I'd like to fall in love again - June 2016

 

R.Pascale

 

I’d like to fall in love again---really, I would.

 

But it’s been so long, and I think I may have forgotten how.

 

To care.

To share.

To relax.

To open.

To reveal.

To be real.

 

I have been single for 7 years now. This is a curiosity to me. Prior to this period, I had never before been without a lover.

 

The cause is not entirely clear to me, although it stems from circumstance and choice. Perhaps it has something to do with being burnt out from single motherhood---sole provider-hood. Add to that a career change, and yes, maybe I’d simply been too busy for love.

 

Although I had entered into a new relationship after my divorce, I was never all in. Somewhere deep down I knew that the woman I was as a mother, was not necessarily the woman I would be when my children were grown. I didn’t want my romantic relationship to revolve around parenting, I wanted it to revolve around passion. 

 

I put my heart on hold and immersed myself in a career change, deciding I would wait until I was truly “single” before I’d start dating again

 

We are amazingly adaptive creatures. When we can’t get something we need, we find ways to work around it. As the years went by, I convinced myself that I had evolved past “romantic love”. I dedicated myself to scholarly and spiritual pursuits, thinking romance and passion were not essential, or even conducive to my growth. I laugh now at the ridiculousness of it, and at the same time am fascinated by the ways in which the ego will conjure up stories to protect itself.

 

During the lean years of single motherhood, I had become lean as well. With my children now grown, and the load lightened, my body is filling out. Like air filling a deflated raft, life is coming back into me. As my body becomes healthier, it is remembering sensuality, passion and desire. it wants to be touch, to feel pleasure at the touch of another.

My heart, which had been filled by the daily care of children, is longing for more.

 

As my body fills out, my energy is projecting into the universe. I haven’t done anything particularly different, but somehow men are appearing in my orbit.

 

The men are tentative and non-committal, surely a reflection of my own energy. Perhaps they are reading the energetic signals I am emanating: Proceed with Caution: Unfamiliar Territory Ahead.

 

Which leads me to my new friend.

 

We are neighbors. He and I met quite by chance. In story straight out of a fairy tale, he rescued me along a flooded street and drove me to my car. As I crawled out his passenger window, hoisting myself into my car, he shouted out his apartment number. I returned the gesture. To my surprise, he called me from the security guard’s desk and asked permission to get my number, “maybe we could meet up some time”.

 

We became fast friends. When we are together, conversation flows easily. We connect intellectually, spiritually, culturally; an unusual circumstance, considering the building we live in is filled with retirees and immigrants. It’s a bit like finding a diamond underneath your doormat.

 

That was one year ago. I wish I could say we fell madly in love, but we all know it is never that simple.

 

Instead, slowly our relationship crawls along. In what was an indirect conversation about us, he said he was mostly looking for companionship, and of course, I quickly concurred.

 

The unfortunate truth is there is little sexual chemistry between us, in part, because neither of us is putting it out there. He is a brainiac, literally a genius; the consequence of which mean he has zero swag. It seems all of his testosterone has been dedicated to his intelligence rather than sexual prowess.  

 

For my part, I have tucked my sensuality neatly away. I am quite passionate as a lover. My sexual self has an on/off switch. Once I am turned on, you get all of me. I don’t do tepid.

 

The problem is, I am starting to fall for him. He’s on my mind throughout my day. I want to get closer to him. I am not sexually attracted to him, but I want to be.

 

As my heart begins to crack open and love begins to flood empty chambers, I see that it has been broken. For the past 7 years or so I have been pretending that I do not want love, I do not need intimacy. I’ve been lying. I’ve been hiding.

 

The longing and heartbreak that this potential relationship is provoking is astounding. I find myself in tears, because the ache in my heart to feel loved again, to share my love again, is so intense. And it has been so long since I have felt this way.

 

Getting close to this person is pricking at the surface of my heart and it is threatening to burst. I have been reminded that my heart is had the capacity to hold an enormous amount of love.

 

I know that although painful, this is cause for celebration. In the words of Dr. Frankenstein…It is ALIVE!

 

However, opening our hearts leads inevitably to vulnerability…yuck! I don’t want to be vulnerable! I certainly don’t want to be rejected. This man calls me every night, he wants to see me every day. I imagine he is waiting for me to give him the go signal, yet I hesitate. I don’t think it would be fair to him for me to open the door and then not invite him in, and if I were to open that door, and he did not walk through it, I would be crushed.

 

I know enough to know that this is not about this man. When we have such strong feelings, there’s a good chance we are projecting our unresolved emotional stuff of past relationships onto our potential new partners.

 

When relationships don’t work out, regardless of who ends them, they are experienced as abandonments to the heart. All the heart knows that something it once cared for deeply is gone, and it grieves.

 

The longing itself comes from attachment and desire---the carnal, secular love of a human being, and the pain that comes from the lack of it.

 

My mind tells my heart it needs to relax, to let go of these fear based projections---to reach for the spiritual, universal love of another, which seeks not to possess, but rather is unattached, fluid. Love which allows people in and out of our experience without the need for permanence. With this comes freedom from suffering that comes from such attachment.

 

Although these are worthy and enlightened aims, my wiser self knows this advice is also my ego looking for ways to avoid feeling these feelings. The ego can be quite sly, using spiritual principles for its own purposes. In this case, to lift my awareness above these feelings of longing would be to avoid my human nature, rather than leaning in to experience it.

 

As the saying goes, The heart wants what it wants. Alas, I am merely mortal.

 

 “The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection… and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals. ~ George Orwell

 

I want to run, to avoid these uncomfortable feelings. I see now why people ghost other people, it’s too hard to face the ambivalence, the heart ache, so much easier to just disappear.

 

What leads us when we are lost? In the past, I clung to professional growth and ambition to guide me. At this time in my life, I choose to let love lead.

 

Like a beacon in the darkness, Love’s light continually calls to us. It’s up to us to raise our eyes and follow its beam. If we are courageous, it will lead us into its welcoming arms---and with luck, into the welcoming arms of another. The warmth of an embrace. The caring of another’s heart, the sharing of another’s soul. This is now what I long for.

 

I am lifting my heart to the heavens, and am facing the uncertainty. I am reaching for Love. I can’t yet say it is with open arms, but they are beginning to un-cross.