Love

I suppose what has been on my mind so far today is what is on everybody's mind most of our lives - Love. (Notice the capital L.)

I've been looking through images of people in love, gods in love, gathering love quotations, reading Rumi and the Bagdavita. Am I compensating for something missing in my life? Absolutely. But I'm also healing something I buried inside myself many years ago.

Like everyone, I have been hurt, delighted, broken and built up again by Love. And I suppose the hardest thing is to allow myself to be vulnerable enough to trust again.

I am encouraged by how many people I see who throw themselves into the arms of Love over and over again, riding the roller coaster of hope and despair, working on themselves, giving up bad habits, even sacrificing their own dreams. I am in awe of such courage.

It reminds me of the courage it takes to have a baby especially a second baby or more!!! Before you have a baby, you are told all the lovely things, how good they smell, how they adore you, how fulfilling it is to be a parent. They don't tell you how painful it is to get a seven pound piece of flesh out of your body. They don't tell you that you'll be screaming "I don't want to do this anymore!!!" when you're at the height of labour. (It's true, I heard myself say it!!!) They don't tell you about when everyone has a stomach bug and you are so busy cleaning what is coming out of both ends of three children that you don't have time to get sick yourself.

Well, maybe they do but I, for one, didn't hear them.

Relationships are like labour. We give birth to each other in our own minds. And it hurts like hell. My complexes meet your compulsions and make baby neurosis's!

There is an alternative - loneliness! It's not so bad, just a little sterile. It doesn't hurt quite as much as Love, well, not until you get to the end of your life. Then it might be really bad. It's very safe and secure, not messy at all. No fights, no tears, no disappointments.

You will have to deal with regrets though. They're the buggers who will haunt you. You can stay home and watch "Dexter" or "Lost". But those regrets will distract you into the knowing that Love is still out there, all beautiful, sensual, exciting and very, very dangerous. They will haunt you into your old age and you will start a new obsession with romance novels and soap operas. And still Love will await you until you can wait no more.

I know what I will pick. I do have five kids after all.