love is a many splendored thing!

 I know the place of the broken heart and the great deals and bargaining that entangle me as I yearn for the elusive. I watch myself struggle and being taken to the mat and ultimately being pinned.
for me, as I dive deeper into the layers of what experiences I have held onto, unable to let go of, a stark picture emerges. It's not easy to see, but what I do see are reflections of my own shadow, my own stuck places. Patterns that re-emerge, recycle, reappear. They seem desparate to find their own quiet conclusion, but are helplessly spun in some unbreakable loop.

seeing the spin for what it is, is my step onto a different road. Wrestling with all of it just leaves me exhausted, bereft of hope, abandoned and dark. I am prone to inch or dart to the nearest exit depending on the degree of panic that arises.

But taking time, pausing, naming things as they arise, discovering the spaces between the emotions, untangling the knot.....something moves in a different way. And different is good.
So I name fear, panic, loneliness, anger, rage, jealousy, longing, craving, abandonment, betrayal, inability, unwillingness, indifference, apathy, malice, hurt, grief, terror, sadness, melancholy, depression, hopelessness, desparation, frustration, aloneness, faithlessness....on and on.
"So there you are, that's your name, that's what you look like, how do you do?"
And don't be misled by my sweet little propriety. There is nothing necessarily clean or tidy about the naming. It can be as wretched as self surgery.

Before I was where I am now, the experience of self love was unavailable to me. By miracle, by grace, by a hellofalotofasskicking work and with the help of HELPERS, that part of things, which is a major part of things, is beginning to find it's groove in the whole machine.

But when I say to myself or outloud "I deserve love. I won't settle for less than such and such.." the inevitable and initiatory reply has been "how serious are you?"
there is that small child in me that grew accustomed to giving an inch and being taken for a yard. the same one who muttered "well, just this one time...". the one who sat under the table and delighted in the crumbs while everyone else enjoyed the feast.
Do I shame myself for those parts of me? I used to. I grieve that it was so, that I'm capable of and that I subsisted on the contortions of a Chinese acrobat just to make sure I had something.  I grieve that sometimes I am reflexive in reaching for the old box and readying for the fold. That those inclinations are still hovering and I need to be somewhat vigilant to avoid them hits me like a brick in the gut from time to time.

The "how serious are you?" question is a tough one. As I grow into my love and my power, the tests come in and unfortunately, I don't know they are tests until I'm either on the shoulder, hood up and smoking or else whooping and whirring with my arms up singing the Rocky theme. And there's not a thing that's linear about it. I pass one test with aces, then fall facefirst into loving someone who simply cannot, will not, does not, what not, why not love me.

But, I prefer the title of the underdog champion to the faded old Pinto on it's way to the junkyard, bent and bruised from one too many kicks to the side.

Love is breaking my heart. Loving who I love is breaking my heart. Soon enough I hope, Goddess I pray, the scales will tip the other way and all that love that I set loose on people who cannot nearly hold it will follow a shifting wind and find it's way back into my own steady arms. Love will hold me. Love holds me. Love returns. Love is here. Has always been and soon, and finally,  I am ready to let it in. I know...it's me who's gotta open the door to let all that in.

so...pause. untangle. name.....patience, love, joy, blessing, forgiveness, peace, ease, wholeness, health, flow, trust, surrender, acceptance, gratitude, equanimity, compassion, spaciousness,love, love, love.................
"there you are,  that's your name, that's what you look like, how do you do?"