When Life Was Measured in Moons

Photo: Guzman Barquin

Day 2194 – Day 2201

This past full moon, I was out on the water in a kayak.  I had the experience of a lifetime, getting to see bioluminescence at night.  We paddled a lot and it was hard for me because I’m not able to engage my core in the way that I normally do.  For all the distance we covered, I would have been content to simply paddle to the nearest dark cove and spend the night enchanted by the bioluminescence that my own hands created, as I moved through the water.  I felt like I was made of pure electricity – and of course I am.

We often forget the magic that we are.

I thought about a time two or three years ago when my heart was so broken that all I could do was mark time in lunar cycles.  Each time I saw the full moon, it gave me comfort that time passes and things can change.  Eventually, we can feel differently.  The tides didn’t carry me as quickly as I wanted, but they did carry me onward.

By the time that I was in hospital, fighting for my life, a year ago, I had come to really grasp that life was magical, that I had magic in me (we all do) and that life is precious.  I would never waste my time or energy like that again.  I would never let myself fall in love so deeply that he could break me.

Never again would I let my life be measured in moons.

When that relationship first ended, I had said I would never fall in love again.  It was the first time I had ever sworn off love and it didn’t sit well with anyone in my life.  Love is my spiritual path, after all.  Love is the magic that is within me.  But, I nearly died of a broken heart for that love.

No, I meant it.

Some time ago, I realized that I had a magnetic draw towards someone.  It was around the time that I started seeing number patterns everywhere.  I joked that he must be my twin flame.  The joke was on me.  As much as I don’t want to, as much as I resist – and I resist with a force that would shatter steel – I do love him.

Of course, twin flame love is not easy love.  He is a man that I don’t know, but he wears walls like they are a comfortable garment, and there was a time when there was just a narrow hedge between us and we could smile and wave at one another over the top of the hedge.  Now, it is a brick wall and it has the feeling of impenetrable permanence.  No amount of love or light that I can beam at that wall feels like it can ever penetrate it.  I am learning to love unconditionally, as I see him in my mind’s eye, sitting on the other side of the wall, turned away.  Maybe when I am dead and gone, he will remove a single brick and look out for me, never to find me again, in this lifetime.

I want to be loved by someone, in return.  I’m not going to stand at anyone’s wall trying to break through. My energy and my magic is too precious, and I deserve to be loved. So, I am leaving a note of unconditional love pinned to the wall, and carrying on. Twin Flame love is not for the rookie.

Last week we had a new moon and I set my healing intentions on it.  I love a man who, it seems, will never be trusting (or trustworthy, because the two go hand in hand) and to whom I am eternally bound.  There is another man who is kinder to me than anyone I’ve ever known.  He quietly takes care of me and asks nothing in return.  He protects me and gently cares for me and maybe, in time, I can open my heart to him.  I’m really not sure.

Two men pulling in different directions.  I am pulled to the one who repels me and pulled toward the one I keep at arm’s length.   I’m not able to navigate this crazy mess of human love.  All I can do is love unconditionally and pull up anchor.

I’m just letting the cross-currents of these two men turn me in a gentle circle, towards my own heart, like a dervish turns to her Beloved.  There lies the path of True Love.

While I gaze at the stars, I try to find a new way of navigating this lifetime: one with an awareness of the moon’s pull, but one which plots a course that follows the stars.  Sure, I’m grateful to be cared for by one man and for the difficult lessons that the other man brings.  I’m grateful to have the chance to be on the water and in the water and to witness my own magical luminescence.  There is a time for oneness with another and maybe one day I’ll get it right, but now is the time to witness and wonder at where I am meant to go, and to follow the stars where they will guide me.  The story of love begins with loving my own way home, plotting a course through my own broken heart.

Photo: Blake Carpenter

For what are you most grateful, today?