My Love

This afternoon after watching my daughter play soccer and then having coffee with a friend, I treated myself (and my sore knee) to a bath and a movie. The movie was Before We Go -- something I stumbled across on Netflix. It wasn't a terrific movie in a lot of ways, but it was about love, and y'all know that's one of my favorite subjects.

I liked what it had to say about love, which I would roughly summarize as love is messy, sometimes it makes fools of us, sometimes it enrages us, but it's always, always, always worth fighting for. I share this belief, but in a couple, you need two -- both -- to really be in it, willing to fight for it. And if you don't have that, well, the movie also suggested that it was possible to move on and find love again with someone else.

I believe this is possible. I believe it will happen to me. And in the meantime, I'm now able to talk, as I did this afternoon at coffee, about the love I experienced and lost in this post-divorce phase of my life, without crying. It's ok that it happened the way that it did. I'm ok. I really am. This is true.

It is also true that when I watch a romantic movie, as I did this afternoon, and I let myself, I feel my heart breaking open all over again. It still physically hurts, this loss, when I let myself go there. It amazes me how powerful the feeling remains.

But today, amidst the sobbing in the bathtub, I felt something else, too. Something new. Something reassuring: I felt my heart expand with each sob. Like it has had to contract to hold that pain in, and in releasing it, I am making space. Not just figuratively, or emotionally, but physically.

And I am grateful for that. So grateful. Because if that love taught me anything it taught me just how worthwhile it is to love someone fully, bravely, vulnerably, and I intend to do it again. And hopefully soon, now that I'm halfway to 50(!). Not that I'm in a hurry, but now seems like as good a time as any.

I heard this song tonight. It's about love. And it's beautiful. And that makes it pretty darn perfect to mark this day:

There's nothing more that I would have that I could need
Cause having this means that I've got it all
When I was taking turns and you were wrong for me
You chose to understand and let it go

And ohhh
You've turned this black heart made it into gold
So I wanna let you know that

My love and my touch, up above is made with the warmth of my,
My love and my touch, up above is made with the warmth of my love
Looovve

Control is such an open-ended word for me
Something that I used to think I owned
I'm standing here with none, I'm feeling so complete
You helped me understand to let it go

And ohhh
You've turned this black heart made it into gold
So I wanna let you know that

My love and my touch, up above is made with the warmth of my,
My love and my touch, up above is made with the warmth of my
My love and my touch, up above is made with the warmth of my,
My love and my touch, up above is made with the warmth of my love

Stay close to me, love
Stay close to me, yeah, love
Stay close to me, love

Or don't, but if you decide not to, please let me go so that someone else can...