Someone wanted me to tell you to still believe in love

Someone wanted me to tell you to still believe in love
Long after the heartbreaks that grow you old, weather your rib cage, tighten your lungs
Long after you've learned strategy and self-respect, or how to be happy on your own
Long after you've grown weary of risking so much energy--putting in, without any guarantees that your efforts will bare fruit
Past your better judgment that falling in often means falling apart
Someone wanted me to tell you to still go
All the way
Past the fear of certain pain, past the knowing that you will lose
Someone out there, despite these warnings, still wants your vulnerable, scarred up heart
Still desires your tender desire
Still seeks your raw and wobbly expression of trust
Still waits for your laughter to fill the quiet room
Someone still wants to face you as your mouth cries out in human explosion
Wants to evaporate with you, lose all sense of self--together
And then hold you for just a little while longer, at least
Remind you--by being with you--
That, for better or worse,
Through sickness and health
We all disappear together

When they leave, it doesn't mean you lose. A contemplation on break-ups, winnings, and losings in love.

When they leave, it doesn't mean you lose.

 

You lose when you roll up the windows of your truth. When you pace paranoid in your own darkness, afraid that if they knew what was in there, they couldn't possibly be interested in staying.

You lose when you prioritize "keeping things easy" for them, over believing that your heart's real expression is worth the work of understanding.

You lose when getting them to stay becomes more important than how relaxed or happy or in-love you feel when you're with them.

You lose when you do all the work. When you process and coach and coax things into surviving. When you deny creative destruction. When you don't let what's sinking, sink, and you drown yourself in the process.

You lose when you decide stubbornly that if they don't stay, you're not staying. What about standing in the truth of your love, either way? What about saying "I'm not done here," without demands, without overextending. But with gentle knowing trust that it's okay to let love flow its natural desiring course. Vulnerable, and completely okay.

You lose when you've convinced yourself that you couldn't possibly do it without her, without him. Because you could. You can. The truth is, everyone eventually loses everyone. We all go home, to the Big Home, alone. Even the truest loves between two people are mortal. But the best loves help us remember the infinite love that's beyond us.

Which brings us to winning...

You win when you heed your intuition about what will make you happy in a healthy, expansive way, rather than clinging to the attachments of your heart. 

You win when you let the leaving happen honorably; no fake-outs or fold-ins. The true you stays true. 

You win when you respect yourself and your desire for capital L-love, rather than fearing the loss of a nice-and-easy Like.

You win when you trust that Love is infinite. That everyone, everyone, wants to give and receive Love. That there is really, truly always more Love to go around.

You win when you realize there's a spiritual love within your body, your being, your very sweet soul--and you can access it at any time. It's inconvenient for our hopes of a constant material expression of love from another, but it's still true. You Are Nothing But Love. And you win when you can tap into that truth, breathe in it, bathe and dance and sing and weep in it. That's the biggest win of all.

“Don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens - The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.” - John Steinbeck

Becoming Fire

It's the night before Independence Day and I'm in Colorado alone. I technically have a home waiting for me, but we all know how that goes--the things that wait we don't always want. I can feel my dreams screaming with urgency not to get off track, but to ride the train hard and fast as far as it will take me and at the cliff fly, let what wants to die, die--trust that the stuff of spirit floats.

Last year, this time, I was walking the streets of a small city in Maryland watching families gather on blankets, sharing mosquito spray, popcicles, beer. I remember keeping my eyes peeled for anyone, anyone at all who was also alone and ready to sweep me away from my terrible solitude. The ice-cream man gave me a free a bottle of water and his phone number. I never called. I sat cross-legged on the grass and watched the moon stand steady behind exploding fireworks. I prayed that I'd somehow recover, feel sane, happy even, given the chance to sit alone again watching the world explode.

Tonight I'm going out solo on an out-of-town friend's cruiser bike. I don't know what I'll find. But it's almost Independence Day, and no coincidence that I'm alone.

It's become clear over the year that the hidden gift of solitude is you only have to please yourself; let the most alive and fearless part of you choose what you really want to do, go do it.

Tonight, I want to feel something new; be out in the world, become fire.

A Haiku for the Heat. (In 4 parts).

I surrender, sun.

