Friday
My heart aches. This is the other side of loving Bella. I accept the ache as the price of loving. I would not choose to refuse the love in order to avoid the pain. I put my arms around myself and tell her I love her because she’s willing to accept the pain. And the pain fades. What can I say? Thank you.
Friday, a week later
My heart is hurting. I don’t know why and I’m certainly not treating it as an honored guest. Dear Heart, I know you’ve been hurt a lot. You’ve been battered and bruised and stabbed. You’ve been burnt and poisoned, you’ve opened yourself to love and been rejected over and over. You want so badly to give good things to the world, but you’ve been shamed so many times it’s hard to feel your gifts are worth offering. Dear Heart, I love you, and I know some of your pain is about loving and losing Bella. I would not choose to not love Bella and avoid this pain. I’m willing to bear this pain as the price of loving. And there’s pain for the earth too, so badly treated and exploited, and pain for all the people, especially children, who are being abused and exploited and trashed. I feel honored to be with this pain, it’s the other side of my caring for the world and it’s creatures, including human beings. It wouldn’t hurt so much if I didn’t care so much. And I’m not going to stop caring.
This time the pain lasted most of the day, and faded so slowly I failed to notice. I have finally learned how to do this. The problem with having the pain fade when honestly accepted, is that the next time it’s too easy to “accept it” as a means of getting it to go away. This doesn’t work. You have to truly want it to stay as long as it needs to, and then it doesn’t matter if it goes away or not.