find

FIND a way to connect
to someone

I read, I write, I sing, I flirt, I talk, I wonder, I love...
I am searching, with every breath
with every other thing I do

searching for someone to connect to me
searching for some insight into my pain
searching for some tenuous connection to tie me
to the human race

my kids are connection
but not a high enough gauge
so I have to keep
reaching
searching

And perhaps, in honesty, my biggest fear
has been being as broken
and broken in the same ways
as my mother, my grandmother

I have two generations of women to break from
divorce, not death, severed their hearts
but they never loved again

And I even asked him, before he was too lost,
if that is what he wanted.
And, in love, I was even willing to try to give that to him
if that is what he needed.
But he said "no", that is not what he wanted for me, not what he hoped for, not what he needed

So the door is open to date again
someday
to love again
somehow

and I worry that any love I feel
will be a slap in his face
a betrayal

and yet I know I need it....
I know it is natural and normal and healthy
I know it is okay to want to

I know I am not ready.
And I know my tendency is always
to put my feet in the water
before I am ready
to see what it is all about...
check the temp before I get in

I flash back to sexy stuff too soon, just seeing what it's about...ending up so scared....
to loving and committing at awkward points too soon...
leaving proposal flowers on someone's stairs on Valentine's Day when we weren't even really
dating
but he fell asleep with books in his bed and woke up three hours before he needed to and made me coffee!  I could live with that, if he said yes.  He didn't.

so this is my pattern...there's more, but you see....this is how I learn the world.
Not done dealing with this episode
I embrace the next too soon
to try to figure it out.

Perhaps that is why I appreciate change
instead of fearing it
Not that this change hasn't broken me
chipped my heart so deeply
more than light
seeps in

There is brokenness and sorrow and pain and lonliness
like I never experienced
But I have been here before
in many little episodes
many different times
over the years
I know the mess

I know I can
I know I will
I also know it will be messy
along the way...

I'm on the path
and I will not stray.
I may not feel right saying "I got this", but I sure as hell
am not
getting off...not literally anyway.