T.L. Gray's Blog, page 19

We'll Figure It Out

The world is a mess. We are all mess. I’m a mess. You don’t know how many times I’ve found myself in situations I knew were coming, yet procrastinated until I was deep into the heat of battle. It’s during times like that I’ve often heard myself say, “I’ll figure it out.” Most struggles stem from a lack of preparation, yet spending my life planning for every situation often caused me to miss out on actually living in the moment. Battles come… always. They never stop. When one is won or lost, another rises in its wake, each leading us closer to the resolution of our war – life. This is our ultimate plot line.

I’m a planner, a dreamer, and survivor. I do try really hard to live in the moment, to focus on the here and now and not continue to be caught up reliving the past or fretting over the future. But, come on – it’s part of my DNA to have the whole story, to flesh out the minor plots, to notice the connections, the paths, the solutions, the threads, and the story on the whole. In the story of life, I’m not only the protagonist, antagonist, the hero, and the villain of my particular tale, but my story intermingles with so many other sub-characters, allies, enemies, and love interests. How can I not get caught up in trying to see where their plot lines cross with mine? We are all part of the same story.

I can’t express how many relationships I’ve run from because I’ve followed the plot lines and found they didn’t lead to where I wanted them to go, or where I needed them to go despite where I wanted. Yet, even the best plot lines, no matter how certain of their direction, were met with plot twists or inciting scenes that changed everything, mostly changing me and what character I thought I played. Some were wrought with red herrings and disturbing revelations, or deep mysteries, while others just simply had a lack of story they became lost amid my drama.

Here I am again with another plot twist. Here I face new plot lines, new characters, new scenes, and a new objective, yet filled with many familiar faces. Here I am once again swimming in a sea of uncertainty, hearing myself say, “I’ll figure it out.” But there is a particular part of me, one of the many characters that has played in the story of my life so many times before, that aches inside. I can hear her soft, broken voice whispering, “I’m tired of going it alone. My cape is worn. My boots are crusted in mud. My mask is fading and withering. No matter how tirelessly I fly from one disaster to the next, the world continues to spin and my job is never done. Who’s gonna save me?”

Though surrounded in this world by people that have come and gone in my life, I’ve always felt alone, an orphan among seven billion people. I’ve tried really hard to let people in my life, to only be met with pain, disappointment and heartache. My walls are too deep to tunnel beneath, or too high to fly above. My skin is made of steel, though it appears soft as flesh. My eyes see through the veils at what is hidden beneath, that it’s hard to see the shallow exteriors. Though I look like everyone else, I’m unique, one of a kind, and alien in strange world. Though strong and gifted, I’m afraid. Not of being destroyed by anything this world can throw at me, but that I’ll always fly alone. What will keep my feet on the ground, tether my cape, and hold me tight as I struggle to fly away?

The world will always need to be saved. Solutions will always need to be figured out. There is no day that will be free of struggle, be free of inciting scenes, plot devices, climaxes, or resolutions. But my greatest hope is that one day I will hear the flap of another cape and a soft whisper in my ear, “We’ll figure it out.”

Till next time,

~ Hopeful Heroine

Faith, Hope and Love

Faith, hope and Love

Life has a funny way of sometimes jumping forward, pulling you back, or getting stuck in the present that you can’t move in either direction. That complexity is what makes it life. If everything worked the way we thought it should, or our thoughts always went in a forward momentum, or our hearts always moved in a particular direction, we wouldn’t be the complicated human beings we’ve turned out to be. We’d be happy plastic people. Isn’t that the way the song goes? We’d be strong in faith, solid in hope, and brimming with love, right?

Anyway, we are complicated, complexed, and often confused. We are taught morals and values that create walls and boxes, and when life doesn’t go according to plan, we often crumble inside those boxes, doubting ourselves and becoming weak in faith, void of hope, and empty in love.

