Eat, Pray, Love ---Sleep, Work, Sweat (reposted...)

Eat, Pray, Love?


...more like Sleep, Work, Sweat.... I wonder if the Love part shall ever grace my door again. I don't say that in a lamenting or mournful way, just sort of contemplative from a distance. Kind of like I am observing someone else's life. I think that is a healing or defense mechanism. Perhaps?

I've been fortunate and really have no room to complain when you get right down to it. My life has been very good and full and I have gotten or achieved just about everything I have ever decided I wanted. I've loved and been loved by several wonderful men, and some not as wonderful. If I have learned anything from those experiences it is this: Love really is what you make it, what the two of you make it. It is not a one way street, and it doesn't last forever if it isn't nurtured and tended to. It isn't to be taken for granted. It won't solve all your problems and it WILL wither and die if you leave it all alone and don't give it attention. And trust really IS everything. As is respect. And kindness. Being kind to one another. Allow the other person to "be" themselves and continue to "be" yourself and still come together at the end of the day in mutual, loving, respectful harmony. And passion. You must have passion for one another. There is no magic "THE ONE" for anyone. Or, I should say, there is no "THE ONE" for me. I can't speak for anyone else. I believe, though, that there can be many "one's", each beautiful and special and a gift in their own way. I have been lucky, as I said.
From the high school boyfriend who showed me how the other half live on the golf and tennis courts of Pinehurst before heading off to West Point ~ to my first college boyfriend who taught me to ski and how to use a computer and introduced me to the world of the Resident Advisor and Char Grill (yum) ~ to the next college boyfriend who romanced me, and showed how to live out loud and taught me a little Greek and broke my heart ~ to the last college boyfriend who shared my visions, my philosophy and who taught me how to study and still have fun, and showed me beauty in the simplest things and became my husband and took me on picnics and a hot air balloon ride and held my hand and was my best friend, who should have always remained just my friend, it turns out in the end...~ to the next boyfriend who was a surfer and an artist and a lovely albeit wounded soul (which works well for artists, but not as much for partners), who also became my husband and taught me that you can be with someone for years and never know what they have hidden in their closet. He also taught me that wounded people need to heal themselves before getting into relationships and that I was also one of those wounded people...he also introduced me to Costa Rica and the lifelong love affair I have developed with the country and for that, I am ever grateful...in the end, we were roommates and he wasn't sure if he liked men or women or both and September 11, 2001 came along and I took a good long look in the mirror and said to myself "I have to find a greater meaning and purpose, not this".....then there was the wonderful man who mentored me, made me laugh at his sense of wonder and amazement at everything, who "got" me and challenged me to be better, who let me make mistakes and helped pick me up after and understood me and shared my love of wine and food and cooking, travel, simplicity, conversation and hearing the birds sing on a chilly Cape Cod morning, with whom coffee tasted better than it ever had because I was sharing it with him, who taught me how to row a canoe and who in the end taught me that you need to give yourself freely and fully to the one you love, or you surely will lose them entirely (that one was tough, because he is the one who really only loved me for me, and I didn't give back because I was afraid)...
...and now to the final resting place of my heart, the third husband who left me raw and weary and just absolutely emotionally, mentally, physically, and soulfully spent, drained, undone. The worst kind of turn you inside out pain...In my most farfetched of dreams and fantasies, he was perfect and "the one" and with whom I felt everything was possible. Turns out I was wrong and he liked someone else better. That one I gave myself to fully. That one I gave my pride and dignity to. That one I made myself smaller to be with, and it was never enough. Ultimately though, I can have no regrets. I lived, I loved, I gave it everything I had. I lost. I met and shared a life with two delightful stepsons who let me know what it was like to be a mom for a while and for that, I will always be beholding to them...I would not trade any of the pain for all the world because of that experience, of being one of their parents, just for a while. James and Sam. I love you both entirely, as a mother and a friend.
Oh, would that I had possessed that same courage and readiness when in Hyannis! But, it was not to be. I left that garden untended and it grew thick with weeds and prickles and bits of broken glass. Regret.
So now what? I don't know - but I am going to enjoy the journey and the people I meet along the way. It is a healing journey, as well as a journey of self discovery and personal enlightenment. I get to "feel" every single feeling, every pang, every laugh, every tear, every little thing. I am making peace with my feelings and allowing them to just be what they are. Not trying to label them. Not trying to manipulate them. Not trying to make them into what I want them to be. Not trying to mask or hide or sweep them under the rug - just letting them be what they are and being with them so as to keep them company, until we both feel better and learn something.