I'm In Love Again

The luxury I have in life is that I’m loved. Loved, by life itself it seems. It’s only through the lens of gratitude I grew to understand what that really means. Gratitude helped me appreciate what I could never tell. I lived in a web of lies that prevented me from seeing that self-hatred is a spell. I saw myself through the stories it would tell. I didn’t know that I never knew myself, I almost died hating someone else. A lie is never more powerful than when it totally eclipses the truth, but it still cannot reach the root. The life itself that loved me, like the sun that rose each day above me, had only one message for me. It was in the leaves that blew around, I could hear that same message in the sound. Life itself would not let me drown in the tears that came running down. It had a message and a plan, and with a single tear that dried into the shape of a heart on my hand, it was in that same way the message would land. It was how I came to understand that the power of love was in my hands. Self-hatred had no power at all, it was my power it used to build the wall. The wall that kept me from knowing my true self, I spent twenty-seven years believing I was someone else. Twenty-seven years looking through a lens that lied; twenty-seven years contemplating suicide. Twenty-seven years trying to stem self-hatred’s tide, but little did I know there was love in the ride. There was love in the tide, now it’s in that love, I abide. It’s through that love, I decide, to live a life where I don’t have to hide. Hatred hides us from each other just as it hides us from ourselves. It’s only through love can we truly know each other, because only love knows the route. Since hate and all its allies cannot get there, all they can do is mask the truth.

 

"What God crafted within me is complete, it is whole. I was never going to be defined by the lies a corrupted love has told. A love that said I’d be nothing without his hand to hold, but even in the desert where he left me to die, was a spring that exposed that love to be a lie."

 

When I think about how the very essence of life saved me, I get weak in my knees. When I try to talk about it, my tongue tends to seize. I was loved long before love was something I believed, and long before I grew into who I am today. What many of us actually met is what love looked like for others. We were born into destinies passed down, and when it was our turn we were asked to wear the crown. Heavy is the head that wears it, they say. Some of us decided, no way! Wearing it once looked like love because it was a sacrifice. It was what was done when choices were limited and voices like ours were prohibited. The generation that preceded us grew up in a time of transition, they started to think outside of the confines of their communities and their religion. When it came their time to consider what love could look like, some of them started to make a different decision. Some of them decided to say what was real, what many of their brethren felt but allowed others to conceal. They suffered in a belief system that had little love to show, that had self-esteem for sale, and that kept love behind a veil. With pieces of our soul, they twisted and sewed into a quilt, what they returned to us as warmth and comfort was actually shame and guilty. We would wear it, we would share it, and we would make it our own, not realizing that its poison, would turn our hearts to stone. That is the crown they passed down believing it to be a gift, but the hands of those who lived in the true power of love, exposed it to be the rift. The rift that lay between us, that kept us far away. Why we “loved” each other from a distance and could never seem to stay. Why our visits during the holidays felt like a price we had to pay. Why despite our longing for each other we never longed to stay.

 

"The greatest gift I have in life is me and where my relationship with God and myself lies is my greatest luxury."

 

The luxury I have in life is that they invite me in, into intimate places where very few have been. Nowadays, I don’t attend, every inclination, for which there is an invitation. I once would feel an obligation, to be where they would have me, but no such obligation exists today. I hadn’t yet realized the value within I would betray. When I was surprised that I was someone they’d marry, self-loathing was a burden I used to carry. These days I travel really light, making room for what resonates with my inner sight. What I’m really looking to see, is if who they are is worthy of me. I don’t need to accept their invitations to see their energy, I saw it at the door, and I felt it through the floor. I don’t need them to affirm me anymore. If the basis of your value is built on someone else’s affirmation, what else will that lead to but your eventual devastation?  I cannot have that be the result of my devotion, so I surrounded myself in an ocean of, peace, purpose, passion, and the notion, that I am the potion. What God crafted within me is complete, it is whole. I was never going to be defined by the lies a corrupted love has told. A love that said I’d be nothing without his hand to hold, but even in the desert where he left me to die, was a spring that exposed that love to be a lie. When that love left me on ice, within there burned a fire, within you burns the same. Now, I attract a love that takes me higher, because I now know that love within. I know now why sometimes you have to lose to win. What I lost living in this skin, is the reason I’m in love again. It’s the love life itself was always giving, the love out of which my true self has risen. A love that held me in her arms of healing, and although she let go, never did the feeling. A love that found me thousands of feet in the sky, and every time I connect with the force behind it, it lifts me that high. If you were wondering how that's why. The luxury I have in life is what we’ve always had. What some have allowed others to take to repurpose and rebrand, but what life itself is asking us to understand, is that our greatest source of value lies in our own hands. The greatest gift I have in life is me and where my relationship with God and myself lies is my greatest luxury. If you’ve found it you know that it is a gift that keeps unfolding, as long as you remember the value of what you’re holding.