I'm still kickin'...

Yes, I am still periodically blogging, but I have transferred everything over to my new blog -
http://40andawake.blogspot.com/

I'm keeping this one active for the time being, but any new posts will be at the link above. Subscribe... or don't... or whatever.

Namaste!

Resurrection of 'The First Kiss'

My 'official' first kiss was in the summer of '86 (I think - the years get fuzzy these days). The son of my grandparents' friends invited me out to dinner (my first chaperoned 'date'). We were on the wooden stairs leading up to the game room of an Old West themed restaurant - the smell of BBQ chicken and smoked ribs in the air. At the last possible second, I realized how rank my breath was - and closed my lips tightly in an attempt to hide my oral odor. "Addicted to Love" was playing on the speakers overhead. Oh, how true those lyrics turned out to be!

After multiple boyfriends, two failed short-term marriages and one miserable long-term relationship, I've learned a few things. Unfortunately, I've learned more about what love IS NOT... but the power of rational thought has also allowed me to translate this into what love IS.

“Unless its mad, passionate, extraordinary love, it’s a waste of our time. There are too many mediocre things in life; love shouldn’t be one of them.” ~ Unknown

I've recently experienced my own rebirth in love - a resurrection of that which I once thought dead and forever gone. I hold the hope that this was indeed my last "first kiss" - rising from the ashes to remind me that we are all capable and deserving of love.

Love is a consistent, truthful, fulfilled, healing way of relating to ourselves and others.
Love is freely given and received. It is not earned nor legislated, imprisoned nor held hostage.
Love speaks out for justice and protests when harm is being done.
Love does not come with conditions, stipulations, agenda, addenda, or codes. Healthy love, however, comes with guidelines and parameters and "rules" co-created by its participants.
Love cannot be turned on as a reward or turned off as a punishment. Only something else pretending to be love can be used as a lure or hook for bait and switch, imitated or insinuated, but the 'real deal' can never be delivered if it doesn't occur naturally and freely from the heart.
Love points out the consequences of hurting oneself and others.
Love is bigger than you are. You can invite love, but you cannot dictate how, when, and where love expresses itself. You can choose to surrender to love or not, but it is unpredictable and irrefutable.
Love allows room for anger, grief, or pain. It does not cower or diminish in the presence of these things.
Love does not say directly or indirectly that if you want to be loved, you must "be a good girl", or "nice", or "do what I want".
Love isn't a power-struggle or about control. It is win some/lose some. It is compromise.
Love honors the sovereignty of each soul.
Love doesn't hurt. If it hurts, it's something else - fear, attachment, idolatry, addiction, possession.
Love isn't perfect. There is room for mistakes and quirks and missteps. Love means being hurt sometimes, but not irreparably.

Unconditional love is not being a self-sacrificing doormat or loving someone "no matter what". Unconditional love begins with loving yourself enough to protect you from the people you love if that is necessary. Until you start loving, honoring and respecting yourself, you are not truly GIVING - you are attempting to TAKE self worth from others.

Last night, the Supreme Court of the United States ordered that all Americans are afforded the right to marry in all 50 states. The predominant sentiment among my newsfeed right now is, "Love Wins".

Yes. Yes, it does.

Love is the dissolution of the borders between "you" and "me" and "them". Those lines are conceptual and imaginary anyway, and love offers a clear vision to see the world without them. Love wins. It is powerful. To love someone is to partake on the greatest adventure - it is unknown and wild, carefree and brutal, rich and honest, deep and meaningful.

For the past 24 hours, I've been reminiscing about young love, and daydreaming about what all of this means for my children and my children's children - who will never know a world in which people are not free to publicly (and legally) declare their love for and devotion to their partner. This gives me hope for a more tolerant, inclusive, loving, future world.

“Throughout this life you will meet one person who is unlike any other. You could talk to this person for hours and never get bored. You could tell them anything and they would never judge you. This person is your soul mate, your best friend. Don’t ever let them go.” ~ Unknown

Rebuilding Trust

I have squirrels in my back yard - one in particular who will climb on to my patio screen and chatter until I toss him a scrap of bread or a cracker. (I've named him Marvin.) He snatches his treats and hops to a safe distance where he can watch me warily as he nibbles. (We've run this routine for a good year now.) Because I have cats (and until recently, a dog) who can fly out the pet door at any moment, most of the other critters keep their distance. But Marvin is always there. He taunts the cats (and has tussled with one of them at least once) and flaunts his courage to the other squirrels who stay far away - close to their escape routes.

