There will always be days in all of our lives where everything we believe and hold dear is shaken…a 9.8 on the Richter scale. Yesterday was one of those for me…
Several days ago, I spilled my guts to all of you about the things I hold dear…what I call my core values. As is all too often the case, the moment you think you know any fucking thing Fate decides he needs to test your beliefs in fire. I faced that fire. And here is more of that truth which should probably be another of those core values actually:
1) In 15 days, I turn 50…the big five-0…half of a fucking century. While I do not look, feel or act my age, that number is boring holes in my fucking brain like no other birthday has (worse even than twenty-nine I think…ask me in a few months). As we all should, I look at my life and ask…what have you done with over half of it? How can you squeeze all the living and the loving you want into the years you have left?
2) I feel like such a fucking fake sometimes…I write about relationships that last. And I have been separated from my second husband for over four years. I still am not divorced though…just because I don’t want to be a failure at something so fucking sacred to me…AGAIN. Even though I know there are hard limits, times when you have to call it quits…and both of mine have genuinely been that…only when it came to knowing that I had to for my children did I end it…even with all that it still is not easy to admit defeat.
3) Then I had coffee again with my beloved older daughter, who is going through a horrid break-up. Basically because she is repeating all of Mommy’s mistakes…giving too much and settling for too little, making excuses for someone you love even when they hurt you.
But it all came crashing down around my ears when I saw a post on FaceBook. This woman founded an organization that I have believed in for years. She was talking about when you call it quits…when it is time to end things. As I said…there are and MUST always be hard limits. But to my very core, I believe that we have come to see people and relationships as disposal as our phones, televisions and cars. Besides the obvious references in this woman’s posts to protecting yourself from abuse and physical harm, there was a significant bit of psycho-babble about…unhealthy/toxic and the other person’s problems not being your ‘responsibility.’
And I found myself shaking and rolling from side to side as a fault line shifted inside of me.
Though I did not know this woman, I had followed her work and believed in what I thought she stood for…but now she was saying something else. And just as I had with the church, organized religion and the BDSM community, I felt my ideals crashing themselves like ships against the rocks of reality and disappointment in someone and something I had believed in. I swayed and lost my balance. I fell even.
One thing I am good at though is being honest…not just not telling a lie…but actually pro-active honesty. I reached out to a friend…probed his mind for answers to questions that are honestly beyond either of our or anyone else’s ability to definitively answer. But he did not let me off the hook easily, he held my feet to the fire and made me face things I did not want to even.
It got to the point that I quoted
to him… but I only quoted the first bit. “I thought love was only true in fairy tales. Then for someone else but not for me.” His reply was “Keep reciting the lyrics…” Honestly, I had to turn on the laptop and pull up YouTube because I had forgotten the rest of the song.
Just as for a moment I had forgotten what I stood for…what I do believe. It is easy to stand on solid ground with everything you want right in front of and all around you. We have become a world that expects that kind of instant gratification. But like physicist searching for the god particle, it is far harder to believe in something you cannot touch, taste, smell, feel or as the song says…see.
Like them…even if I spend my whole life searching for the kind of love I write about…even if I never do find it…that does not mean it does not exist. Merely that I was not lucky enough to find it. Like those scientist, I too shall keep writing my ‘papers’ about what this true ‘god particle’ called love ought to look like and act. Because that is what believers do…share their beliefs.
Tara Cox - Literary Erotica 
I’ve been waiting all day to comment hoping to get my thoughts together but i’m just going to come out with it and hope i don’t ramble too much. You’re what my mom calls her and I being in love with love. In love with the idea of finding the one, the happy ending and when listening to music almost always choosing songs that represent love. In this day and age of people divorcing left and right, or people getting married for all the wrong reasons (money, power, just cause) we refuse to give up on the notion of love and that in the end we will find it and that true love exist and will continue existing until the end of time so keep on believing because we are here with you. i will leave you with on of my love songs
Oh, I know that life will still sux…even when/if I find him…just that well it is the title of a Sargent Mike book that I hope to release for Halloween this year…Shared Burdens. That makes it more bearable. Thing is that when life does sux, we have a choice…you pull together or you pull apart. These days most people just think it is easier to pull apart and move on to the next one, instead of investing the time, the pain and the love into making it work with the person you are with. Growing up where I did…I saw a different way…two people respecting one another and working together. The problem is that one person alone doing that is not enough. The song is lovely too.