I think, as women, asking for what we need is always a vulnerable thing. To ask for what you need is to expose yourself. Sometimes, it can feel more naked than if you were to expose flesh. Whether you've gotten hurt repeatedly or if you fear getting hurt for the first time, you're still scared it's going to happen. When you love someone, you don't want them to think less of you if you show them who you really are, or talk with them about what you really want - not what you're supposed to want. It is my road. It is my destiny. It is my travel. Sometimes, I set myself up for disappointment even when disappointment hasn't come yet. Great literature has called it a "self-fulfilling prophecy." I've come to call it, "just being me." Why is this? I wrack my brain to try to understand that missing chromosome or serotonin level that always results in me anticipating when the other shoe will drop, so much so that I find it difficult to trust or revel in pleasure. Because pleasure never stays too long in my world. For so long, I have been trying to understand what seems to be a phenomenon of self.
Yesterday, another birthday came and went. I used to love my birthday. But this year, hours before the day arrived, I began to feel a significant sense of "oldness" that I couldn't quite put my finger on. I know it was likely in my head, having managed to complete my hour-and-a- half workout each day this week and feeling stronger physically than I have since the summer months. Maybe it's just me, noticing the lines on my face much like Lucille Ball did in one of the first I Love Lucy episodes. Another year older, she is sitting at her vanity and points out her "crow's feet" to Ricky who, in a moment of quintessential Hollywood magic, kisses her cheek and tells her that she's beautiful. The image always stuck with me, not her perception of her oldness, but that there could be someone - this other half of her - who loved her so much, someone so perceptive of her inner uncertainties and internal feelings of anguish, and yet still call her beautiful, and that she could represent the same for him. Maybe, at this stage in my life, I'm waiting for someone to tell me I'm beautiful and actually stay. Of course, I'm not that vain. The "beautiful" part doesn't matter. But the "stay" part is everything to me and always will be. No, "beautiful" is more a state of being. Ricky thought Lucy's soul was beautiful and recognized they were more powerful together than apart. Recently, my friend Gary was telling me about a "must-see" television series called The Chosen. It slipped my mind until I saw a pamphlet the other day that read: "What does it mean to be chosen?" Though I knew it was to be taken in a religious context, I felt something stir inside of me. Of course I would relate it back to interpersonal connections. At this point, I've come to recognize that that is just what I do. I've always pondered what my purpose is in life. Maybe my purpose is to touch something deep inside my readers and in the process, become closer to myself. Maybe my purpose is to encourage others to feel. My friend Dan used to say this to me. I don't know and ponder on the thought. I mean, I am not some guru.
Lately, I have been thinking much on the concept of twin flames. I don't want to call it "hokey" or dismiss it as such, but some aspects of it are too much for me to buy into. You could say that the concept of the twin flame is one that I have always been intrigued by but have kept at arms length and for good reason, I suppose. Though I am fascinated by the world around us and its ever-increasing unknowns, the only real dive I have ever taken "into the mystic" is through the Van Morrison song of the same name. But then again, there is the title of my new book and the accompanying "right place right time" photograph taken on a friend's patio in Maine - the upright flame that eerily resembles a finger pointing upwards if you look closely enough. My father's words, not mine. Even my recent writings have had so much flame imagery, the majority subconscious. Where does it all come from? I would like to believe that it comes from some place deeper, a higher place, perhaps.
Almost involuntarily, my mind circles back to the theory of twin flames, this belief that two people can feel so familiar at the onset, be magnetic, and feel like they are mirror images of each other - often to the point where you feel like this person could even be you. It shakes you up a bit, this thought that you are looking at yourself in this other person but in different bodily form - and I think of someone I have been close with for so very long; someone whose presence I feel sitting next to me as I write this; someone who I can hear cheering me on and encouraging me to keep writing despite the tears I feel welling in my eyes because to write is always to crack my heart wide open; someone who asked me, just last night, "Are we twin flames?" Surely it would seem so, for my soul doesn't know the difference between "goodnight" and "goodbye" and reacts accordingly, sometimes embarrassingly. But then, something hits me. Twin flames aren't only about love. They are about truth. The hallmark of a twin flame relationship is two people who see straight through to one another, far beyond the "surface" of what the world sees. "Challenging" and "healing" are the two words most often used to describe this connection that is not a walk in the park but rather, a catalyst for love, growth, and harmony in each other's lives -
and also, maybe, the realization that you can have the very thing you've always wanted but never could attain,
and feel safe to revel in a pleasure that stays.
Burn, baby, burn,
The Red Queen
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