I was thinking about God and family this morning. Well, how religion often portrays God, really. I thought about the scripture in Philippians 4, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything through prayer and supplication make your requests known to God… “, and I remembered being told more times than I can count not to worry about things, that God is watching out for me, He’s got me in his protection, and He’d make a way for me, to protect me; that my worry was detrimental and contrary to my faith. I’ve always wondered at those who would quote this scripture to me, if they’d ever suffered any real loss, any real tragedy, any real heartbreak, any real disappointment, any real set back or failure, because I had. For many years I felt weak in my faith because I still worried about the things that threatened my welfare, my children, my family, or the life I was trying to provide for them. Yet when I expressed those worries or fears, told with a smile NOT to worry, to have faith, to trust God would see me through it. Yeah, like all the things I already went through, that’s what I feared. Many of those things I worried about happened no matter my faith. Instead of feeling the strength I had often felt growing up in a severely abusive childhood, I felt like a failure, weak, and a disappointment to a god that was supposed to love and protect me. But it’s easy to talk warfare when you’ve never been in true battle. It’s easy to talk of a father’s love if you’ve never known a father’s love. But, what of us orphans who never knew love, never had a father to protect us, but a father from whom we needed protection? What of a soldier on the battlefield of life, one that’s seen the brutality of war, the ugliness of mankind? How can we ask them not to be afraid?

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the past, not really the experiences I’ve had, but the woman I used to be. I was strong, but so lost. I was damaged, yet impenetrable. But what’s changing for me now is love. I’ve known love, but I didn’t quite know how to accept it. I’ve loved deeply, but I didn’t know how to express it. I’d like to say it’s because of the love that’s growing for my Dominican Marine that’s creating/inspiring this new outlook, and perhaps that’s part of it, but it’s more of the love I’m receiving from him, from my best friends Jenna and Kenny, from my kids, but mostly it’s from the love I’m receiving for and from myself.

I heard my ex-husband is getting remarried. I’m happy for him, because I’ve only ever wanted him to find and feel love. Everyone knew we married for convenience, to fulfill responsibility, and I could never be the woman he wanted, the woman he loved, and he often made sure I was reminded I was not wanted, or desired, or acceptable. I am not without blame, because I always knew I was never in love with him either, though I respected and was faithful to him, I couldn’t give him the love he needed. What hurt most in our divorce wasn’t our separation, because now we both had an opportunity to find the love we desired, but the loss and separation of family. His family was my family for two decades, and really the only real family I ever knew. His parents were the only parents I ever really had and I loved them dearly. Still do. I miss them. Now they’ll have a new daughter and I hope it’s one they can be proud to love. The bond I have with my natural brothers isn’t one of love, but one of survivorship, and while that bond brings us together and keeps us connected on some level, it’s also the foundation of the huge wall that keeps us separated, well… that and the lying, stealing, cheating, drugs, etc. My kids love me, but they don’t need me, and they’re getting on with their lives knowing they don’t have to worry about me. I loved them more than myself and only hope they understood and felt that love from me. I often fear I damaged them because of my own lack of being able to show what was inside beneath my thick armor.

I am a vagabond, a woman without a home, without a people, without a family, yet I am a very blessed woman because I am rich in love, in friendships, and in faith. While I worry about the cares of this world, I am not afraid. Not because I cling to a scripture, to a promise, or to a faith in a god to protect me, or a man to save me. I cling to a knowledge that shit happens, but I’m strong and I’ll overcome it, and I’m not alone, because LOVE is with me. God is love. God is with me. I love me. I love my kids. I love my friends. I love my Dominican. That love … that love is my strength. That love helps me heal from a past, gives me hope for my future, and surrounds me as I walk through my present… in all its complexity and simplicity. Faith is good. Hope is beautiful. But, love is the greatest of all these things.

Till next time,



~ Love’s Lover

Somewhere in the Middle

I tried to find a word to capture my current feeling, this overwhelming, yet underwhelming lack of expression for a place somewhere in the middle, but I can’t quite capture it. I even asked one of my highly intelligent friends for a word to express a median and they couldn’t come up with one either. It seems we are hard wired to think in extremes, always looking for that heightened or lack of feeling, but what we often experience on a day to day basis lies somewhere in the middle, and that’s normal. Yet, we think normal is depressing or non-essential. As a writer, one would think we always need to feel those polar extremes to write better, but that’s not true. What we should be able to capture is every level, every plane, every degree, every color on the spectrum.

