More on LOVE!

My coworker just blithely informed me that she is "in love" with the newest man in her life. Let me break the scenario down for you... She's a thick, white girl--ahem, gurrlllll *snap snap snap*--and I have never met anyone like her before...she chases the brothers, shaking her booty at reggae and Trini (Trinidadian) clubs and bars, wanders around the floor humming Usher or Akon, and talks in strange slang that I find fascinating and confusing. During Caribbana she stripped down to a bikini top and bottom, along with a giant and feathery head piece, and pranced down Yonge to steel drums and much foofah. "H" is energetic and happy, always flitting from one thing to another, telling me wild and crazy stories about her nights out on the town or a flirtatious moment with a bartender or waiter.

Anyway, her last relationship lasted a couple months and was more on and off than my bedroom light switch. She vacillated between being angry at the man for being emotionally unavailable, and then reached heady peaks of pleasure and happiness. They just, like, got each other, know what I mean?

But after the relationship crashed and burned, here she is, once again throwing herself whole-heartedly, with reckless abandonment, into another man, already convinced after three or four weeks that they are in love and he can do no wrong. He's a Jamaican who will be unable to stay in Canada permanently, and God help me, I find myself skeptical (at best) about his motives. But she's in loooveeeee and it's the real thing!

What's the point of this rambling?

How does this woman recover so quickly from each relationship and bounce on with such vivacity to the next and the next and the next? I spend hours sobbing and watching P.S.: I Love You and The Notebook, journalling dark thoughts and ideas into my tear stained diary, listening to Damien Rice and John Mayer (doo dee doo I'm perfectly lonely, cos I don't belong to anyone and nobody belongs to me dum dee dum), and either binge eating or starving. There is no half hearted loving for me and the drop to rock bottom shatters me every time (Oh yeah, John Mayer has a plaintive lyric for that as well: how come the only way to know how high you get me is to see how far I fall?)

Even as I write this and think deeply about the human heart and our capacity to love, I find myself conflicted internally. For "H" I feel happy, jealous, doubtful, cautious, afraid, pleased, disbelieving... As history has proven over and over...all will go superbly well for maybe a few months, and inevitably things will slowly take their wear and tear, and ultimately fall apart.

I ask, how does one pick themselves back up after another broken relationship, and cheerfully start all over again with optimism and hope that this could be The One? How do you just move on from being so close to another human--physically and emotionally intimate in every manner? When it seems as though the entire world is rushing past you in a frenzy of love and energy, when you feel frozen in one spot, unable to move forward and desperately wanting to move backward and just get another, just one more chance to fix things...how do you step out from that place and join the living again? And more importantly--how do you embrace the next relationship knowing that it might be your destruction...again?

We do what humans do best: rebuild. We start from the base up with ourselves, attempting to clear out the rubble of the past. We find the tenacity to start all over because it's what people do. History screams out that truth. London was raided and rebuilt seventy-one times in less than a year during the Battle of Britain, the English spurred on by multitudes of inspirational speeches from Churchill (We shall fight on the seas and oceans...we shall fight on the beaches...we shall never surrender...), so we clear away the ruins like the English did time and time again. We try to restore our faith and hope, and sometimes when we're so hurt, we have to dig deep for the person we were before the storm. We soldier on, we press forward, we accept the grief and dwell on Tennyson's wise words: better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

What alternative do we have? Close ourselves off from the beauty of loving someone? Hide from relationships, fear of pain pushing us away from people? Bury your heart deep down so it can never be broken? Do we attempt to maintain space, between our hearts and people, in order to save ourselves from falling into love, and often past it into the abyss of brokenness?

There are two things that I cannot escape:

Love can be painful. People are going to hurt me, and I'm going to hurt someone. We're not perfect, we never will be, and we have accept that our relationships will be imperfect to some extent. The loving husband and wife who never raise their voices on tv are not realistic. We disagree, we fight, we argue, we debate--differing opinions, varied emotions is what makes people so interesting and unique. I look at marriages around me that are twenty odd years strong, and I still see flaws and imperfections, but I also see a deep love and commitment that has lasted through time and through the petty fights and squabbles. Love isn't always glorious, poetry inspiring, and wonderful. Love is what sees you to the end.

"Love" isn't always love. We can be infatuated with someone and barely know them! We can think that the dreamy guy who can play the guitar and sing is meant for us, OMG, but how do you know for sure? What am I basing my feelings of "love" on? I've learned the hard way how hurtful it can be to awaken feelings of "love" that were not real and were not lasting. Guard your heart and don't give it away freely to anyone who has a nice smile and a witty overture.

"H" interrupts my reverie. "We need a WalMart greeter here," she says, referring to the constant stream of visitors that somehow manage to get completely turned around and require redirection. They come to my desk looking for so-and-so on cardiology and insistently reiterate, "It's on the FOURTH floor! This IS the fourth floor! We took the elevators to the FOURTH floor."

