no longer two different things…

flipping through channels this evening i stopped [absent mindedly] at a show i’d never even heard of before…  it was about complicated lives full of truth and lies…

and the intricate web that is the heart of a woman…  the heart of a mother… the heart of a lover… the heart of a friend.

two of the four women, who were obviously long time friends, were walking together and talking.

one of them, the vivacious glossy brown eyed and promiscuous one, [who i later learned had just begun to experiment with her sexuality and gender preferences] was lamenting about a feeling she had recently that she could not define, had never felt before, and didn’t know how she would find again…

she had tried to find it again over the previous several weeks of further experimentation in every combination she could think of, trying to detangle herself from her confusion… but the feeling was elusive –

her friend asked, “what did it feel like exactly?”

she answered, “overwhelming, but not in a bad way”

her friend replied, “was it like your emotions and your body were no longer two different things?”

the girl stared at her friend, a little shocked, yet relieved at the realization that she was completely and thoroughly understood, and nodded her head enthusiastically.

her friend said, simply, “you’re in love”.

I suppose there is no way to predict when love will come into your life, how swiftly it will take over your sensibilities, causing you to immediately throw self preservation to the far corners without question, making the impossible seem possible, nothing seem dangerous and everything seem right…

making the soul insatiable for more more more…

You can’t pre-determine how you will respond; how it will rip through your veins and tear apart the foundation of who you were and what you knew (or know)…  making it impossible to ever go backward and a shaky prospect, at best, to go forward – how will you ever know what’s real again after THIS if THIS isn’t the end all and be all…  and how presumptuous to assume that THIS is real when you obviously don’t know SHIT (after all [insert past here]…)

There isn’t a way to anticipate if you will be ready for it, who or what in your life might be impacted if the timing is wrong (or if the timing is right), how your mind will shift when you realize you’ve been living a lie but now you KNOW better, or what you would be willing to give up…

For the girl in the storyline, it wasn’t anything she was attempting to recreate on her own – not gender, or excitement of the chase, or even the experience itself that shook her.  it was, at the core, the connection and alignment of the different pieces of herself she’d been able to keep in their own perfect little boxes her whole life…  she was an expert before this at never spilling from one box to the other, and never confusing which contents belonged where.

It was the person.

For those of us who have never felt that perfect, simple, effortless unification of all the senses, mind body and spirit before, it’s easy to be blown away (and right onto our ass) by its introduction.

It’s easy to let the heart trick the mind into believing it means something it does not, and that both people involved have to be on the same page at the same pace at the exact same time, because, after all, it’s LOVE.

It’s easy to flood ourselves with dreams of “meant to be” and “this is magic”, rush to conclusions which might involve traditional things – a family, a home, forever after…

But it’s so hard to open ourselves to the notion of:

Simply enjoying the feeling

Letting it fill us completely

Until there is no more room inside

And then letting it fill us some more

Not caring about the outcome

Not considering the risks…

Just jumping, knowing full well

there is

no net

© jmr/2009