By Your Side

These cutie pies came frolicking out of my ipod this morning while I was puttering around getting ready for work, and this song really captures a feeling that I was trying to express to my friend last night on the phone. We were talking about how up and down being in love can feel -- how one moment you feel certain and as if you're on solid ground and the next moment you're wondering if you're crazy and planning your escape route. Part of that is just being human, and it's the up and down you'd feel about yourself and your own life even in the absence of your partner. But it gets projected onto your relationship because you think that being in love should somehow protect you from your own insecurities. But it doesn't.

I think the best relationships actually do the opposite: they reveal our insecurities and give us an opportunity to heal them. But we have to take those opportunities when they come, rather than allowing ourselves to fall into our typical patterns or let past wounds unconsciously control our present. How do we do that? By allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. And yeah, that can be a really frightening feeling.

After my man went home from this past visit and we had a couple of days without much contact, I freaked out a little and sent my friend an email saying "Did I ask for this? I was much more comfortable when I felt like he liked me more than I liked him and I felt like I had control." This is a friend who does not mince words -- she is, in fact, the friend who helped me see that cutting off my relationship because of distance when my heart said to stay in was just plain silly. "Oh yes you asked for this," she replied. "You hang in there. Methinks great things come from vulnerability."

Methinks she was right. I guess it's only been about a week, but I feel like I've entered a new phase that feels pretty damn solid. It isn't that I'm not going to have my ups and downs, or that my love isn't, or that we aren't together. It's just that stronger, louder and more resonant than all of that is the chorus of my mind, body, heart and soul, and they're singing:

I wanna be by your side...