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A post shared by Waylon Lewis__. (@waylonlewis) on Aug 18, 2019 at 8:03am PDT

I want a lover who doesn’t mind when I eat chips in bed, the crumbs of salt falling onto the covers occasionally.

Tiny crystals that encase a gigantic, golden truth:

I am messy. Life is messy. Love is messy.

And yet, within that, there is beauty. There are absolute gems.

Love cannot be ordered or controlled. It cannot be forced to fit within the artificial confines of our epic expectations.

Yes, commitment is a glorious thing, but it must never be a cage.

And for this mermaid—well, love must feel fundamentally free.

It must drip with the delicious invitation to inhabit our souls and take up residence in the deep, ecstatic roots of our authenticity.

As I’m learning to embrace my own messiness, I crave a lover who’s okay with the imperfect. The rips, the flaws, the broken pieces, the grit.

All of it.

Not just the pretty sparkles on top. Not the trying-too-hard bullsh*t.

‘Cause life is brutal and breathtaking—I gasp regularly from the sudden twists and turns, my skin rendered warm and pink from the sun, mud under my nails from the trek of unexpected adventures.

What I’ve discovered in my travels is that I will never have it perfectly together. No one does—and I don’t want to pretend.

So I will eat chips in bed and it will make a mess. I will wear my heart on my sleeve and that will be messy, too.

I’m just not made to fit inside the convenient, well-defined lines—I am born to breathe in the spaces between, in the dark purple of midnight and the grin of glimmering dawn sunlight. And I will embrace chaos. Oh yes, I will embrace the wild, whipping winds of emotion, growth, transformation, and the gut-wrenching tenderness of being human.

I don’t want to become a shiny replica of someone else’s expectations. I don’t want to be a trophy or a prize or a good-luck charm.

I will be myself instead. And I shall guard that with joy and ferocity.

I’d like to say: “Here, I am. Take it or leave it,” with a sweet, fiery glimmer in my eye.

Because that is how I feel.

I’m sick of men trying to change me. I’m sick of trying to be perfect. I’m tired to the bone of trying to please other people.

I crave a love who understands that when my heart and hair are in tangles—it’s okay. I actually like it.

I live for those deep, wild places that aren’t varnished or made-up.

I don’t want to wear a mask, keep my house spotless, or be so very careful not to say the wrong thing.

That sounds boring. And exhausting.

I want to be…

I want to feel the wind sting my eyes as the salt from a fallen chip on my sheets reminds me of the vastness of the sea, of all that is possible. Of the incredible mysteries that live and breathe within our hearts.

I want to blurt out my thoughts and feelings—unvarnished, baby!

And I want to dance around the kitchen in my underwear, flip my hair, sing, and make a complete fool of myself. Honestly, I need to do that regularly to feel like I can breathe.

So, hell yeah, I crave a lover who doesn’t find my wings annoying or try to clip ’em—I want a love that can fly with me. And when we touch down onto the deep, red clay of the earth—it shall be glorious.

It will be like the wrinkles forming around the corner of my eyes because I like to laugh and cry a lot. Because I welcome all the waves: the tears, disappointments, successes, fears, pain, beauty, and sweetness.

I was not made for a cage, but for movement.

For the dynamic pulse and change that is life!

For awkwardness, humanness, and late-night heart to hearts.

And this existence, it is so precious. And messy. It will never not be messy.

I’m beginning to embrace that, with a satisfying crunch of a salty chip from under a soft blue blanket in bed.

My former beloved, he did not turn out to be what I needed. I did not turn out to be what he needed.

There is sadness, a deep, fractured hollow in my chest. And yet, there is freedom. There is a deep, resounding inhale and the soft sound of my wings unraveling. I love how the sharp sadness of endings can exist right alongside the subtle expansion of other feelings—like excitement and relief.

Because I’m not perfect. I’ll never be perfect. The goal becomes something else…

I will be myself. My weird, flawed, joyful self.

Tears run into my mouth mixing with the salt from those chips and I know I won’t forget this. Because isn’t this what we really live for?

A moment of deeply honoring ourselves.

When we get goosebumps and truth whispers on our skin like a light breeze,

And we cannot look away. 

Usually, we see scraps and fragments of our relationships—the parts that we wish would work, the parts we jam together to pretend they fit. But finally, we glimpse the whole picture. And we see clearly what doesn’t fit.

There is no turning back.

So we swallow stardust and shed tears and walk into change, into the life that is meant for us. It hurts. It’s magical. It’s both.

And the tangles of heartbreak, they are messy of course. They are frayed and tender, like the poor ends of my sun-bleached hair.

But they also speak of stories to be written and adventures yet to be tasted.

I like that.

~