Seeing the Other Side
After all, the only thing stopping us is ourselves.
By Julia R. DeStefano
Love should make you better. But one of the hardest things to do is love while you’re afraid.
Recently, I was having a conversation with a friend with a past situation that mirrors my present one. “Either one of you is afraid, or you both are,” she told me. Her words were sharp and self-assured, in disbelief that it could be this hard. But, having been through it herself, she could recognize the writing on the wall. At her words, I felt my mind begin to stretch. Past scenarios came flooding back to me — an uncontrollable tsunami of memories. My longtime ex-partner fit the statement to a T. While raveled in that dysfunction, I never pushed, never prodded, only stood idly by. I didn’t realize then the act of loving. I didn’t comprehend love as the potential to be the most fulfilling work that two people can ever do in this lifetime. I thought that if a connection was fortunate enough to exist, the Universe would do the rest. It simply doesn’t work that way.
But while I could have done better, his wasn’t the kind of love that made (or could make) me better.
Knowing this didn’t stop me from engaging in an intellectual debate with her — citing the let go and let God mentality that has resounded in my brain ever since Bible school. I even threw the line good things happen to those who wait into the conversation for good measure. My Aquarius is nothing if not headstrong. She wasn’t having it, and the truth is — neither was I — at least not any longer.
“What are you, Julia? You have to let go of ego and find a way to express it.”
The words came flowing out of my mouth without any forethought.
“I am a woman full of love. I am a woman in love.”
“I am a woman wanting a win. I am a woman desirous to be chosen.”
Damn, it was heavy but expected. I have always walked the path less traveled — my unusual ways in one hand and my creativity in the other. My eyes welled with tears because I recognized the pattern.
To be human is to innately crave an opportunity to unravel someone else’s knots with your own while simultaneously wanting to be bedded.
To be human is to say the hell with the knots and only want to be bedded.
To be human is to grapple with the thirst for these two scenarios in different capacities at any given time of day or night.
There they are — my definitions of human should replace the Dictionary’s current ones.
Flash forward to my birthday, the day’s emotions that I had not anticipated, and the evening that found me saying that line:
I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy. I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.
What is going to be worth it, exactly?
Me, damnit.
Somehow, that line takes on a special meaning in the face of love.
Later that night, over a piece of Boston Cream cake, my mother remarked quite pointedly: “Who needs men when you can have dessert?” It was the first time I had genuinely laughed alongside her in a long while. She was surprised I was home but quietly grateful that the birthday tradition had been unbroken.
As we commented that the cherry on top of the cake had gone uneaten and mused what it might be like to bring someone into the fold of our small family — even if only for a little while — my wheels continued to turn. These days, they rarely ever grind to a halt.
I was contemplating that something that happens as we age.
Suddenly, life becomes clearer and with this clarity, we begin to recognize what matters most. Either we weren’t in a place to see it before, or we didn’t want to see it — maybe it’s been buried underneath lustful thoughts and we’ve spent our years trying to mask it. But when we finally undergo this “epiphany” and own what matters, so does our desire ache and burn passionately for another to experience the same — for that person to say, as if by fate, magic, or miracle, in some roundabout way — I see how much you matter to me, and I won’t let you go.
One piece of cake turned into two, and I found myself wishing we had any sort of wine in the house.
Buried deep within folklore and astrological literature are the somewhat-hokey concepts of soul mates, spiritual partners, and twin flames — those intense and intimate relationships where the other person feels like home to you. These days, I don’t believe much in these constructs. But I do know a once-in-a-lifetime-anvil-to-the-head connection that feels like you’ve been together forever when I see one.
I’m wise enough to notice that bond that allows each person to unknowingly (and knowingly) teach each other; the one that inspires and challenges.
I won’t turn a blind eye towards the fact that we have it.
I can’t discount the fact that, ever since I was a little girl, that wake-up-call kind of love has been my definition of heaven. As Belinda Carlisle sang, two people have the capability to make heaven a place on earth. Killer chemistry and an unbridled enthusiasm for the physical doesn’t hurt, either.
I think a large part of that begins with two souls helping each other up and out of the doldrums — perhaps without even realizing it.
Maybe one soul didn’t even consider itself to be in the doldrums. But something about the connection makes one or both souls want to live better, even to recognize the fleetingness of existence -
because love is the gift that life grants us, if we’d only embrace it —
not set it aside as if it were made of Fine China,
only to realize someday, down the line,
that we never got to enjoy it because we were too afraid of screwing it up
or too afraid of causing the other unhappiness.
Fear is false evidence appearing real.
The truth is — so few soul connections are effortless. But these are. Despite all the difficulty, the uncertainty, there is something in the soul that just knows and aches to keep on knowing.
It’s when the other soul does its own dialing, calling to you on its own, and all you are is desirous to answer it.
If we have free will on this earth — so long as we are alive and breathing — we hold within us the power to ponder the directions calling out to our soul.
We know enough of life to not miss out on something, anything, because of fear.
We know not to miss out on an opportunity because we doubted we deserved it.
We know not to dismiss a longtime desire when the world is capable of reshuffling the deck on us at any moment.
But how often do we stop and listen to these critical messages from our hearts? I think we tend to ignore these messages until they’re in hindsight and colored with the bleakness of regret — over what could have been.
If I had one wish in this new year, it would be that we listen more deeply. It all begins with that rhetorical question: how badly do you want it? Few things in this life pain me more than two people who love each other but can’t figure out how to express that love. This isn’t The Thorn Birds. I don’t want to die wondering what if and full of unanswered questions, and I imagine you don’t, either.
How would we feel if we lost something before we even received it?
What if the chance vanished?
What if the choice removed itself from our lives as an option?
Life is a balance of everything. While it can present us with an opportunity of a lifetime, it is us who must take a step — any step — through the doorway, however minute. But if we decide against that step and live our lives only concerned about the people we might be making unhappy, the one we end up hurting the most is ourselves. More often than not, the truth isn’t an easy thing to admit. Although it may be easier to lie, such words aren’t worth anything because they are not based in honesty. Real truth brings with it lightness and ultimately, the ability to breathe more easily. The only thing we need to do to get what we want is to tell the truth — first comes admitting it to ourselves, then speaking it to others.
I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy. I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.
If we begin to operate on the idea that the moment is all we truly have, can we make more of it? Can we kiss, touch, talk, laugh, share, and debate more? Today’s opportunities become tomorrow’s missed chances if not seized. Don’t let the here and now pass you by, for these are the spiritual gifts we often only encounter in dreams.
The door is open — as is this heart of the woman who believes in miracles, you sexy thing.
