That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be

But Arch is already in Madison -- see the legs?

The weather has been really weird. Foggy. Wet. Kinda warm, but not super warm. After I dropped off the kids at their Dad's this afternoon, I went for a run in the Arboretum. As I had done in DC, I decided to run on trails, even though they were pretty messy.

It felt good to be in the woods. It always does. I was listening to a weird station on Slacker -- I'm not even sure what it was -- but songs that I'd never heard kept coming on, like this one:

But you say it's time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me -
Well, that's the way I've always heard it should be:
You want to marry me, we'll marry.

I wasn't sure who was singing it, but I'm not surprised it's Carly Simon. And it got me thinking. Thinking about how for some of us, it just doesn't go the way we've always heard it should. Some of us don't enter adulthood with enough of ourselves intact to have our first marital selection be a great fit -- someone we can love deeply, someone we can continue to grow with over the years.

And although I've had a lot of trouble accepting it, it seems that sometimes, when those of us in this category do meet and fall in love with someone we want to move in with, raise a family with, sometimes we don't even get to have it that time around.

It doesn't make any sense to me, none at all, to find a love like the one the New Englander and I found, and then choose something other than to partner on these trips around the Sun that we've got left -- but today as I ran I realized that there are lots of things about this world that I find senseless. People who want to have babies being unable to conceive and children dying being a couple of examples, but the fact that I find them senseless doesn't stop them from happening. Same thing is true of my situation. It's happening. Might as well accept it.

And although I'm sad, I'm also grateful. I'm grateful that I'm not living a life like the one Carly sings about here:

My friends from college they're all married now;
They have their houses and their lawns.
They have their silent noons,
Tearful nights, angry dawns.
Their children hate them for the things they're not;
They hate themselves for what they are-
And yet they drink, they laugh,
Close the wound, hide the scar.

Nope. I'm not hiding the scars. I'm allowing my heart to break open into new life, and I'm trusting that all the work I've done to liberate myself means there'll be no drowning in love's debris for me:

You say we can keep our love alive
Babe - all I know is what I see -
The couples cling and claw
And drown in love's debris.
You say we'll soar like two birds through the clouds,
But soon you'll cage me on your shelf -
I'll never learn to be just me first
By myself.

And I know that I will never cage the man (men) I love on my shelf -- even if it means losing him (them) for good...