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| In the Pentland Hills, Edinburgh, Scotland |
Since my birthday August 12, there has been more time with my Baby (our names for eachother), more family, celebrations, less alone and work time. Aaron's attentiveness and the complete joy in his face when he steps into a room and looks at me, leaves me exposed and I still soak it up like a sponge. At the most random times, when he is super busy and focused on a project, he calls my name, pauses and he does a little dance for me.
For my birthday my wish was to find this mysterious lava tube near our home by the coast. A whole in the ground, crawling on hands and knees into cool and utter darkness through tight squeezes, I hung onto his fearlessness. We emerged walking fully upright with our flashlights, within a round cave that looked like being inside the belly of a whale. Darkness, neutrality, mystery.
We continued on to see a light at the end of the tunnel, and after sliding through a tiny opening on our backs, we emerged to an outlet in the face of a cliff overlooking the vast ocean. Nothing else to see but moving water on a rainy, stormy day with layers of gray. We had just literally moved through a birth canal of the earth.
We lounged as he leaned back and I held him. After all this excitement, and now awe of the space and sight, I dropped into what this love, this gift, feels like. First of all, it feels so luxurious, that part of me feels like I could never afford something this precious. With my attention on him, I notice he is so fully himself and so free, and inn all of that spaciousness, his attention goes to me unconditionally.
Every smile is a fresh bouquet to me. In a random, stolen moment to myself, he beholds me in all of my broken glory and says:
"Oh Baby, you are so beautiful", beaming at me. I am a deer caught in the headlights. Nowhere to run or defend myself, although I desperately want to find the nearest bush to cover any bits and pieces of myself I find intolerable and despicable. But he loves it all.
When I hug him, I can't quite define:
he completes me. NO. He fulfills me. No, he meets me. No. It is more generous than that. It is way more expansive.
It is like a plug that has been plugged in to an unknown source, where I am held, nourished, supported, amplified and a third energy, a reality I generated that is truly unknown and thrilling territory. The territory of possibility.
There is more of me to be unleashed. Safety to come out of hiding. Strength that I may have more increased courage to venture out to the edge.
He is just being himself and I get to swim in his ocean.
He says: "I wish I could be you. It must be amazing"
I say "Why, so you could experience what it's like to be loved by you?"
What is so profoundly different, is that in the presence of feeling such a deep love for someone, there is a complete absence of pain. And by pain, I mean the fear that I will lose him. That eventually, we will tire of each other, that he won't want me anymore, that he could have an accident, that one of us will die (I have been keenly aware of this since I was 5 years old, composing romantic Barbie scenarios and in their terms, they all eventually die).
That has always been my train of thoughts...Sabotaging the moment. Somehow, someway, this love is so presently filling, it leaves no room for fear or worry and his being just fills my cup, my heart.
I cant control him. When I am mad at him, he cracks me up. When I'm crying, he holds me with the strength of a mountain. That is what Aaron means, I looked it up.
I welcome you to define what it feels like to be loved and expect it.
