I am awake

I am awake. it is dark outside. I want so badly to pick up the phone and call someone right now, but I am giving them the space they need. so I let the space spread like an inky blot, I surround myself with its blackness. what doesn't kill you...

we love, we love hard. sometimes that love takes form as the perfect and pure thing it was intended. sometimes it gets distorted, filtered through fear and doubt and selfishness. the intention alone is not enough. we must watch that love like a hawk. we must constantly take stock, is my love being expressed as love, or has it been cleverly disguised as disappointment or judgement? is my fear of loss turning my love into a hard ball instead of a soft hug? it's easy to become very convinced that what we are doing is right, in response to so much wrong done upon us. but then sometimes a gift, in the disguise of a gut punch, forces you to realize you might be the one to blame for all your dissatisfaction. maybe the love you'd been missing was there all along and it was you that was shutting it out, calling it by another name. maybe you were too busy sinking into the vicious pit of self pity to notice that what you were wanting was right in front of you all along. ah to be a victim, it can feel so juicy, so victorious in its twisted way. but how is the world to respond to someone who feels so unjustly treated? all the blessings bestowed upon your head, tossed aside and dismissed as one more example of how you just have it so much rougher than you should. I am trying to stay with the fact that remains, I am lucky to be here. I am lucky to love, even when loving leaves you sick to your stomach in the middle of the night.

here is something I have been sitting with these past few days: strength is the softest thing you will find. strength is softer than a bunnies tail. strength is not hard like I have been thinking for too long now. I want to soften. I want to open wide and say aaaaaaah. I want to let it all in and have faith that it won't destroy me. I want to trust. I want to let down these walls that I've convinced myself were protecting me, when it is clear now, all they have done is keep me away from the one thing I am wanting--love.

here's to staying soft and open and loving like you mean it.