So, why am I thinking of mediums this morning? Well, because my over-thinking, over-imaginative, over-complicated mind (get the idea?) is trying to evaluate, to be introspective about the current relationship I’m involved with my Dominican Marine. Some moments I have these bouts of clarity and think, Wow, I’ve met an incredibly wonderful man and I can feel the love and admiration, and I can see a life with him. Not a fantasy, but a real life, full of struggles and obstacles, but standing side by side with each other as we navigate. I suppose I found an adventure partner. And other times I think, Oh, shit… now what? Will I be able to stick this out or will I get scared and slip into my running shoes because I’ve worked too hard to find myself? I don’t want to be on either end of that stick, but I need those ends to keep me balanced. I don’t want to lose myself into someone else again, forget who I am as a woman, forget and forgo my own wants, needs, and dreams in order to fulfill theirs, and yet at the same time I don’t want to get so consumed in protecting the long list of personal goals and wants that I don’t make room for him and his. It’s about finding a balance somewhere in the middle, like a bubble finds the medium mark when it’s leveled.

So, here I find myself living between hope and fear, love and indifference, want and need. It’s okay to have them all, but it can get confusing if they’re experienced out of balance. One of my best friends is an 18-year old named Kenny who still yet has to discover life, love and heartbreak, and part of me envies his journey, but at the same time I am so glad I’ve already climbed those mountains. I also had a conversation with a 23-year old young man named Jordan at work yesterday, and hearing his doubts fight against his wants, his ideas against his morals, his hopes for a future against the reality of the present, made me smile because I realized I already know what I want when it comes to a relationship, I’ve already discovered for myself all the things he’s trying to discover now. My only fear at the moment is if what I want is compatible to what my Dominican Marine wants, and that answer is going to be found somewhere in the middle.

Yes, I’m still afraid and some days find it hard to breathe because love has a devastating way of being very elusive. At the same time, I’m finding myself beginning to dare to hope that maybe love has finally found me. In the meantime, I’m just going to enjoy being right here in the middle of them both. Got any popcorn?

Till next time,



~The Bubble in the Middle

Lies and Love

We are all liars. We lie to each other, but mostly we lie to ourselves. We create these ideals of what and who we are, and when things happen in our lives, we often get hurt and confused when they turn out to be something we didn’t expect. We don’t mean to lie to ourselves, in fact, we don’t often know we’re doing it. But the pain of the lies we tell ourselves, well, the pain hurts us really bad. Most often, even in the midst of the pain, we can sometimes still refuse to see the truth.

Why do we think it hurts so much when we’re disappointed, when our faith is tested and we’re deemed wanting? We hurt partly because we believe we failed on some level, but mostly because we were deceived, things didn’t turn out as we had imagined them, as we had hoped, as we had believed. We try to blame everything and everyone else for that pain. But if we really look at each situation in our lives, the worse of the pain stems from realizing we were wrong.

When I found out I had cancer, I instantly wondered what I had done wrong in my life to have deserved this punishment, to have earned this disease. That’s how I’m programmed to believe, that there are consequences for my actions, that for every action there’s an equal or opposite reaction, or there’s a blood price to pay for the sins we commit. When my ex-husband told me that he was never attracted to me or was never in love with me, I thought I deserved that, too. I didn’t deserve to be loved. The things I loved died. When my father would beat me for talking back to him or denying him, I thought I deserved the pain. The things I challenged hurt me. I was disobedient, and how can the universe, God, faith, or science honor disobedience? Even the natural laws of the universe have abstracts. When my oldest daughter ran away from home, I thought I too deserved that, after all… I ran away. I had just begun the journey of loving myself, loving my body, and loving my mind, and daring to love someone else when the cancer attacked. But it wasn’t the cancer that hurt me; it was the lies, the fantasy of a life I had created for myself, and those around me.

I ran, not so much from the people I loved from this crazy idea that it would hurt them less when I died if I was already gone, but I think I ran more from the dissolution of the dream world I’d built for myself, the hope of a life I dared to dream, and the reality of that dream didn’t live up the fantasy. Not even the man I thought I loved lived up to the man I had imagined. That’s not his fault, that was mine. It was unfair for me to build him as I had. He was perfect. He was simply amazing. Was he as I imagined him? Far from it, but I liked the lie. I fell in love with it. But as with all lies, the truth finally revealed itself, and I got hurt. No, I shattered.

