love again
One holy moment. It’s all it takes really, is just one holy moment and all is better. Somehow every hardship becomes romantic and poetic after the agony has passed. One holy moment is what I had a year ago in a river.
I entered naked and allowed myself to be guided. I was held gently, playing with my float but not asking of it. If I sank a little I was nudged upwards and made shapes with my hair in the water. A trail, a trail of hair and water. The midnight sky full of stars and the plants and trees playing tricks with my vision. My eyes seeing faces and ears hearing voices like an imagination that remembers. All so safe and reckless. A skinny dip to prove that life is fun. With a man I don’t know and hope to never see again, just for fun.
That night turned me towards a desire to be pleased with men, or at least not be so mad at them.. It enamored me Costa Rica, it turned me on and tuned me in to what could be.
So these days when I catch myself saying men are shit while longing for a partner, I recognize it as a recipe for disaster. The spell that binds me to suffering, the echoing of my own warnings, the reverberation back to me in moments of doubt. Put simply, I wanted an interruption to that pattern. Oh and I got it! The download came in such a sweet way and I then decided to be genuinely happy around men. I want to just be myself and be open to their desire to please. Now I have a view into something meaningful to me that I otherwise might have missed. Perhaps there is a space where people have intimate moments full of love and respect that are not spellbound by generations of mental incantations like men are shit. The message seems to be clear for everyone, that men are, to put it simply, shit! Which of course is not the truth, cannot be the truth but it lived like the truth in me. One holy moment in a river unlocked a truth that would make space for generous men to appear and for me to give myself the time to choose.
What do I actually want?
I would imagine that a shift in ‘men are shit’ consciousness would do us all some good. Especially me, being a mother to two sons this is a tender spot for me. To believe men are shit would taint my relationships with my children and those are sacred and holy. It is a non negotiable, I cannot move through the world with this belief any more. One holy moment, being single and 40, letting myself feel life around me, led me to this. This special healing that has me look to my sons for encouragement around dismantling an old loathing. A repaired friendship with the ex, an enthusiasm for love and dating, motivation for my work. This is because of the seed of that holy moment. Holy moments happen because I say yes to joy, yes to fun. Yes to my life as a single almost divorcee, in transition and reinvention, thriving source of goodness.
After a long marriage, a sad break-up and hardship it seems only right and fair to lay to rest my animosity towards men. it seems right that I would tend to my sons with a faith in their inherent goodness. The year after the holy moment was one of immense struggle and growth but something held me in place, there was a place, a real place, a lived experience that I could go to. It carries me through.
Now I stand in the responsibility to honor what matters to me. My sons, the love i might have one day. I stand in a space that is grateful for solitude and singlehood, a new appreciation for privacy and autonomy also emerges. I look to the world for evidence that good men are here. If I don’t, I increase the chances of shit men al around me, shit sons, shit brothers, shit pops and shit companions…no thank you. I will take my man kind, sweet, woke, connected, in love and respect with himself and me. I wouldn’t mind it if he also had a liking for trails of hair and water in dark rivers. At the least, may I heal this anger based fear. May I let slip my attention that talk of marrying again before it’s too late. May I live beyond the limits of lies and live by design..
