Arms of a Woman

One of my favorite songs is Amos Lee's Arms of a Woman. "When she wakes me, she takes me back home." When I hear it I think of a couple in the comfort of their love, and him taking vacation...refuge in her loving arms. She is his home. And even though he sings of it nostalgically, or in remembrance I still think its the most beautiful love song ever. I wondered to myself why on days like today my mind finds itself on love. I listen to beautiful songs, and I watch beautiful movies, and I plan a beautiful wedding and daydream on a beautiful happily ever after. Admittedly, the present sucks so I wander into the future. Everything is always better there. I told my person about a wedding in Negril at a cliffside boutique hotel. I rambled on about the pinks and oranges of the sunset and the flowers nestled in the green foliage against a turquoise ocean. I romanticized my Liz Gilbert quote, "The desire to feel chosen. A wedding; a public event that will unequivocally prove to everyone, especially to myself, that I am precious enough to have been selected by somebody forever...what better confirmation of her preciousness could she summon than a ceremony in a beautiful church where she could be regarded by all in attendance as a princess, a virgin, an angel, a treasure beyond rubies? Who could fault her for wanting to know-just once-what that feels like?" Of course you go "there" Jessica, its love.

I realize that I may want control or safety more than I want love sometimes. And by sometimes I mean all the time. Its incongruent. How can you want love but be so repulsed by it? Much in the same way you crave validation and attention but hate being seen. Whatever you want most is what you get. My energy has been so dedicated to protection that I realize I have been closed off to many splendid and intoxicating joys. I have stayed nestled in the arms of a woman, only her arms were my own. Folded into myself wanting desperately to be hidden. I said to myself today, "You are safe. Let it go," I wasn't sure what it was I was holding on to...but my evening changed right then. My breath was sure and for the first time today I didn't feel like crying or sleeping.

And it may be that I'll be doing it everyday multiple times a day for the rest of the week...month...year. But I will because you're only as heavy as the shit you carry. And I am tired of taking my insecurities everywhere with me. I want to shed them but I know it will take time. I cannot shake out of all of them like a snake sheds its skin, but perhaps I can drop them gradually along the path. And for each one, a moment of reflection and forgiveness and acceptance. A breath and a drop. And a step forward.