Practicing Love

So, it came as a kick in the gut last weekend to hear that the boy I loved at 18 is now, 18 years later, getting a divorce. Nevermind that the man lives way over in the Midwest with two kids and is pissing off his family something fierce. It kicked me in the gut.

Why? Wouldn't I like to know. This guy was someone I grew up with and came to love deeply over the years. He was also my brother's best friend over that time period. And then my brother died. So we had a lot to relate about. Except for that one time he got married and stayed that way.

The thing is it took a long time to get him out of my system. Even years later, when consciously I had forgotten about him, when I had moved into my own apartment and was living an adult life and enjoying adult friends, I would dream about him. Rapturous sleep. A deluge of familiarity and remembrance and longing. And then I would wake up. Alone as ever. In my big adult bed in my big adult apartment, and remember my big adult life. Sheeeouw, where did he come from?

It's been a long time since I've had one of those dreams. But this news from his mom last weekend hit the same replay button...what if, what if, what if? Why didn't he pick me?

So I called my therapist. The cool thing about my therapist is that he has this energetic psychic thing going. He tunes in, reads my energy and that of people I've interacted with, and describes them spot-on every time. When I told him this old-love thing is wearing me out already, he spied some pretty deep connections between us. Then he got soft and kind and said, you love him. You need to just feel that.

Hm. Feel it. Really? Okay.

So I felt it. And I began to glow. And I let it in more and I began to buzz. I let the love flourish even more and it overflowed so powerfully that I was sending it through thought waves and prayer and good wishes to this guy across several states and even more lifetimes, considering it's probably been about 10 years that we've seen each other. I sent him love in this very difficult time in his life.

Meanwhile, I was thinking, "Fabulous. How about this timing? Things are just beginning to get sweet with me and Bombo. We're having fun. We're opening up." But this other feeling I have is eons old. It's as old as my development from girlhood on. It's as deep as my first love and first loss. I have to just give it sway.

So for three days, I let the love course through me, so much joy. And would you believe that the more love I allowed myself to feel for my childhood sweetheart, the more free I felt to let Bombo in? In dating, I have these neurotic tendencies that keep me on guard. But those, my friends, have all but disappeared.

Then something else happened. This love thing was really working for me. I thought about Michael, how he was my mentor, my friend, my boss, my sometimes-confidante and I his. I remembered how much love I had for him when he was alive, and realized that now that he is gone, there are no social mores to respect, no boss-employee boundaries to effect, no professional distances to meter out. I love him. Plain and simple, like I always did, in the contexts we held. But now I don't have to follow any rules. So I just let the love flow. I lit up. I buzzed. I loved him.

Can I just say I've had the best couple of days emotionally that I've had in a long time? I feel like a humongous boulder kind of just yawned wide and mosey-rolled on its merry way, out of the way of my feelings. I feel like LOVE is accessible to me now, and is closer at hand than my need to protect myself, my need to be careful, my need to NOT love because I'll get myself into trouble or sadness.

Judging by this experience, I froze up around lost love way back when I was a teenager. My muscles cramped around the injury and my limping feelings allowed only limited movement. But this week, I let it flow! It's not realistic to believe I'll meet up with my childhood sweetheart as adults and all will return to what it "should have been" at the addled age of 18. But it IS realistic to recognize the intense joy I have felt in the past few days, allowing this feeling of love to overpower me and teach me a few things about loving as an adult. And it is deliciously realistic to recognize the room that love has made in my heart. I feel like my heart got cleared out by a love bomb, and that now, anything is possible.