Live to Love, Love to Live.

She brews her coffee—with a Kuerig she paid $20 for it’s an easy button-pressing process. Compared to the rest of her life the simplicity is inviting. And she likes to invite moments with coffee and this moment she sets down to write.

Last night the depths of her anguish flooded her heart until she reached the bottom and the tears for her mommy overcame her. She is 54 but when the sadness wraps her in the embrace she always missed she always goes to her mommy. She lost her to Alzheimer’s 17 years ago.

She knows loss well.

And she keeps trying to learn to love. After all, that is all she really wants, to give love and feel love, with the same devotion a puppy brings her master.

Recently she learned her marriage failed. She has not stopped loving her husband. And he loves her, she knows. But things shifted and changed before her eyes and she did not see. When the curtain rose the stage she saw was all scenery and props. The characters roles did not suite the play.

It’s okay though. She is healing. He is healing. The present is where she lays her head. They stay in touch. But distance works better for now. Actually she thinks divorce is in the plan. But that does not mean she will stop loving him. Some loves are like the sun and some are like the moon. Theirs is the moon, always steady, always high in the sky, just not always visible in the light.

Her brother told her once in relationships people grow and change in different ways. She knows the way things happened weren’t planned. She knows in time he will do what he needs to do to find his way as she makes her own.

They can live as friends forever still. The vow may seem broken but really the promise remains.

Friends change too.

She felt more alone through this than she can remember. She felt like a single acorn under a snowdrift.

She has lost friends over the years, some close, some casual. Some for reasons she understood, some for no reason and sometimes for reasons she did not understand. But that’s life.

Change is the only constant.

She is finding she wants to learn to love, totally with all her heart. She wants to drop her ego, her need to be in control, her hurt feelings, her desire to be close because she has such a strong need for others, and simply love.

The men she has loved taught her more of what she did not know about love than what she did. It’s like the book she writes in her head that only has beginnings and no endings. She loves to write.

She did not know how to love without neediness. She did not know how to love without taking care of another who did not ask for help. She did not know how to love with respect. She did not know how to love  like a mother.

She has never been a mother.

Love between adults must be conditional. She has learned that unconditional love belongs to mothers and fathers. Adults need condition like mutual respect and clear boundaries. Otherwise love’s energy that moves through like water down a mountain can dry up without an opening or wear down what it longs to know.

She learned as an adult that if she had self-respect growing up she lost it. She did not know she lost it till she found it.

She learned recently that sometimes friends forget when to listen and when to speak. She learned recently that certain types set a fire under her.

Her mom used to tell her if she was a doormat people would walk right over her and wipe their shoes. One time in her life that may have been true. Maybe because of that when she feels pushed and bullied her ire rises in the moment though at home, she collapses in tears.

Some may not see that. She has lots of fire. She calls it grace because otherwise life would have burned her up years ago.

Yet today she takes her pen to meet her grief. Today she takes her pen and finds comfort in her Muse who always understands. Today she knows she wants to learn to love the bully, the friend, the one’s who understand and the one’s who don’t. Today she knows she only wants to give love.

She imagines a poem, a way of packaging her hope. She thinks of lavender, the moon and candles. She thinks of the lull of chanting. She thinks of hope and prayer.

She thinks her friends, family and husband, all love her the only way they know how. She treasures this knowing; it is the lotus that balances her heart.

She unwrapped it for you tonight. It’s a simple gift: compassion’s understanding in a tale of becoming.

She offers no answers. She has only questions. She wants to begin. She wants to love, She wants her knowing to undress her ideas.

Like a seed floating in the winds, she wants love to land, find earth to give her the roots she needs to grow beyond, to live to love ad love to live.

Want 15 free additional reads weekly, just our best?

Get our weekly newsletter.

Editor: Rachel Nussbaum

Photo: Creative Commons