A Little Bit of Inspiration on a Sunday Afternoon...

What does love look like?

I posed a question on my Facebook page yesterday and was overwhelmed by the response.  The question was "What is real love? What does it look like? What does it feel like?"

I didn't expect a clear answer.  Philosophers and poets have been trying to define love for centuries, coming close, but never quite hitting the mark.  Why?  Because love looks, feels, sounds, smells and tastes different to every soul in the universe.  It can't be defined.  I know this.  So why, then, did I pose the question?  For several reasons, I guess.  Because sometimes people who aren't philosophers and poets can sometimes come up with better answers to the really tough questions and because I think I wanted some solidarity.  To know that there are some others out there who are just as lost as I am.

I was amazed at some of the beautiful answers I was given in response to a very difficult question...


Rachel Clemons Guarino It's like when you had your babies and there's a moment (however short lived) that you are overwhelmed, amazed, and surer then you've ever been about anything.. Embodied with devotion and love. I found my love two years ago and thinking about him is overwhelming to me.. Sometimes so charged I feel nauseous! It's the only thing I can compare it to is that moment a few days after having Lil just knowing my life and love is hers. It's bigger then me, it's the universe, it's magic. It's everything.



Candace Todd 

Real love is involuntary and unstoppable. It will find you when you least expect it. It will begin w/ only a spark and keep burning hotter and growing stronger! It's when you've learned every mistake someone has made, every flaw they have, and all your differences, and still think they're absolutely amazing! An addiction that completely consumes your heart, mind, and soul. The feelings you feel are genuine, unique, and above anything you've ever felt. It will make you go against anything you promised yourself, and change any plans you had. Your biggest desire is to do whatever it takes to keep it and protect it. It has no certain look, or description.... It doesn't have to because somehow ( that cant be explained ) you just know!

Loretta Lewis Real love is what you feel for that child you carried in your stomach and close to your heart for 9 months. It looks like that baby you hold for the first time, that toddler you chase after, that teenager you worry about and that young woman you give away to be loved by another person. It feels like your chest is going to explode with happiness, sadness, fear, and wonder everytime you think of your child, see your child, hold your child, leave your child.


Star Peimbert Like being ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!


Karen Allen Poole It feels like home! No matter where you are or what's going on around you. If that person is beside you, you are home! That goes for spouses, children, parents, who ever makes you feel like you are at home. ♥


Random Thoughts n' Lotsa Coffee Real love. It is knowing, without knowing, it is that fit, the melding of souls that can't be seen only felt. It is the feeling of a part of your soul becoming whole as it seamlessly fits with another. It is not work, there is no effort... it simple happens on a karmic level. It is the feeling of coming home, of finding some part of yourself that you didn't even realize it was missing until you find it. There is no question, there is no doubt. True real love simply, is. You hear it in a sigh, you see it in a gaze, you sense it while in its presence. Like air, it just simply is. It is the feeling of being whole. ~Jenn




Here's my problem though...These are all beautiful answers and I get them on an intellectual level, but on an emotional level, I draw a complete blank.  the only ones that come close are the ones about a mother's love.  That one I get.  I would maim, murder and destroy anyone who hurt my child and knew that in my core the moment the nurse handed her to me (and I don't even kill bugs).  But even that one only goes so far, because I am just waiting for the day that she realizes that I, in fact, did not hang the moon and that my kisses won't heal every hurt.  What happens when she figures out that mommy is a deeply flawed human being and she doesn't like me anymore?


I asked my very patient husband the same question.  I laughed at the answer he gave me, because I interpret it in a very different way.  He said that love is like a black hole.  You can't see it.  It's just there.  And it's huge and sweeps everything into it.  To be honest, I don't remember anything else he said because my brain got lost in my own version of that analogy.  I am a black hole for love.


I suck love in and it can't get out...it's lost forever.  No one knows what happens to it, it's just gone.  I don't know how to give it back.  I have this unexplained gravitational pull surrounding me, calling people in.  The smart ones get out before they get sucked in and lost forever.


And that right there, is why I am in therapy.  


I will say this about love... There is one way I know unconditional love exists and I feel it every day.  I think the only soul capable of truly unconditional love is a dog.    

What happens when she finds out I didn't hang the moon?

When does life begin?

When I was sixteen I remember thinking I couldn't wait for my life to begin.  Soon I would be in college, on my own, no rules, no oppressive family life to overcome.  Childhood gone and forgotten.  I could finally start MY life.


Then I was eighteen, and in college.  Soon, my life would begin.  I would finish classes and get my degree.  I would start a career and not have to worry about where my next meal would come from or how I would cover next semester's tuition.  I would be a grown up.  My life would finally begin.


