But please let me tell you, SPEND YOUR LIFE immediately. Save no love. Spend it now. Wait for nothing. Be profligate with your joy. Our lives are not made to be saved for a tomorrow that is never promised. ~Sophie Strand @cosmogyny on IG
Every now and then, after they experience a heartbreak, a client will declare they will never open themselves up like that again, they will never let themselves be vulnerable to the pain, betrayal, grief, again because it hurts too much and it isn’t worth it. They claim it is better to be closed off, isolated, safe, than to suffer as they are in that moment.
I get it. I’ve been there. When my marriage ended I declared I would never date again and then when I started missing partnered sex, I would keep it distant, I wouldn’t let myself feel, I was just in for the orgasms and nothing more.
Less than a year after my ex and I separated I met someone who cracked me open in the best and worst ways. We ended and I thought for sure I could never have an experience like that again. I was both right and wrong. I met another person who cracked me open in different ways and again when we inevitably ended I was sure I’d never find another to love and play with so deliciously. Again, I was right and wrong. I met yet another… rinse and repeat.
It is true each relationship was unique. It is also true with each relationship the sex got better and hotter and I loved both more fully and openly and more and more in the moment. This was mostly because I was doing my own work, coming more and more into my body, learning to become more and more present in the current moment, and working through the layers of my own trauma (i.e. it wasn’t about them, it was about me).
By the time of the ending of my most recent significant lover, I came to realize I actually cannot stop myself from caring, from loving, from feeling all those gorgeous and delicious and decadent sensations and emotions, and the price for getting to experience all this is inevitable grief - but for me now, it is worth it, so very very worth it.
A truth is, the people we are in relationship with, change us. Because of this, the people we were when we were then, no longer exist. And so no, no love is ever the same, even when it’s with the same person, because we never meet the same person twice (nor do they), even when we are occupying the same body. The past is in the past, and while beautiful to look back on and remembered, it can never be relived. This is why being able to be in the present moment is so important, we don’t get do-overs.
I talked with one person about chapters ending and how we had a really great chapter together. It is true. And also within our one chapter there were multiple sub chapters and interwoven, as well as completely disconnected, plot lines. There was much neither of us knew about the other, and it didn’t matter. That was part of the magic of us, we didn’t need the day to day details for us to have a deep intimate connection. We could (not at all so) simply be in the now.
Entering new chapters, or books, or writing a whole new series, is about character development and arcs. But as we are writing it, as we are living it, we can’t really see the arc or where any one decision will ultimately lead us. We can’t foretell the future, we don’t know what twists and turns will come our way to change our trajectory. We can’t see how we will change because we don’t know what will come into our life to catalyze those changes.
Quantum entanglement describes the ways particles interact with each other over vast distances. How once connected, they are always a part of each other in some way. It’s a beautiful description of our human relationships, I believe. Not every person we interact with we maintain this kind of connection with, but with a few we do. No matter the distance of time or space, we still have a way of affecting each other and when we come back together it is as if we never separated in the first place.
I wrote once I want to live in the wanting. This is still true. I want to crave my people, my relationships. I want the intensity of both interaction and separation. I want to love deeply and fully and also have that love for myself. I want passion and pleasure in all their forms, not just sexual. I want to have such amazing experiences that I want to relive them, even though I know I can’t. I want the excitement of seeing how relationships, people, life, evolve.
I want connections that can endure the distance of time and space. That in fact are strengthened by them.
I want to meet people and see where it goes, and if that is nowhere, it is also beautiful because it means I am not trying to force or manipulate, I am acknowledging what does and does’t work for me and my own boundaries, and am keeping my capacity for what can and will and has gone to the depths of my soul and the ends of the multiverses. I don’t believe in saving ourselves for “the one” (hell, I don’t even believe in “the one”), and I also know we each only have so much capacity to offer as we all try to survive in our oppressive, dying, society and world, and so we can’t give vast amounts of our time and energy to everything and person who comes into our sphere.
And.
We all have infinite quantities of love to both give and receive. Love is not the same as time, energy, or capacity (though how we express it is related to those things). So giving our time and energy to those who matter most while being open to expanding (and contracting) that circle, to me, is what loving is about. Sometimes I only have enough capacity to give my love to the trees or the oceans or my cats, other times to only my children and or inner circle, sometimes only to humanity in general but not one person specifically. But my capacity to give does not define the amount I have to give. My love is infinite, my capacity to give it is finite.
I believe this is true for all of us.
The more I am able to be in my body and in the present, the more I allow myself to experience the joy and grief, the pleasure and discomfort and sometimes pain, the ebb and flow, the contractions and expansions happening right now, the more of the love I have to give is given. Sometimes that love is only given to me, sometimes a room full of people, sometimes an entire forest or ocean of beings. Sometimes only to the breath that is moving in and out of me. And the more in the moment I can be, the more connected to the what is right now I am, the more my love flows.
I want my love to flow.
Because this life we have, this love we have, is not meant to be saved for “the one” or a special day. It is meant to flow, to breathe, to both move and be in the stillness. It is not meant to be guarded or hoarded but freely lived and given.
All easier said than done when we have complex trauma, childhood relational and attachment wounds, adult experiences that left is feeling broken and lost, and we live within and under systems that constantly and consistently cause us harm. Which is why it is a practice. Which is why we learn the difference between boundaries and walls (and the importance of the former and detrimental nature of the later). Which is why we learn discernment and coming into our body to trust our gut, our intuition, our knowing.
Trauma tells us to isolate. The trauma of living under the trifecta of captialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy tells us to cling to our “rugged individualism”. Trauma tells us we aren’t safe and the trifecta actually makes the world unsafe.
And.
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