"I go to where I love and where I am loved, out into the snow.
I go to the things I love with no thought of duty or pity." -- H.D.
The Space Between
You need the space between Chile and here
to have enough room to love me.
With just you and me in a room
it's suddenly crowded,
and the tide of your breath
swimming out from mine
crashes against the waves of silence
that tell me the tale of your fear.
I am no shark in the water;
I have no teeth, no carnivorous plans.
I only want what is freely given -
the tangles of seaweed that float, unattached
because it has nowhere else to be,
and the space between waves and sand
is always enough.
Spring 2003
I don't want love to be mediated -- through another love, through guilt, through another woman, through pain, or through fear.
Love is not restrictive. It flows. Where it is pent, it sours.
In my mind, our job is to find the space to love the people in our lives in the fullest way we can. When the outlines of the love you have do not include romantic relationship, then physical intimacy should not be part of the relationship.
When we interact on a level that's false, we set ourselves up for an impossible situation and promise (by continuing to be in the situation, even if not in words) to be what we cannot be. It's a lie and it dishonors our connections and their love.
He asks what he can do for me. Understand yourself. Free yourself. Free your love. You're trying to box in the love you feel into definitions that don't fit.
Love is not torture. Applying false restrictions to love is.
Doing what's wrong is really just about setting up the situation in your own mind, not necessarily any particular action or "sin."
Watching him go, the best way for me to help is to not help. For my own healing, I need to see him figure this out and understand that love with me will take a change in his paradigm about relationships.
I believe in connections. You have no idea how much I believe in connections! But they are each individual and unique, which is why I don't have a problem with jealousy. The only way I get jealous is when he tries to have the same connection with someone else that he has with me.
That's NEVER POSSIBLE. It is NEVER POSSIBLE to replicate the connection between two people with any other two people. When you try, that's a deep betrayal -- of the connection and of each other but also of reality.
What that means to me is that there are an infinite number of ways to be in relationship with others. I believe the work we should be doing is to figure out how to be the most you can to each other without trying to be MORE than you can to each other based on what your connection is, and what your feelings aren't.
The pain and fear of loss comes from the false dichotomy that if you can't be everything to someone you can't be anything to them. I simply don't believe that. That's what most people do, and it's very hurtful. It's the easiest thing, don't get me wrong. But I don't think we should factor what's "easy" into decisions about people we love. It is VERY difficult and VERY challenging to continually define your connection with someone and find a way of interacting that honors it fully. It takes a lot of commitment from both people, and from everyone else close to you in your life.
But that's the way I want to live.
That's the way my partner must want to live.
If that's not in the cards for him, or not something he thinks he can sign up for, then we should probably take the moment to figure out how we can honor our connection in friendship and leave the big love for another time.
But I don't want it until he comes to me freely.
I'm still half in, half out of the boat. As much, if possible, as he is.
I want a relationship in which we are both whole and wholly choose each other, understanding that that means a commitment to also find and honor the space for all the other people we love within our circle.
"Where there is no void, there is nothing to fill."
That's why you fill up your connections with each person as fully as you can. And then we all overflow.
That's why you define your relationships to fit the connection you have, because if you try to be more, there is always a void left to fill. And it fills with other people and other feelings that end up betraying and hurting everyone.
Guilt is the sign that you need to redefine the outlines of relationship. Re-examine and adjust the contract. And then honor the new one.
No comments:
Post a Comment