All Roads Lead Back To You

My love ... there's only you in my life
The only thing that's right
My first love ... you're every breath that I take
You're every step I make

Dear You ...

Heaven only knows the amount of emotional turmoil I have unleashed upon myself the last few days.  Among the positive of growth, life has placed me upon a tightrope - performing a balancing act of self reflection.  The revelations have not been completely easy to absorb and implement.  I have found myself quite enlightened on an array of personal topics while, in some cases, even less is known of myself.  But this is still good.  I am aware.  I prayed for a greater level of discernment between what I know and do not.  This new acumen has yielded greater awareness and therefore even further opportunity to ensure I'm on the correct path.

One major epiphany within the last couple days has been regarding matters of the heart.  Amidst all the pain and confusion unleashed for positive forward momentum, I've found that my heart continues to return itself to You.  Despite all the lamentation for things I had to give up, I find that my heart continues a certain level of consistency in that I can always revert to You.  You've been a constant lighthouse in every storm as I have worked toward finding my way.  I'm not always certain WHY You still allow me to come back but I'm grateful.

You've held me closer with each new complication.  With every loss and every gain; for every blessing and every curse; with every pain or every sense of accomplishment, You create a desire for me to use it as a fuel for personal betterment.  You are my perpetual motivation cheerleader and also my teddy bear when I'm feeling less than self.  You're filled with God's love and, for that, I am always in love with You. I find it interesting, I didn't always realize your love was there, nor did I realize how much I loved You.  Your steadfast backing of whatever happens to me does not go without notice.  I'm not so naive as to think there are others who would do what You do without condescension or judgment.  I often feel as though I'm using you since You've become my "go-to" whenever I need you.

I do realize though, if there was no You, there would clearly be no me as a result.  You are the ever present blessing to my life and I'm glad that I can always count on You and your presence whenever - if ever - there is something going on in my life.  You are thee love of my life and I'm glad You've never decided to leave me hanging.  I do hope the one I am to spend my life with understands you are a staple and I will always choose You if ever it comes down to a choice.  My awareness helps me to realize that I am able to move on with another yet still keep You close by as well.  I need to learn to live with the fact that I can't live without you and to build up my necessary affinity toward polyamory.  I'm unable to live without You, so he - whomever he may be - will need to be willing to share me with You.

I quite obviously cannot get enough of You!

I love you forever and ever, You!

I will see You soon,
~You

Blessed Despite the Circumstances!

You may or may not have seen this before.  There are always inspirational videos from America's Got Talent or Britain's Got Talent, but you never hear about the stories along the periphery in other countries.  I never knew there even WAS a Korea's Got Talent.  Aside from this young man's amazing talent, his story touched my heart in ways that only God can explain.  There are such tragedies that happen in our world on a daily basis and some people live with and must ENDURE those tragedies on a daily basis.  I am truly amazed by the blessing God has bestowed upon the human being - what we can endure physically and/or emotionally just based upon sheer will is literally a phenomenal gift squandered by most.  We have grown so accustomed to a life of privilege and circumstance that, when something goes wrong, we would rather complain about the setback instead of doing what is necessary to get ourselves out of the predicament.

I've said all that to say, My God is AMAZING!  I REFUSE to allow the "negative" issues within my life to deter me from seeking out my destiny!  I shall not be moved from the path.  Thank you God for bestowing upon me these gifts ... I shall not stop until their purpose has been fulfilled in your eyes.

Bag Lady *OR* It's Our Anniversary *OR* In Time

Bag lady

You gone hurt your back

Dragging all them bags like that

I guess nobody ever told you

All you must hold on to

Is you

One day all them bags gone get in your way…

~ “Bag Lady”, Erykah Badu, Mamas Gun, © 2000 Motown

Today is an interesting day …

**sigh**

While I've known for some time that today was coming, I have not really been certain how I wanted to approach it.  A few days ago, after a conversation, I thought it would be easier to just begin writing about my feelings on this day.  Last night, however, I listened to the above song and the ground fell out from under me.  Allow me to clarify in that it wasn't a bad thing.  I've just been presented with an opportunity to look at things from multiple angles.  This day COULD be hard.  It could be easy.  It could be a mixture of fantastic and terrible, nostalgia and/or heartbreak.  As thoughts begin to flow through my fingers and I read them for the first time as they appear before me on the megapixels of the LCD before me, I realize it is a mixture of everything previously stated … and then some.

Today, you see, is my anniversary.  Well … kind of.  Last year, on this day, I was to stand before God and my family (blended as it was to become), and declare publicly that I would spend the rest of my days with him – my love, my heart, my breath, my soul, the ‘Moon of My Life.’  Unfortunately, my anniversary has been replaced.  In its stead, this date currently holds the reminder of what should have been or what was to be.