Then I got pregnant and dropped out of college.  It was unplanned, as most things are, but at least then my life would begin.  I started to plan.  I was alone, though not for long or so I thought.  As fate often does, it had other plans for me and I lost the baby at sixteen weeks.  My life didn't begin.  


I wandered around the country, mostly following a man, for six years, selling roses and grooming jousting horses  at renaissance faires, waiting for my life to begin.  I had lovers.  I had drugs.  I had a romantic -albeit dirty- gypsy life.  I had fun.  What did I have to lose?  I was still waiting for my life to begin.  


I hit my mid-twenties, still waiting.  I watched my friends get married, have children, have careers, have lives, while I had crap jobs and piece of shit boyfriends who still lived with their parents.  I was running out of time.  Somewhere in my mind I heard this quiet ticking.  Not a biological clock, mind you.  I knew I wasn't ready for babies.  I still liked to party.  I still wanted to have fun and be young.  But in my mind, my life wouldn't begin until I had someone to share it with.


To this day, I wonder where that came from.  I was surrounded by young, brilliant, successful women who had careers and lives completely independent of any man.  They were not defined by their relationships.  I left home at a very young age because I knew I could BE one of those women, yet I found myself needing to tie myself to a man in order to feel like I could start my life.


At twenty-seven I moved back to a place I feared and loathed...home.  So my life could finally begin.  Surprise, it didn't.  I worked dead-end job after dead-end job, dating loser after loser, hoping maybe the next loser would be the one to bring me up out of my hole.  Maybe this loser would marry me and my life would finally begin.


At thirty I did meet someone and I got so extraordinarily lucky, I still have a hard time believing it.  He was not a loser.  He is a good guy.  A great guy.  We were married a year later.  Parents a year after that.  And you know what?  I am still sitting here waiting for my life to begin.


That last sentence sums it all up.  I am sitting here.  Waiting.  It has taken me thirty-eight years, countless hours of therapy, too many drugs to list, journals full of pitiful tears and the verge of divorce for me to finally realize that my life isn't just going to begin.  I have to MAKE IT BEGIN.  It sounds so simple, doesn't it?  I think it's about time I get off my ass and start my life, don't you?  


    

Teaching an Old Dog an Old Trick

Today my daughter tried to teach me how to play.  Play what?  Just play.  It seems I've forgotten, or I never learned, one of the two.  But whenever she asks me to play with her I go into a bit  of a panic and always seem to find something else to do.  Something more important, like check Facebook or pretend to clean the kitchen, or watch television.  Something always more important that her, at least that's how she sees it, and rightly so.  I was terrified.  But I did it.

I let her put make up on me.  I put on a party dress.  I put on high heels.  We danced around the kitchen and acted like children.  And you know what?  I had fun.  The house stayed standing and the only one who laughed at me was my daughter.  My daughter who is wise beyond her years.  She saw that I was struggling.  She knew I was so far out of my element that all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and hide.  She asked me why I couldn't play.  I told her it was because I didn't know how.

I tried as best as I could, without coloring her wonderful opinion of her grandparents, to explain to her that when I was a little girl I was never really allowed to play.  That there was always better things to do.  I should be cleaning or doing something productive.  There was no time for play.  So now, when it comes to having fun, my instant reaction is that there are better things to do.  But soon, my daughter won't want to play.  Soon she will want to do everything on her own.  Too soon, she won't need or want mommy around anymore.  I will have missed it.  So I better get over my issues and get down on my hands and knees and learn how to play if it kills me.  It probably won't.

Spring Broken

I'm sitting in a hotel room in North Carolina. My daughter and I are on spring break. Just she and I. Her and me. The kiddo and the mommy. All the time. No off button. No daddy. 100% quality time. I suck at this.

I'm a good mom, don't get me wrong. I can do the mommy thing. But when it's just the two of us and I am expected to entertain her the entire time, I start to lose my shit a little. I can't think of what to do. I want to curl up in fetal position and pray that she'll just watch TV for a little while, but NO...she wants to DO stuff. She wants to play. She wants to go places. But she's five. So the things she wants to do and the places she want she wants to go don't always jive with what I want to do.

I'm trying to be cool mommy. Go with the flow, super fun, think Lorelai Gilmore. But there's a reason we never saw 'Gilmore Girls: The Kindergarten Years' Because five year olds are damn hard to please. Even pleasant, cute, well-behaved ones like mine. They are still short terrorists.

I'm only on day two. So far I've been mostly rescued by the company of a new friend, but the rest of the time, I'm on my own. We may cut this trip short. But here's the rub... spring break is about to become permanent.