So, here I am now, at a new place in my life, a strange place, because I can’t explain what happened to me, what happened to that dreamer, but I somehow I changed. I have slowly been piecing myself back together. While there are familiar fragments of the woman I used to be, I’m something different, I’m something new and the way I look at life, love, and living is something new too. Could it be another lie I’m telling myself? Maybe. I know I’m capable of it. I’m a writer after all, which makes me a master manipulator, an imaginative dreamer.

I don’t say this about being a liar as something derogatory. On the contrary, some of the lies are beautiful. The truth is always hard, always absolute, always concrete, but we are fluid, moldable, movable. The truth of life for me at this time is that not everything in my life is beautiful. There are struggles, there are strings, there are twists and turns, uncertainties, and a whole lot of choices. But there’s also adventure, discovery, and even love.

I’m falling in love again… in love with my life, in love with my body, in love with my mind, in love with my gifts, in love with my passions, in love with my sense of adventure, and in love with love. I might also be falling in love with this one particular Dominican Marine. Love has hurt me deeply before, broken me, shattered me, but I’m ready to try again. I’m ready to dream again, and the truth is… this is what living is all about – falling down and getting back up again. Love isn’t the broken pieces of my life, it’s the glue that keeps putting those broken pieces back together again. And that, my friend, is no lie.



Till next time,



~T.L. Gray

I'm Scared, But It Feels Good!

I can’t even express what I’ve been through emotionally, physically, psychologically, or even intellectually over the past few years.  Well, I don’t have to, these blogs have recorded that for me.  I find myself even unable to read them because those emotions are just under the surface, and I can’t jump back onto that roller-coaster ride, not yet. The highs are really high, and the lows are so deep I find myself really, really, really wanting to stay afloat for just a little while somewhere in the middle, somewhere in a medium, somewhere safe I can breathe.  Don’t get me wrong, I still want to feel the thrill of the peaks and the even the pain of the depths, but I just plead the universe gives me a little time to enjoy this moment of inertia.   
I’ve met someone recently, a wonderful, handsome Marine that keeps me smiling. I call him my Bello, because that’s what he is to me, he’s a beautiful soul that arrived in the midst of my darkness. I’m not sure I can explain what meeting him and knowing him is doing to me, because whatever is happening it’s momentarily outside my understanding.  I’m not going to say it’s love, but I’m not going to say it’s not.  I can only honestly say it’s different.  All the loves of my life have been different. Some complicated. Some painful.  All in the past, all gone, all of them I lost either by death, divorce, or deception. Each left a mark, a scar of their own, but a scar that I’m not ashamed to bare.  These scars have made me who I am.  I have no regrets. 
Last year, when I thought I was dying, I pushed everyone that meant anything to me out of my life, or at least to the edges of it, and built this huge wall of fear.  I became afraid… of everything and everyone.  I lost that girl that was living out loud and doing all these amazing things.  God, I envied her, I still do.  She was so full of life, so full of hope, so exuberant, taking on the world and taking a chance on life and on love.  Even now, I still envy her.  I fell in love with her, with myself, with life.  She had nothing, yet she had everything. But, I had to let her go, because cancer killed her, fear destroyed her, and a broken heart ripped her to pieces. She went from living out-loud and deep into survival mode - a place of numbness, detachment, minimal existence, darkness.
But light has entered the room.  Not a big light, but a little one and it grows brighter every day, exposing the shadows that have petrified me for too long.  I’m waking, wanting to find my way back to the light, back to a life full of sunshine, a life where I can once again live out loud.  I have too many dreams, too many hopes, too many passions to keep them hidden in the dark.  A dear revertant friend of mine has helped me see a glimpse that girl I once was, and though I can’t go back and be her, I can be even more.  I survived, again.  I’ve lost so much, but there is much more ahead of me.  
My Bello is showing me that though I’ve lost a lot, but those I’ve lost also lost me. I suppose that’s what I’ve had a hard time to see.  I’ve been so focused on what and who I’ve lost, even the girl I used to be, to see that I was the one lost, not them.  They lost me.  For whatever reason they didn’t choose me. Now, here I am, breathing, standing on my own two feet, staring at a world of possibility, alive, and ready to live.  I’m scared, but it feels good.  I’m ready to live out loud again. I’m ready to jump back into the light and fly.  My wounds are still there, and I have a few new scars, but my wings are not broken.  They’re sore, but I’m so ready to fly.  Yet, this adventure will be different, because I’m different.  I’m not the same woman I used to be. I haven’t yet figured out who she is yet, but I’m okay with that.
My Bello came to see me this week.  He moved his schedule around so that I wouldn’t spend Christmas alone.  Someone put me first.  It felt nice.  He moves me to find me.  He encourages me to chase my passions. He doesn’t ask me for anything.  He makes me feel beautiful, wanted, desired, and adored. Mostly, he inspires me want to live out loud.  While I love the feel of his strong arms around me, or the softness of his lips upon mine, I mostly love the fact that I don’t want to change for him. I only want him to hold my hand as I break out of this cocoon and spread my wings.   I have loved deeply.  I have loved faithfully. I have loved wildly.  Mostly, I think I’ve loved love.  Maybe now it’s time for love to love me back.  I’m still scared, but it feels good.
Till next time,
~T.L. Gray

