falling in love...

   The last few weeks have been crazy (nuts insane bonkers...)! I have spent the last couple years exploring what it feels like to fall in love with: my children, our city, friends, sobriety, future dreams/goals, my writing, independent lady life etc etc. Basically channeling all my intensely romantic love feelings (in the past, that stuff pretty much always ruled my every thought!!) into healthier options. I was on a romance break. For however long that needed to be. I figured that eventually, when the time was right, a dreamy partner would appear. I believe that like attracts like and I would find someone special when I was ready and wonderful, happy within myself. In the past, I had always tried to control and make relationships into what I envisioned they should be. I used people I was in love with to try and fill an emptiness. I thought others were responsible for my happiness. This didn't work out well for me. I was also guilty of finding men that resembled rough pieces of coal and trying with all my might to turn them into dazzling diamonds...

 3 moons ago, at the urging of an old friend, I did a new moon manifestation list. I wrote down all the traits in specific detail that I wanted in a new partner. My ideals were so specific that it seemed impossible one magical creature would ever possess them all. I folded up my list 3 times, wrapped it round with red thread, tied 3 knots and left it in my bedroom window where it would be bathed in moonlight. Almost instantly there were strange suitors on the horizon. None of them were quite right but still it was a start...
 I turn to my tarot cards for insight almost daily. My readings were beginning to deliver messages of, what I saw as, a more romantic tone.

   I realize that romances are like the stories I write. I have an idea in mind and I sit down to attempt pulling it from my brain onto the page. It the process of extraction, the story takes on it's own life, begins to breathe and changes the course of the initial idea I had. I never fight this in writing. I let the story tell itself, I am just a channel for the revelation, whatever it may be.

 A few weeks ago I began falling in love. The process began so innocently and it has been instantaneous and virtually effortless. I am working on placing no expectations or strategic ambitions (oh the games and tactics I used to obsessively employ!) on this romance. It is a new experience for me. Love as a coming together and sharing the same path, sort of journey. Not as a goal oriented conquest of spirit...

 Last week I was on a plane. Off to see this darling of my dreams who lives over 800 miles away. And yes, my hair is hot pink now...

 I began my trip, a belly full of butterflies. I was nervous, calm, excited, terrified, apprehensive, elated, totally freaking out... on my way there.

   Once I landed my nervousness intensified to be so heavy that I nearly hopped on a plane to return home... I calmed myself down, pushed through it and was rewarded with a long weekend of wonderfulness.

   There can be such a transformative power in romance. At times it was overwhelming but ultimately sweet and lovely.

  I returned home full of a buzzing, psychic connection. I feel comforted that the physical distance will bring careful decision making and wise perspectives. I have had a tendency to be impulsive and less than careful.  I feel aware now. Awake and alive and present in the now.

Love is all around me now. In the birds that fly overhead, even in the crow caws, sparkling in summer flowers, washing over me as waves from the sea, sliding by in shifting sands. I have fallen. I am falling. There is now the feeling of being so deep in the middle of love. xo m