This morning, he used my head as a landing pad and jumped from the screen to my noggin and then hopped down within 8 inches of my feet and looked up as if to say, "Your move, giant woman."

I tossed him a scrap of bread, and instead of snatching it and retreating to a safe distance like he always does, he stayed. Nibbled right there at my feet.

I crouched down to be closer. He flinched, but didn't bolt. After a second he resumed eating, and upon finishing his treat looked to me for the next one. I held out my hand.

He sniffed the air, inched closer, stood 'at the ready' (I could swear I saw him take a deep breath) inched closer again - and snatched a bit of tortilla right out of my hand with the slightest brush of fur and tiny nails. Again, he didn't retreat - just sat there and ate his fill.

Trust.

It took us a year to build.

No words, no 'relationship status', no intentions, no expectations. My patience. His courage. A mutual respect for the damage we could inflict upon one another. Care (mostly on my part) not to compromise that respect. To honor it - nurture it - celebrate it. (Quietly, and without any sudden movements.)

I imagine this wouldn't mean much to most people, but to me... it's everything.

Trust can be rebuilt. It will take time. It will take patience and courage.
The rewards, though intangible, are what feed my soul.

Remembrances

I'll never forget the day you left.
The weather was as fickle and bipolar as I. Sunny one moment, drizzling grey the next.
The desert dryness of the paper as I wrapped the plates we both love.
Our dog... who smelled of sweat and Fritos.
The cats - hiding in corners. One of them as old as "us".
The red-sided garter snakes that taunted me from the side of your U-Haul with the simple question,
"Where will U go next?"
I don't know.
I don't know anything right now.
If I try to think too hard, I forget to breathe.

The ring of the doorbell and the leap of my heart when it reached for the impossible one last time, opening to a stranger with a slender package.
The new blinds for our room... my room.
The pit in my belly swells with the clouds.
Will you be okay? Will I be okay?

I still expect to hear the jingle of a collar and the patter of paws as the dog makes her rounds.
Like a zombie, I shuffle from room to room seeing everything and nothing.
You left your Gatorade on the coffee table, half-drunk.
If I lift it to my lips, can I still taste you?

Gone in an instant are the vile names we called each other, the hurts we hurled so carelessly, the pain we bore silently for years.
There is an echo... losing strength with every repetition... until there is only the vacuum of silence.
I want to cry and scream and wail and chase you down to beg you to stay.
I'll change. I'll be different.
Better. Stronger. Kinder.

The phone rings to distract me from my selfish indulgence to embrace the pain.
The voice on the other end speaks words of encouragement that wrap my heart in hope. She tells me that I am better today than I was yesterday. Stronger now than I've ever been. Kinder than I am even aware.

The universe heralded your exit with dramatic booms and thunderous applause, raining sheets of silver that stripped my garden to its roots.
The only survivors, the potatoes, safely buried in their protective cocoons.
The beans, once the pride of my labours... are a heap of delicate, fragile tendrils, their fat leaves caked with compost and soil, weighing them down to the earth that promises to reclaim them.
The landscape is desolate, but I urge them to fight... to survive... to thrive, even.

I will never forget the day you left.
The first time I've seen my son cry since Junior High.
He poured his rum and coke and sliced a lime - just like yours.
I poured a glass of KJ Chardonnay - just like old times.
We talked about our next step. Our "plan".
We inventory the things you left behind. The Keurig, the bathroom hooks, a painting...
us.

My tears blur the path - I can only see one step at a time.
I trust the rain will cleanse.
I trust my heart will heal.
I trust you will be well.

Emotional Sabotage and 'The Retroactive Lie'

Human memory is a funny thing.
While some elements of a memory may be fixed and immovable, other elements are fluid and evolving as we age, grow, gain wisdom, and put distance between the present and our brain's catalogue of past events.

Some of my memories of the past many years hover and shift like shadows from a candle. Other memories are as bright and hot as the flame itself - always moving, shifting - details emerging and retreating back into the recesses, a new discovery and different landscape each time I revisit.

What happens when someone informs you that your memories of the past aren't accurate - or truthful - or even real?
Do you blow out that flame, discard your experiences and emotions and start over?
Or do you protect those memories and allow them to illuminate your present decisions?