Burn me like a forest fire,

leave me half-way gone.

Watch my matter change,

disintegrate, fall, take flight.

It's all a rain dance.

When red is just red,

when clouds can be wet or dry,

you'll have found me, free.

Don't look for the old.

Familiarity's blind.

Taste me: I'm pulsing.

What if the Gift is the Ending? We Can Reimagine Our Lives?

The title to this post is an excerpt by Jen Lemen from the short film below.

We loaded our bicycles, panniers, salty-skinned bodies into the van. The door shut and the dog licked my face. I smiled on the outside, retrieved my camera, snapped a photo with my husband, then watched as the open hills of South Dakota moved like sound waves through my heart, everything singing loss. I might never come back for my destiny, I thought. Jesus Christ, I might never know.

~~~

Some people are doorways into new depths of our selves. My body pulled into his like a magnet, like it had been dead and suddenly shocked awake again. Once we feel, we cannot un-feel.

~~~

Almost a year later, I still could not undo my longing. I want for us to come clean, I wrote my husband with every ounce of courage in me; to honor each other out the door.

~~~

We ran into each other on a random side-street in the city at 2am on a Tuesday a month after we split. When I didn’t know how I was getting home, he offered me to stay at his. We hardly cuddled in that tiny twin bed. He tried, but I couldn't kiss him. I couldn't bear to take off my clothes. I couldn't offer my body, not my heart, not my hands. All I could do was sob. And so I did. And he did, too. We sobbed together until we forgot why we were sobbing. Until we fell asleep like motherless babies in a new world neither of us knew. 

~~~

My best friend curled into my bed after her brother's wedding. We spooned. The gas that had been grumbling in my stomach for a month was slowly disappearing. I slept without worry or stress. I woke up with tears in my throat. Drove her home where her family was waiting. 

Do you ever miss him? her parents asked of my ex. 

Sometimes. We're not talking right now. I just need the space. 

I got back in my car. Soko played in the background. Four years and I still haven't gotten over you, she sings. The whole ride home, grief flooded my face. I landed on the couch, asked my mother to read to me.

~~~

He called from South Dakota one year after my ex and I loaded that van with our bikes. My ex was back on the Rez and ran into him, told him out of the goodness in his heart that we broke up and I’d love to hear from him. Then gave him my number so he could call.

I’m building my house, he left on my voice-machine. You can come out if you’d like. I’d love to see ya. Three hours later I was in a rental car. Two and a half days later, he was holding me at the top of his dusty driveway, a whole universe of unfinished business flooding our bodies.

I heard every message God wanted him to deliver me. We sang every song that was stuck in my throat of doubt.

~~~

A cat nudges me now in the mornings, purrs like a reminder that love comes in many forms. I sit alone after a year of dating around, doing my best at not hurrying for others arms or eyes. I sit alone now in a whole new body, cell after cell transforming from stuck to free. I do my best at getting out of the way, at letting myself float in the unknown until something real jumps out for touching.

~~~

Some truth about love is really wanting to break through you, Jenny tells me on the phone today, one year exactly after my ex and I split.

It’s true, I say knowingly, tears cracking my voice. I have to keep going like this--risking everything for my truth, not knowing what will happen. I have to stay willing to speak everything in my heart, then watch things break or be born again.

Yes, she whispered with power. It's revolutionary work.

It is. But what else is there? I'm here for the very best quality love. I can't pretend I'm wired any other way.

Not pretending is the beginning, she said.

Yes, I nodded quietly, knowing that beginnings are only born when we brave our honest endings, and no ending is done without courage. 

~~~

A year ago this short was filmed by my incredible friends Jen and Corinna via Hopeful World Productions. Brian and I so tenderly agreed to let them capture the very end of our relationship on reel. I am so thankful to have it, to hear Jen's wisdom, to see all the love matched with all the loss, to know that truly, our goodbyes are the beginnings to the new life that is waiting for us. Today, I hope you give this film a watch. And may you know, especially if you are amidst grand change, that there is reason to be hopeful, to have faith, to trust, that a deeper truer you is ripening. And that we are truly, truly together in the tenderness of our beautiful endless cycles. 

All my love,

Rachael

Everything Changes from Hopeful World on Vimeo.