Isn't There Any Room?

With the world gathering beneath tinsel, families making holiday plans, lovers finding creative ways to express their affections, I can’t help but see the universe singing along filled with holiday cheers and fears. Yet, with all the fa-la-la, I also can’t help but feel a little lost. The constant festivities have me thinking about things, traditions, ideals about love. Working in the fashion industry and swimming among the super, secret, surprise sales, I also can’t help be a little disconnected, a little torn, and whole lotta confused.

I’m a giver, and I’m a rebel. I show emotion, and I keep it to myself. I like to do things for the people I love and care about, but I hate feeling like giving is an obligation. So, just as I didn’t feel pressured to cook an elaborate meal to feed our gluttonous appetites for Thanksgiving, I feel no pressure to buy meaningless gifts for a commercialized Christmas. I miss the Christmas cheer, but at the same time I’m free from the bondage of it.

Just as conflicted I am about the holidays, I’m just as conflicted about finding room in my heart for a new relationship in my life. I’ve lately met a wonderful man, my Bello, and he is delightful, and handsome and has many of the qualities I’ve always found attractive in a man. He keeps me smiling so much my face actually hurts. We seem to be kindred spirits and click in many, many, many ways. I like it. I like the whole romance phase. I like the butterflies, the expectation, the whole getting-to-know-you period. I’m not in a hurry, taking my time and letting things bloom in the sunshine as they’re meant. But, there’s also this small ache in my heart for the relationships of my past. The world keeps telling me I have to let them go so I can make room for something new. But, isn’t there room for everyone? Just as I continue to love my children as I enter a new relationship, I believe there’s room for both – the loves of my past and the loves of my future.

I suppose I’m struggling with the concept of ‘unloving’. I don’t think it’s possible, not when the love is real. I’m beginning to think that you NEVER stop loving. While you may stop being in an active relationship, you never stopping loving what you really, deeply, truly loved. These loves of our past helped mold us into who we are today. They’re part of our history, part of our experiences, part of our who we were – so how can we disconnect completely from that? My soldier died nearly 25 years ago, yet I still love him today. My love for him never prevented me from loving others and it doesn’t mean I love those in my life today any less. The pain of losing him made it hard for me to open my heart for a long time, but it didn’t stop me. I did open my heart. I did love. Wow, I mean… I loved deeply. I fell hard. I lived, I loved, I had an adventure. While that relationship didn’t work out, it doesn’t mean the love we had wasn’t real, and now that I’ve moved on to another relationship, it doesn’t mean the love is gone. It’s still there, and I believe it will always be there, because I don’t understand how to stop loving. I can stop being in their life, stop being connected, but I can’t make my heart stop the love. I can deny it, but I can’t stop.

Just as I see the holidays with a different pair of eyes, I’m learning more and more about love, and have discovered the concepts I’ve always accepted are like an artificial Christmas tree. Just as beautiful, but when the season is over you can pack the artificial tree away and bring it out year after year, but the real thing… the real thing, was a living thing and the scent of it never leaves you, even when the decorations are put away and the tree is gone from your life. All you have to do is close your eyes and you can still smell it. The life of it lingers in your heart, in your memory, and in your soul. The loves of the past… though gone, still linger, because my heart has plenty of room for all the loves I hope to experience in this life. I’m excited about this new spark, and I hope it burns true as the one’s before it, and yet even brighter.