Soon enough it will just be she and I. Her and me. The kiddo and the mommy. All the time. Not just on spring break but every day. No one at six o'clock for me to say "Here - this is yours." Always the one to entertain. Always on.

I am afraid that I won't be able to cut it. I am a damn good mom. But what if I'm not good enough? What if I can't be her everything all the time? What if I screw her up? What if we don't survive spring break?

I have a too many pets. And yes, they are a pain ass.

There.  I said it.  I have two dogs, one of which is a Great Dane coming in at just under 200 lbs.  I have 4 cats, 2 fish and a mouse.  Sometime they piss me off.  And I love each and every one of them.  Why am I telling you this?  Because I am getting ready to move across the country and I have to find a rental property and it is proving quite difficult to find a decent place with my brood.  Any time I mention it, the first words out of everyone's mouths are "just get rid of them."  To which I reply with a resounding "Fuck off."

Would it be infinitely more convenient to not have them? Yes.  It would be a lot more convenient to not have my kid, too, but that's not an option either.  Each of these souls came into my life for a reason.  They picked me.  That may sound ridiculous to some of you, but not to me.  I don't take in every stray.  I don't belong on an episode of Animal Hoarders.  There are some days I'd like to kick them all to the curb, right along with the kid.  But I can't.  They are mine.  And I love them.

When you bring a pet into your home it is for their entire life.  They are yours and you are theirs.  Not just until they become inconvenient, or your life changes, or whatever the excuse may be.  So yeah, I may bitch about my animals, especially in relation to my living situation, but please, don't tell me to get rid of them.  Thanks.

Girl Power: Then and now

Almost 20 years ago I did a self portrait for a college design course.  I combined my skills in metal work with my love of water colors to create a (very) short book.  I wanted, needed, anyone to see the pain I was in.  The irony of the whole thing is that, at the time,  I thought all of my pain was behind me.  I thought my life was about to begin.  It was college, after all.  That's when life is supposed to begin.  I had found Jesus.  Little did I know I hadn't found Jesus at all.  I had found a group of people whose main purpose was to make people feel unworthy, unloveable, unloveable and unclean.  I was so un, it was unbelievable.

I found this 'church' through my boyfriend at the time.  I left the church after the pastor told him not to marry me because I would never be submissive enough.  Boy, was he right!  I guess that church did me at least one favor.  I'm still mad at those people for ruining Christianity for me, but that is another story in itself.  It isn't this one.  I am happy in my faith now.  It fits me like my own skin and really, what more could you ask for?

This story is about that book and a self portrait written 20 years ago that still applies, but for different reasons.  Fate is a funny little bitch, isn't she?

Made of brass, each piece hand cut and together soldered together.  The image represents a rising sun (Dawn), with a child's hand holding on to the fingers of a parent.

At the time, it symbolized my difficult relationship with my parents, whom I had little to no contact with at the time, as well as my new found relationship with God.  

Now?  Now all I see is my relationship with my beautiful, bright little girl.  That no matter what she and I will weather anything that comes our way.  That child gives me hope with every rising sun.

And so begins our story...

     

(No Title)

A small child lies waiting for a loving mother to hold her.  The mother never comes, yet the child, she grows anyway.

A hand reaches out of nowhere, yet everywhere, to push the child unwillingly through life.

Many faces surround the frightened child.  Some smiling, most not.  Their eyes reaching into her mind and pulling out her courage, making her want to fight.

She wants to fight, but not alone. From behind something bigger than herself.

As she grows, she ventures out from behind her protector more and more. She is confident that she can stand on her own.

From out of nowhere, yet everywhere, objects are hurled at the girl who stands frightened, taking the abuse.  She longs for the strength she was given once and cries out.

Then I woke up.

So what does it all mean and how have things changed in twenty years?  Everything has changed and nothing has changed.  I am still confused and lost and abused, but I am stronger and smarter and I know what I want.  I have a better idea of who I am and more important, of who I want to be.  And that makes all the difference.

There is still a part of me waiting for my mom to love me, but there is a bigger part of me that accepts that she really does.  It also makes me want to be a better mother every day...for my daughter to never doubt for a second, even when she hates me, which she will, how much I love her. 

There's still that scared little girl who feels attacked at evert turn, forced to make decisions even when I'm not ready to.  I don't think that ever changes.  I still feel the pressure to fight my way through every situation, but I care less and less what others think and more and more what I think.  That is huge for me.  I am no longer fighting alone.  I have my baby to fight with me, and to fight for.  

I am confident and strong.  I can take on the world, no matter what is hurled at me.  I will still and always need a hand and am so grateful that the security I am walking away from will always have my back and be my best friend.  I am a lucky woman.  

I am awake.