It’s funny what symbolism a song can conjure up within the mind.  I realized last night that, until I heard this song, I had been living a lie of sorts.  I had grown accustomed to a certain level of weight being added to my person.  I was content with allowing it to be my new norm without even considering its source.  I walked around touting this persona of forward movement and clear-minded, daily, new beginnings.  All the while, I was completely oblivious to the fact that I had a tremendous amount of invisible (at least to me) baggage that had been holding me back in a number of ways.  Despite all the forward momentum and progress being made in other efforts, I was still tethered to an invisible source within my past.  This song shed light on so much.

Honestly, how could I not want to hold on to it?  It was, and still is, on top of the list of “Greatest Things I've Experienced Within My Few Days Upon This Rock” and therefore requires a certain level of respect.  I was in love.  Truly.  Madly.  Deeply.  Completely.  Irrevocably (?).  On May 5 of last year, I wrote a post entitled “Orange Moon” (click and opens in another window) to give a glimpse into a love that had enveloped me and every fiber of my mind, body and soul.  I was so happy and so excited to be in love with him that I needed to share with the world just why it was that I was to marry him.  In truth, I wanted everyone to fall in love with him just a modicum of how much I had already fallen for him – to show off the blessing I was so grateful and humbled to have received.  I couldn't wait to walk down the aisle to/with/for him.

Anyone who might have attempted to tell me that day was not actually destined would have been a liar.  Unfortunately, 2 short months later, our love would fizzle from what was then its physical manifestation.  Our dynamic as ‘one’ had transformed us into more of a ‘duo’ working together to bring about something – I could no longer tell what.  We had become two individuals on the precipice of doom.  We were building a ticking time bomb.  We fought against ourselves in that we were continuing to build it while also attempting to dismantle it – any stray movements sending us into a catastrophic blast of destruction and chaos, hearts flailing about amongst the debris and rubble.  There would be no return from either of these scenarios.  Two months, a moment that doesn't even seem significant enough to be a quantifiable measure of time.  The rapid deterioration depleted blood from the heart, the mind and the body, leaving in its wake, an emaciated shell that once was a house of love.  Now there were only 2 choices: continue to build the bomb and await the blast, or work to disassemble it – touching so many wires that the detonation was more than an inevitability, it was an absolute certainty.  The gravity of such a decision could suck the body of an elephant through a drinking straw.

Eyes wide open, I still saw nothing but total and complete darkness around me.  The void of light, this black hole that was my heart, consumed me more and more until I became one with and within it.  Differentiating yourself from a pain so black that no sound or light would dare come close is a task no one should have to endure.  The brain begins to play tricks on you and mirages form within your mind.  Because you have nothing but your mind, the mental representations seem to form themselves before your eyes.

A white speck seemed to form before my eyes and I figured I was creating another delusion.  It got closer and closer until it became a blinding light.  It was love – more specifically the love we once had.  Having become one with the blackness, it hurt to look at this love.  It hurt to feel this love upon my flesh.  It felt as if I was sitting upon the sun and slowly melting.  In the slowest of slow motion, I felt every layer of my skin bubble and incinerate – each piece only finishing its pain long enough for the next portion to begin its slow and painful deterioration.  Relief came only upon the realization of a third option: we would only be spared the fate of tragic destruction and complete obliteration if we left things as they were - separate ourselves from a love so pure and so amazing but also from a tragic fate that would consume us until we became one with it and lost ourselves (and each other) completely.

**side note: the New York sky just opened up and began to weep for our lost love**

On this day, one year from the day I was to fuse my spirit with his, I allow my limbic system to push forth a single secretion beyond my lashes and down to my chin, depositing itself along the surface of my shirt.  It sits there for a moment until the fibers give way to allow for its absorption – only just in time for the for a few hundred of its friends to join in the now mushy graveyard along my chest.  It doesn't take long for me to realize these aren't caused by pain.  That it’s taken me this long to come to the realization that I must put down this large receptacle and leave it there is one thing.  The realization itself is the focus, however.  Awareness that there is actually a bag to put down – that I’d never let go – now means that I can do what’s necessary to truly move forward.  I am finally, some fourteen months after our relationship’s dissolution, able to completely let go.

The initial reaction is pain - tumultuous and immediate - not unlike ripping a band-aid made of duct tape from the chest of a man covered in coarse hair like that of Steve Carell in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.”  Just as it’s pulled off though, there is an immediate subsiding and the body does what it needs in order to repair the lost skin cells, replenishing what was removed from the heart.  The heart begins to replenish the mind.  The mind rejuvenates the spirit.

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Since there’s no more you or me

It’s time I let you go

So I can be free

And live my life how it should be

No matter how hard it is, I’ll be fine without you

Yes, I will

Thought I couldn't live without you

It’s gonna hurt when it heals, too

It’ll all get better in time

Even though I really love you

I’m gonna smile cause I deserve to

It’ll all get better in time …

~ “Better In Time”, Leona Lewis, Spirit, © 2008 J Records

I miss you.