Category — love

The signs are all there: irrationally crabby, moody, easily annoyed and withdrawn.

I need a vacation.

My first thought upon realizing this was “A vacation from what exactly?”

Let’s face it, I have a pretty sweet life. I have a fantastic (and cute!) fiance who has been extremely supportive and encouraging in my quest to run my own business and do what I like for a living. He is my best-friend. We live in a nice apartment, we have lots of books and toys to amuse ourselves with and we eat like kings most nights.

But, amidst all this happy “we”, a canker is blossoming.

I need time alone. I need to get away from our nice apartment, away from my best-friend, away from our toys and routines. I need to regain my sense of space and self. I want to come home with a sense of eagerness and come back to our life with the ability and renewed desire to participate in it fully.

I felt guilty for wanting it, for needing it – I questioned myself about it endlessly. Do I love Joe less if I need to be alone? Does this mean that I’m a selfish person? Does my need to sprawl out across the whole bed without running into anyone supersede my responsibilities to our relationship?

The answer to all those things is no.

I discussed everything with Joe and I should have known that this would be his response: “You should go – a couple of days of doing nothing by yourself will be good for you.”

Rilke said it best:

“I consider the following to be the highest task in the relation between two people: for one to stand guard over the other’s solitude. If the essential nature of both indifference and the crowd consists  in the nonrecognition of solitude, then love and friendship exist in order to continually furnish new opportunities for solitude.”

My thoughts about love and relationships have changed drastically over the past two years. Yet, there is still this nagging voice in my head (the product of too many romantic films and novels) that needing to get away, alone, from your regular life for a few days was disaster in the making. That real love means merging together as one person forever and ever, it means being a mirror for the other, it means bringing them into your fully-realized world where you entertain them with endless delights and teach them how to live within you.

Now I understand fully that those perceptions are all garbage.

I don’t want to submerge myself in someone else’s personality (nor do I want them submerged in mine). I cannot be anyone’s mirror. I refuse to let some half-finished, disorderly mess of a person come and live in the internal world I’m still building for myself because they find it easier than building their own world.

I find myself agreeing with Rilke again:

“[Young people] (who by their very nature are impatient) fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder, bewilderment…:And what can happen then? What can life do with this heap of half-broken things that they call their communion and that they would like to call their happiness, if that were possible, and their future?

And so each of them loses himself for the sake of the other person, and loses the other, and many others who still wanted to come. And loses the vast distances and possibilities…No area of human experience is so extensively provided with conventions as this one is: there are life-preservers of the most varied invention…society has been able to create refuges of every sort, for since it preferred to take love-life as an amusement, it also had to give it and easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as public amusements are.”

Before now I had simply withdrawn deeper into myself to come to the solitude I need to be happy. Now I know that Joe and I can create space for the other to live in and leave out all the guilt that is supposed to be associated with needing that space.

So I booked my two day/two night trip to Victoria, BC (I got an amazing deal with Pacific Coach Lines) and that’s that.

Two days of keeping my own counsel and focusing on my own inner needs will go a long way to regaining and preserving my happiness!

Valentine’s Day is coming up soon and I was curious about its origins. My Google-fu was strong today so I have a few possibilities to list about this day of love and romance:

• We’re celebrating a martyred priest, a dead bishop and a guy martyred in Africa (all on February 14).
• We’re celebrating the martyred priest only (beaten, stoned and beheaded for refusing to renounce his faith).
• We celebrate the St. Valentine who was apparently so heartbroken after getting dumped by his mistress, he cut his own heart out and sent it to her.
• We’re celebrating the wrong St. Valentine altogether (there are five others which are not commonly celebrated).

Of course, most of us celebrate Valentine’s Day the way they did in Geoffrey Chaucer’s time when courtly love was as its peak – a day of romantic love, poetry, expensive gifts and possibly wedding proposals; not that I can find anything romantic about self-mutilation, stonings, beatings and beheadings.

If nothing else, our modern way of celebrating St. Valentine’s Day gives everyone at least one day of the year to feel special, loved and appreciated by their partners.

Yet, every year I feel slightly nauseated at the sight of the shiny red hearts and cute, plush kissy-face critters on sale at the local Hallmark stores. I am annoyed by the number of signs implying that if don’t buy Joe something really amazing, then there is a chance he’ll think I don’t care.

Thank goodness Joe dislikes Valentine’s Day more than I do!

We do exchange cards and sometimes I even get him gummy bears – but that’s it. No fancy dinner out, no diamond ring in the champagne or other Grand Gesture. Nothing that distinguishes this day as more important than any other in our relationship.

We tend to pick out little gifts all year long; a book, candy, a video game or silly card. We show our appreciation for each other everyday. Small gestures like a genuine “I love you” or taking care of a chore the other despises so the other one can play a video game instead. Those small things add up throughout the year so that Valentine’s Day has become just another scheme to make me part ways with extravagant amounts of money on cutesy stuff that will end up on a donation pile within six months (or less).

I never thought that cynicism could be born out of feeling incredibly lucky – but there it is: I’m incredibly lucky to have someone who shows his feelings for me everyday without all the fanfare and soppy drivel that usually accompanies Valentine’s Day.

Happy Wednesday Joe – I love you.

Dearest Sleep,

Why? Why do you elude me?

For weeks now I have been waiting for you – waiting for that moment to slip under your dark waves and drift, but you never come.

Instead, I am left here to stumble into sleep, falling headlong into places I know nothing of without the benefit of your gentle guidance. I wake up in the small hours with the lights still burning, a book fallen from my hands onto the floor and strange thoughts rioting in my brain.

I have no words for how much I miss and desire you, but I feel I must try!

Recently I had some thoughts – only thoughts! – of getting up earlier than usual to see if I could accomplish more in my waking hours. I assure you, my heart’s darling, they were only thoughts and not definite plans. You know my mind better than anyone and perhaps you saw these thoughts and assumed that I meant for them to become reality.

I can never criticize you but, in this one instance, you were mistaken.

For countless nights before these weeks I came to you with nothing but anticipation and absolute trust. I lay in the dark and offered up my conscious mind to your infinite care with no other thought than to be led down the strange pathways that I can walk only with you.

You have shown me people and places, past and present, that I might never have seen otherwise. Allowed me the chance to speak with people that I otherwise have no contact with. A few times you have shown me things beyond the earth I know and I have seen and felt things so much larger than myself – I have experienced infinity and intense joy all with and because of you.

These past few weeks have been a misery. I am tired to the point of weeping, slow-witted, dull and restless. I am useless to myself and the world at large without you. You are the guardian of my solitude and my dreams. My ability to be in the world as a whole person depends greatly on you.

Can you still doubt my love for you?

What more can I lay at your feet than my trust, love, fidelity and everything contained within my mind – things that even I have not seen yet!

Please – please forgive that errant thought and know that it would never have come to pass.

I will continue to wait for you for as long as it takes to earn your forgiveness.

All my love and thoughts are with you, wherever you may be.

Yours,

R.