tears.
Where is he? I’ve sought him my whole life. Maybe my heart will be ready to receive him one day, I wait patiently for gentle healing.
N. Lois Turtledove is a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Denver obtaining a Master's Degree in Humanities. She teaches yoga inside and outside the home, and is an apprentice in the ancient therapeutic art of shamanic practice. She understands that the only real enemy is the self, and the Self is the deepest source of nurture. She wishes freedom from suffering for herself and for all sentient beings.