Valentines Day 2017

Yesterday we had a major blizzard and this morning the sun was so bright and the glare was very intense from all of the sunshine on the accumulation of snow and ice. As I drove to work, it made my eyes tear even with sunglasses.

Cyndi Lauper’s song Time afterTime was running through my mind:

If you're lost you can look and you will find me

Time after time

If you fall I will catch you, I will be waiting

Time after time

I thought about the period of my life right after my first husband left me. It was 1990 and it would be almost ten years until I met my present husband. It was a long dry season and I was intensely lonely, isolated from family and friends, holding onto my sanity by a thin thread. There was no solace to be found from school which was the only thing in my life that I thought had meaning. The one place in the universe (I believed at the time) that would ever give me any hope of a meaningful life. I tried very hard to find a footing in the “work” but I think I was pretending most of the time. Solace from the people who told me “you are born alone and you die alone” did not really exist.

I felt an intense flashback from that period of my life and I started to cry in the car in the midst of all that bright lively sunshine, my heart felt black and dark and I wondered how I ever survived that period of time. Especially with my ex-husband and his new wife sitting there as she grew fat with the babies I would never have. I felt like the wind was knocked out of me. It's been a while since I have been so intensely "triggered" by something having to do with "school".

Of course, school was supposed to be the alpha and omega to all of my existence – it wasn’t supposed to matter how I felt. I had all those essence friends so why should I be lonely? I had the “work” so why should my life feel flat and empty and devoid of meaning? I tried desperately to find hope somewhere in the work but the moments were few and far between. I lived with a fickle “God” who changed her mind frequently, especially in relation to loyalties, interests, and affections.

Sharon was capricious, changeable, variable, volatile, mercurial, inconstant, undependable, unsteady, unreliable, faithless, flighty, giddy and skittish. She was a fair weather friend and the storms moved in on her with regularity. She professed a deep love for all of us. Well, that's what she said in public but in private she would badmouth even her most devoted followers.

This was not love, not even close.

I thought about our society’s dictum that we shouldn’t “take things for granted” but isn’t something like the unconditional love that a parent has for a child something that a child takes for granted? Isn't it every child's right to take their parents for granted and to feel their unconditional love?  Maybe it's not a bad thing to take something for granted in the right way. Yes, we grow up and strive to pay our parents back or to "pay it forward" but don't we deserve to have someone we can rely on? A safe harbor in a storm. We all deserve to be loved with a love that does not waver or cease. We all deserve to have someone who will catch us when we fall. We all deserve to be safe and secure. Someone we can count on when we are lost…

Sobbing, I called my husband and at first I couldn’t talk and he thought that something had happened, that I was hurt or had been in an accident. I couldn’t talk for a moment, I could only cry. I just wanted to tell him how much I love him and how much I appreciate his unfailing love and support for me. I wanted to wish him a Happy Valentine’s Day.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

― Martin Luther King Jr.,

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.”

― Mahatma Gandhi