Till next time,

~Tinsel Tinker, Love Inn Keeper

The Best Voyage

"The voyage of the best ship is a zig-zag line of a hundred tacks." ~Emerson

This is so true.  Life is filled with so many turns, obstacles, and adventures.  If it worked out how we planned it, oh, what a boring life it would be.  I've had all kinds of moments... good ones, bad ones, dreams and nightmares.  While I didn't enjoy many of them, I wouldn't change them, because they've made me who I am. I can look behind me and see the zigs and zags, and the tacks are colorful and numerous.  It makes me excited and afraid of what might lay ahead.  I'm excited, because I'm enjoying the trip.

~Passenger Aboard the US TonyaView blog

Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

**Image from https://www.pinterest.com/explore/simon-garfunkel/

There are some songs I remember from my childhood, songs like nursery rhymes, rock-n-roll anthems my parents used to play in the car or through the house as they were getting stoned, school songs, and that odd song that would randomly come on the radio or television. One of those songs is The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) by Simon & Garfunkel. I can’t tell you when I first heard the song, but just know that forty-four some-odd years later, I still remember it; every-single-word.

“Slow down, you move too fast. Ya got to make the mornin’ last, just kickin’ down the cobble-stone, lookin’ for fun and feelin’ groovy. Da-da-da-da-da… feelin’ groovy. Hello, lamppost, what ‘cha knowin’. I’ve come to watch your flowers growin’. Ain’t ya got no rhymes for me? Da-da-da-da-da… feelin’ groovy. I got no deeds to do, no promises to keep. I’m dappled and drowsy and ready for sleep. Let the mornin’-time drop all its petals on me. Life I love ya’, all is groovy.”

Facing the next 3-4 weeks of a 50-hour work schedule, that’s what I’d like… for the world just to slow down a little bit. But, it doesn’t. It never does. It reminds me of another song that says, “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future.” Boy, those hippies of the 60’s and 70’s may have been stoned, but they had some really profound sayings.

I woke up this morning listening to the birds singing their morning song. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to their soulful melodies because I moved to a freakin’ hot state that is awfully humid, forcing me to keep the windows shut and the air-conditioner constantly humming it’s dull, dreadful song. For a woman who dreams of breathing in fresh mountain air, this Florida whether is about the farthest thing away from anything I want. But I’m here, and I’m trying to make the best of the hard decision I made to come.

But, just because my life is spinning wide open like a treadmill set on fast speed and I have to keep up or else I’ll lose my footing and go flying off the end, I can choose to regulate my breathing, slow down my mind, and fall into pace. I can choose to enjoy those simple things like listening to the bird’s morning song, remember staring into pair of beautiful, brown eyes and feeling the warmth of a strong pair of arms, listening to the laughter of a simple joke, playing a game of Nancy Drew with my best friends, feel the excitement of meeting someone new, getting to know my co-workers, and taking one slow step at a time at living out loud.

So, as Simon & Garfunkel sang, let’s all just slow down a little bit, make the morning last, take a few moments and just breathe, smell the flowers of life, feel the love of those around us. I feel loved this morning having received unexpected messages from some of my favorite people in the world. It wasn’t earth-shattering messages, just simple hellos from old friends, new friends, past friends, and friends I hope to be there in my life for always. I don’t love easy, but I do love deeply.

Till next time,

~Groovy-Feelin’ Hippy

Let Me Count the Ways

The older I get, the more I look back on life with a little more perspective, and the more I see things differently than I did in my wild, younger days. Well, that’s really a lot of bullshit, because I never really had wild, younger days. I had the misfortune of being bogged down with adult responsibilities since before I could talk. However, I had wild, youthful notions through inexperience and naivety, especially when it came to love.

Having a conversation with a very close friend last night about love, about being in love, about responsibility and accountability, it reminded me of the things I loved most about the people I have loved, and even some I continue to love today. Why do we love the people in our lives? It reminds me of the practice of picking a daisy and plucking the petals with “he loves me, he loves me not”, or some lame poetic utterance of, “Oh, how I love thee… let me count the ways.” Really, what are those ways? What are the things that we truly fall in love with about someone else?

