Learning to live and love and live and live and love a little and then let go and let go and live a little and love a little and let go and step back and take a look and go again, and be firm, and live a little and let them live and love and let them let go and step back, is quite an art form.

I feel happy and just a little proud that I can do that now. I can take a look at the people who have wounded me and be careful with them, and then let go of the old wound, and then give them space, while still being cautious about what is happening in case it happens again, but by the grace of Godde give them space to be themselves, while gently keeping an eye on them so that if they appear to be doing that thing again, then I can step back and gently say “no” and smile and wink at them and say “but it hurt last time so I am not going to let you do that again to me, but I still want you to be in my life, and I like so much about you, and I see that we indeed do have a lot in common, and say, did you get a load of that thing, whatever it is, see we have that in common, we like babies, we like good food, and we have so much in common, that the other thing, the thing that gets in the way, is not as important, but it’s still there, and we will respect it, but with a gentle nod and smile and wink and notice when it starts to take up more than the space that we had allocated. Remember that? Remember when it never hurt? Remember when all was well? Yes, you do remember. No you can’t remember any specific time when all was completely okay, because though you know that you felt fine, but in hindsight, you can analyze the past and realize that you didn’t know any better, but now you know there were many injustices, so much neglect, so many lost opportunities at love and happiness, and so it’s not quite the same. But you do know in your bones that there was a place, and still is a place, perhaps only a memory in your bones, but you know it’s there, it’s a place where everything is truly fine, and lovely and peaceful, and ecstatic and beautiful and where all the promises come true, where your every wish is reality and a place where things go really super well all the time. You just can’t remember specifically what that place is.

It’s there. And you smile and you love that place, and you don’t remember how to get back there, but you try in small ways. You try to make yourself happy, and that other person happy, and even those people who hurt you and might even hurt you again, because you sense that perhaps like some lonely molecules you are looking to hook up to bond into a coacervate of some sort, and it’s precisely only those people, even those miserable people who have hurt you, with whom you can create that string of molecules that calls itself life, and it’s no use denying it, it’s no use running away, because you can’t run away from yourself, and damn those people are parts of yourself, and damn, you always knew that, especially when you were angry at them and rejecting them and swearing up and down that you never wanted to see them again and a hundred miles and a twenty foot pole were not enough distance. I remember you when you said those things and you were smug and clever and stoic and self sufficient. Remember that? Remember when you swore that this is the way things are, that it’s you against the world, and you were going to hunker down and live like that and get what joy you could from cautious camaraderie and the occasional lover who might brighten the night before you got your guard back and played mind games with them again just in case, just in case, just in case, they had a dagger in the shape of warm lips and articulate speech. Such cleverness, how exhausting. Now you know that it’s possible, that you need those people, that they are in fact, parts of you that went missing, and here you are, with them, listening and playing, and well aware, and this love oozes out of you for no apparent reason, that nods to you and says “stay, stay, stay, this is it, there is no other place to go”, and you stay because indeed you have been to all those other exotic places, and you never found it, and now you know, you remember in your bones, that these molecules are yours, and you will soon bond and melt into them to create a new life form. And feel good again, like you always did in that memory from you can’t remember when.”