The Scenario:
You and your partner attend a dinner party. You splurge on a new outfit/pair of shoes/hair-do for the occasion and your partner is effusive in his praise over your appearance. You attend the party, feeling like a million bucks on the arm of your mate. The two of you drink, dance, socialize, and you are the belle of the ball. You arrive home slightly tipsy, have sex with your guy, and fall into bed with the thought, "What a great night!"
Several years later, you are chatting with your mate and something spurs a recollection of the dinner party the two of you attended some years back. You bubble with remembered excitement about how fantastic that party was and what a great time you had.
"I hated that party," replies your mate. "Bob was there, and you know we don't get along. You were drunk early in the evening, making your rounds in that ridiculous dress/pair of shoes/hair-do, and I spent most of the night hopelessly flirting with the girl at the bar, hoping to escape the scene you were making."

As an empath, my response is immediate. What right do I have to keep my happy memories, when the person I love (and profess to share my life with) has only unhappy memories of the same event?

Even more devastating, what happens when your partner admits that they've not been committed to the same goals (or even the relationship itself) for quite some time? How quickly do we replay every event, milestone, intimate exchange, or argument and "rewire" our memories to be more accurate?

ALL of our experiences are subjective. We bring our history, our convictions, our baggage to the party and use them as filters to judge and categorize. What touches me or brings me to tears may not affect the person next to me. It doesn't have to.

Embrace it. Lean into it. Learn from it. Love it. Don't give in to the sabotage, and don't allow the 'retroactive lie' to invalidate your character and constitution. YOU have all the knowledge and experience you need to make the decisions that are right for you.

Just because my partner wasn't experiencing our relationship the same way, doesn't mean my experience isn't real and true. Our experiences don't need to be shared in order to be valid. To allow others to compromise that is to invalidate your own reactions, responses and feelings. Oftentimes based on nothing more than 'hearsay'.

Don't ever let someone else rewrite your story. It is yours and yours alone.

The Dawn of Mid-Life

I turn forty tomorrow.

I can remember being 9 or 10, sitting on the counter in my bathroom with the mirrored door to the medicine cabinet angled to face the large mirror above the sink. I could stick my face between the two mirrors for a view of me x infinity.

It was there that I first pondered existential questions that led to wondering what I would look like as an adult and who I would become.

Some of my musings weren't far off the mark. I look like my mom (when she wore her hair long). I've worked in the arts and with children for all of my adult life. I did not become a singing missionary, a veterinarian, or the best tap-dancer in all of the Southwest United States.

I had great expectations, as I imagine most young people do. At some point, I was sure I'd be married with children in a nice home close to family and friends with neighbors that went to the same church and had block parties on holidays. 

My story is one that has been retold at political rallies, key note addresses, motivational workshops, you name it. But my story is ever-evolving, and parts of it so far removed that it feels as if they belong to someone else.

I was a gold-star kid, academically and socially adept, poised for success. Scholarships to Universities, job offers with major players in my desired profession, opportunities galore. I felt invincible.

With only 3 months left until my High School graduation, I got pregnant. I was dating a boy I'd met while working over the summer with high-risk elementary school kids. I liked him a lot. He was good-looking, fastidious, goal-oriented - strong in the areas I felt weak. We were reckless and careless and had too much time on our hands. Both of our sets of parents were going through divorces at the time and we were left without much supervision. It was a volatile combination.

I was kicked out of the house and my relationship with my parents became truly adversarial. I lost my family, my church family, my scholarship offers and my job prospects in one fell swoop. I gave into the social and religious pressure to get married, and we bought a house and had a second child by the time we were 20.

At 21, we separated. At 22, we divorced. I persevered in my chosen profession and started taking classes again. At 24, I remarried a very sweet man who tried his best to be my partner in every way. It wasn't him - it really was me. We separated when I was 26. I rediscovered my passion for the arts and revisited pursuing a degree. At 27, I fell in love with my leading man in a community theatre play. (I know, it's so cliche. Sorry.) For 13 years, we were a bi-polar, on-again-off-again roller coaster. My focus was primarily on creating a life that was exciting and "fun", my kids grew up, I moved away when they started college, my son moved in with me a year and a half later, and the boyfriend dumped me (for good) last August. 

Throughout my life, I've determined my value and worth based on my relationships. Some studies will say that this is because I'm inherently female. Some experts will say I'm co-dependent. My horoscope says I'm a typical Pisces. Whatever the root cause, I understand and accept that part of me. It helps to define who I am, but it does not encompass my fully-realized purpose.

And so it is that I'm here, starting a new blog as part of my rediscovery. Starting a new chapter in my story. I'm redefining relationships and rebuilding ones I've neglected (including my relationship with myself), and not allowing fear of failure to stop me from trying something new.

I also started gardening. So there's that. 

Farewell, 39. You were one hell of a year. I'm not sad to see you go.

Hello, 40! I hope you'll be as good to me as I intend to be to you. 
Don't let me down.