I’d like to say that in my past relationships that I fell in love with a heroic act, that my superman swooped in and saved the planet, saved me from uncertain death, or saved me from unhappiness, abuse, or a life depraved. But, I can’t say that, because no one ever saved me from anything. I have fallen in love, only in different ways, for different things. It was never for those big reasons, or even for those shallow ones like sex, physical features, money or fame. No, NONE of those things ever seduced me. It was cleverness, compassion, thoughtfulness and nerdiness that stole my heart. Deep conversations, wild speculations, imaginative curiosity, individual reflection, courage, passion, and confidence… oh, let me count the ways.

Touching is nice. Sex is fantastic. Chemistry, fire, passion… they all burn hot, and it’s all good. But, it’s playing trivia, sharing a song, contemplating deep thoughts, debating philosophy, sharing nerdy passions like a favorite movie, tv show or video game, sending silly memes, talking about embarrassing moments, texting me when someone does something to make you angry or happy, sharing dumb jokes, podcasts, videos, or just the everyday things, etc. THESE are the ways that steal my heart. These are the moments that are remembered and cherished. Passions fade. Bodies get old. Things rust. But, moments of love… those are the ways that last forever.

Till next time,

~Petal Plucker

Looking for Love

Life’s a little crazy sometimes. Well, for me, it seems like it’s crazy all the time. But, isn’t that what we all think? While we believe we’re unique and individual, aren’t we really pretty much the same, with the same needs, the same wants, the same desires? The only differences lie within the degree of each? Who knows? I may be wrong in that assumption. I can’t really speak for anyone else, only for myself, and in that… these are my individual wants, my own selfish needs, my own personal desires. What do I really want right now in the middle of my crazy life? What is it I’m looking for? I suppose it’s the same thing I’ve been looking for all my life… I’m looking for love.

I have love in my life, have had love in my life, and am sure I’ll have new love in the days to come. I’m loved by my kids, by my friends, and maybe even loved by a man or two. But, am I in love? Maybe, maybe not. I’m too damned scared to know, or too damned scared to try. The last guy I fell in love with, I fell hard, and I fell deep, and I fell on my ass because he didn’t fall with me. Hitting the ground after such a huge leap leaves a person scared to jump again no matter how much they want, no matter how much they desire to feel the rush of falling, the excitement of dreaming, and the hope of a future. But I want it.

I have a lot of love to give, but I also have a huge empty space inside that I desire to fill. I’ve made room for friends, I’ve made room for family, I’ve made room for the things in life and the dreams I dream, but I want to make room for someone that I can share that life, those hopes, and dreams. Last year, I closed that room when I thought I was going to die. It’s been a long road back to approaching that door, and having the courage to reach for the handle and throw it open. It’s been hard. It’s been scary. No, it’s been terrifying. But I did it. With the love and support of my dear friends, I’ve once again grabbed that zest, that desire, that hope to live. That part of me that was ‘living out loud’ is beginning to hear the music again. It’s been one hell of a climb back up the mountain. I’ve had some very steep parts that I was only able to hang onto by the tips of my fingers and pull my whole weight as I struggled to find a foothold. But, I’ve made it. Love helped me. Love guided me. Love lifted me, when I couldn’t lift myself. Ah, dang it, now I have that stupid song stuck in my head, “love lifts us up where we belong…” And now… now I have something to share and something to give. But, oh Mylanta, am I afraid. I’m so scared I’m trembling.

What if I fall again? What if I jump and find myself hitting the bottom on my own? What if, like another song I know, I find myself looking for love in all the wrong places? It seems I’m drawn to the weird, the awkward, the damaged, the broken, those who’ve been in the trenches and carry the scars, those that have walls as thick as my own, if not thicker, or to the impossible, the improbable, or the forgotten. I’ve never chosen the easy way, but damned… for once can’t it be easy? I think that’s why I love fairy tales and superhero stories so much… though they have great obstacles to overcome, everything always works out in the end. So, I keep hoping that someday it’s time for my story, my fairy tale, my day to shine… and love will come looking for me.

Till next time,

Princess of Impossible Dreams