Yes, yes you did...just, the wrong fourth floor. You got off on the right floor...in the wrong building, and it feels like there's some significance to that predicament, as if we charge into things with the best intentions, but sometimes the timing is off or it's not the right person, and we're as turned around and bewildered as the purple-haired elderly woman who struggles to understand how there is five different wings within one building. She pushes her walker slowly down the hall, determined to make it to her friend/lover/family, and we forge ahead needing to believe that it will all work out and we will make it somehow, the pieces glued together by faith or desperation to be loved.

I hope "H" has a long lasting and successful relationship...I hope that all those feelings she is experiencing, and that she joyfully shared with me, stay. I'm glad she still has the courage to give herself over and surrender to joy and pain of love. I pray you do too.

Ramblings

It's funny--no, not "haha" funny, "strange" funny--how we all have life stories that could be created into movies or novels, and how we all have survived some epic emotional relationship or moment that turns us into people we might not recognize.

Struggling through some tumultuous and overwhelming emotions lately, I came to that realization...that we all barely make it through some things that life throws at us. I can feel that I'm the only lonely girl in the world trying to make sense of, well, everything, but nothing could be further from the truth.

There are millions of lonely girls (and boys) who feel the exact same way as I do, but instead of opening ourselves up to each other and attempting to reach each other exactly where we at, we withdraw further into ourselves and find ourselves even lonelier than before.

How do you change and break the cycle of loneliness and self pity? At what point do you decide that enough is enough, and that you aren't living your life fully and joyfully?

...still waiting for answer...


-Marcia

Each new day

My eyes have sun spots in front of them, but it was worth it.

I got up from my desk and walked over to a window at the end of the unit. The sun is sliding down the sky, determined to rise on the other side of the world. Apartment buildings were silhouettes in front of the giant orange ball. Red, orange, pink colours bleeding from it as it moved slowly out of sight, and thirty-five (give to take a few) giant blue recycling containers crowded about in the garbage area five floors down.

Outside people were walking by with seeming intent, bent on making their way to a certain place by a specific time, and no one could see the beautiful sky above from their positions far below.

The constant exchange of day and night is unstoppable, a force we don't often think about. As the sun rises and falls, another day is gone, and we leave behind all our regrets, our mistakes, our passions, and the choices we have made. Each morning brings a new chance to start all over again and be the person we deeply long to be.

Seize the moment, squeeze and own it, as Eminem so wisely advises.

Bust Yo Ass

It's time for another one! I know it's been a while since I've been around, but here I am again! I've been running and doing the stairs all summer, and hopefully with the cooler autumn weather around the corner, outside exercise will be even easier.

Song of the day (or week):

Give It All You Got - Lil Jon feat. Kee

"Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goals."

-E Joseph Cossman

What Is Love?

Really, it's the question we ask, the regime we live by, the verb we imitate, the lifestyle we attempt, what we emulate. We listen to music about it, watch movies on it, read books by the dozens that try to explain it.

It's much discussed, widely coveted, frequently elusive, and gut-churning.

We manifest it, disclaim it, chase it, fake it, want it, and suffer in it's name.

It's sacrifice; it’s giving; it's humbly receiving; it's courage, it's fear, it's comfort, it's loneliness. It perplexes us, frightens us, fills us to overflowing, and leaves us feeling empty.

In a society where love is depicted as chocolates, lust, beautiful people, flowers, an annual holiday, $7 Hallmark cards that play cheesy versions of "I Will Always Love You"--love is misrepresented.

To me, it's not found in the overpriced celebrations. It's in the mother’s worn hands--tired from years of caring for her children. It's in the wrinkles and laugh lines...a juxtaposition of sadness and joy.

It's the looks between old lovers, decades behind them, but never forgetting what they first cherished about each other, and what they continue to be in love with.

It's found in the father who locks away his dreams in order to provide for his family.

It's the comfortable spaces between friends--knowing the right thing thing to say, the shoulder to offer for tears, the hysterical happiness intermingled with grief.

You can find it physically: intertwined limbs, hugs of reassurance, resting on someones shoulder, tightly gripped hands, a massage for the exhausted and hurting body, the healing touch of loving physical contact, a closed bedroom door.

It knows when to talk and when to be quiet. It's listening to words, both spoken and silent. It's loving the virtues and the flaws.

Love isn't restricted to humans. You can see it in the excitedly whipping tail and adoring eyes of your dog; penguins, who mate for life. Cats that crawl in your lap and purr contentedly.

It's what you believe...your daily walk of faith, the road to change in oneself, the renewal of the old man to a new man.

It's ever present and all encompassing, though we may, at times struggle to feel it or believe it. It's idealistic tinged with a necessary dose of reality. It's childlike, but not naive.

Love isn't magic, although the act of loving is sometimes miraculous.

What is love?

It's opening up your heart to be vulnerable and to fully experience beauty and joy. It's jumping out of a plane and losing your breath from the wind currents. It's running until you're exhausted but satisfied. It's a leap of faith; it's a fall into the unknown.

You can hold love close to your chest, or you can freely give it away without any expectation.

You can choose to be transformed; you can choose to embark on an exciting journey. Invest it in, walk in it with courage, give it away without measure, renew it if it is broken or hurt, and give it a second chance.

Tell the people in your life that you, quite simply, love them. Only you can do that--no one can do it for you. It's your love...it's up to you.