April 2010 -- 6; The Lovers
Love keeps our feet in the fire, motivates us to work through difficulties,
and teaches us to tolerate the most sensitive and raw places in our psyche.
The first weekend of this month I traveled to New Orleans with Lavern. It was there, finally home and free to be my reckless self again, that I texted the first comment that would set off a domino chain reaction in my world. The likes of which hasn't stopped changing things yet.
This month was all about relationships.
The one with my second roommate continued to worsen. Especially when it brought in the conflict of his hit-and-run accident with a police officer. Which strained everything. My relationship with him, and with Earl's choices (if never Earl, himself), and Earl's with his parents. But his parents and I's strengthened then, too.
The one with my stepfather flourished as I played caretaker during his surgery and after. My life-long best friend got married and I was her bridesmaid, in fantastic make-up even if I never loved my hair.
Feelings. This was a Capital "FTM" Feeling Things Month.
I started coming to terms with other feelings poking up suddenly. I had the entire event of Jason/The Boy in Blue at Cat's wedding. Steph, from Milliways, and I met in person for the first time. Earl and I skated on in our hetro-non-dating-normality of baffling the world. I, also, started the process of choosing who and what i wanted to be and not be, with myself, to myself, for myself.
I started to write about needing to write in earnest to clear out the space that had hollowed out my core between Billy and I in Korea. Not knowing how, but knowing I needed to do something. To dig up this hole, unless I wanted to be carrying it around, inside of me, forever.
And, of course, though I wouldn't know how it would change so much then -- Hope. Her advent came in this month. With a single shifted text message response to a previously common word association-explanation. With abject silence and hand holding. With an illness and a tiny dress and a kiss.
With terrified words of pleading. I was not ready for her. The column of my world. Predictable, dependable, reliable, beautiful. I was especially not ready, when trying to explain that I was not ready for anything to change, to have my one absolute placed in jeopardy, that her response, soft, and uncertainly certain was, Too late. How right she was.
I also traveled out to the Strawberry Festival. And it was the month of the Dental Scare. Also, I set up the plans for Pictue A Day May. I wrote a million poetry post during this month, because it was National Poetry Month.
Many favorites and unknowns. But this one fit the month best;
I whispered, 'I am too young,'
And then, 'I am old enough';
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
'Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.
-- Brown Penny by William Butler Yeats
And a quote I should have paid attention to long before now;Dancing is not rising to your feet painlessly like a whirl of dust blown about by the wind. Dancing is when you rise above both worlds, tearing your heart to pieces and giving up your soul.
--Rumi
~*~
I literally started laughing out loud during Mother Night's vigil when I saw this card matched up to this month while doing my equations set. This month was so busy in so many ways I'd completely forgotten about, but especially because it was the first steps of the relationship I'm very dedicatedly in now.
Taurus and Venus in the full moon of Scorpio, and the Lovers Card. She might as well have worn a bell and I still might have missed all the signs. It's not a lie when I tell people I won't notice anything until the frying pan literally smacks me upside the head. Sometimes I think she was a blessing just to have been able to manage me back then, with all my trailing, dangling ribbons going everywhere.
So much of this month was about love. What was okay, what wasn't, how to forgive, when to be tough, when to be soft, the need for compassion against pain, and for deep excavation for the betterment of the whole being, wanting, being wanted, wanting to be wanted, discovering my heart, my skin, how to be gentle with myself.
Family. Friends. Lovers. Endings. Beginnings. Middles. Changes.
I was achingly raw, but the truth of this card was all over this month.