My heart bleeds

My heart bleeds. My blood is a beautiful shade of deep maroon and it tends to be thick and viscous. i think about that blood as it pumps through me, keeping me alive. I think about what that blood is. I think about my life and how much blood has pumped through my heart when I think about the people in my life I have loved.

I think about the blood that has kept me living when I have fallen in love, and then fallen into the misunderstanding that my heart has broken. Which it never really has. it has always worked perfectly and will always work perfectly and is always working perfectly. And it will always bleed. 

It will bleed love and I will continue to feel everything. Because I do, it's in me as strong as the roots that travel down into the center of the earth's core. And those roots just keep pushing, they keep moving, until the dirt moves and they get to the next level of rooting. I however, have not. In the past, up until now, I seem to get stuck at the same turn every time. I love hard and deep and fast and furious and quickly and sometimes I jump in fear of my very own loving shadow. Love seems to be the thing that scares me the most.

or is it the honesty, the intimacy that Scares me? Is it the fear of rejection? is it the fear that the truth of who I am won't match up to the truth of who you may or may not want me to be? Is the fear that I will be forever alone and unloved so big that it envelops and usurps the enormity of my loving in the first place?

My throat tightens at the very thought of that. The thought of withholding how I feel has become almost as scary as expressing it. And expressing it terrifies me, it always has. My throat tightens as much right now as it did 23 years ago the first time I didn't express it. And 18 years ago for the second time and 2 years ago for the...well by this point I've lost count of the all the times i have chosen not to express it. From the first him, to the second, to the eighteenth, to todays. None of them have known how I truly felt, not from my mouth, not in present time. 

But today it is equally painful to think about keeping it in as it was to think about letting it out. I think this may be growth. 

And I know that this pattern has nothing to do with any of the him's, except for the role they play in bringing it up, in bringing it out, in revealing all the places I still hurt. and still this fear, it's ancient and painful and it's keeping me from sharing the fullness of who I am not only with him but with you and most importantly with me.

I love fiercely and deeply. I love everyone I have ever met. Truly. it has scared me at times how much love exists inside of me. it has felt somehow safer and easier to give it away, to shell it out, to offer endlessly at the expense of myself. Give me something, anything to grab onto and I'm yours. I have wanted so desperately to feed the enormity of my love into something solid, something with eyes and a heart and lips to kiss and arms to be held in and a body to rest naked against.

I have wanted desperately to house my love into this solid ground so that it doesn't hurt so badly when I forget that it's not in me, as me, for me, by me. I have wanted desperately to root in someone else’s ground when I forget that the enormity of this loving is actually not for me to give or get. it is in fact who I am, it's who I have always been.

And so in the past, until now, I have disappeared into it. I've done everything in my nature to be around him. I became his best friend. I laughed at his jokes, genuinely laughed at his jokes, because they were funny. I cooked him dinner. I stopped thinking about my writing except to write him letters night after night. Letters that I never sent.

I pulled up my roots and silenced my outreach. I heard the deafening scream of forgetfulness as the pain of having an open ended root waving in the wind ruffles through my whole system. I screamed it as the pain of believing there is nowhere for me to plant myself and no ground that will ever, that can ever house me, feels more real than the wind in against my sturdy bark. 

And the truth is, the truth has always been that I deeply and authentically loved all of my hims from 23 years ago to today. I bleed love remember? And it is one of my most favorite things to do. it's expansive and regenerative and amazing. 

But without a place to plant, where am I? And without a place to plant how can I even find my own solid ground to stand on? Do I even let me be me? Do I even see him for him? Or is he just possible fertile ground I am desperately trying to plant in? Do I even know how I feel at all in the midst of any of this?

And if I'm that confused, it's no wonder my throat tightens. Compassion fills me, for all of those parts that have used this pattern against myself for all these years. I am sorry I didn't understand before, I think I understand now. There is a different task at hand, a different call to action. 

The task is not to seek for ground outside of myself to plant in, but to know that I am solid and fertile ground in and of myself. In fact, I am the best most nutritious ground for this particular root. The task is to realize how amazing it is that my roots run so deep and that they feel to the extent that they do. the task is to feel everything unattached to someone else's ground, unattached to someone else's roots. and to know it is never personal.

And in the knowing of this, I get to play with expressing. Expressing every little thing that lays inside this brilliant love filled heart. I get to Express scary, silly, sad, sexual, sensual, spiritual. all of it. I get to play with the joy of being fully me, being fully alive. I get to play with the joy that I have known as all encompassing and expansive. There are exquisite heights of joy that are equivalent to my depth of loving. This is what waits for me, and everything in between. 

Roots explore, they meander, they come and go in and out of each other's lives. In and out of each other's beds and brains. Sometimes they entangle instantly and comfortably as if they were made to entangle together. And sometimes it's not that easy. But the roots remain themselves, rooted in themselves. And they love the earth they push through, it feeds them and supports them in their growth.

I lay in a cove of trees this past weekend, of roots, squeezing myself into them as they wrapped around me. It was as if they were waiting to envelope me, to hold me. I lay my head back into the most perfectly shaped and comfortable head rest that was in fact a cactus.

As I lay there, completely limp in a bare branches bed, resting my head on a cactus pillow I looked up to the sky and saw the clouds pass by. I became more and more present to the fact that not for one moment did I hurt. I felt the points of the green sharp plant against my hair and the harshness of the brown dry wood against my skin but none of it hurt. This is life I thought. I heard Pachamama, I heard the Universe, I heard God. 

yes my dear one. You are held so very held. We love you. We support you. We are here holding you so that you may know you are held, that you are safe, that you are always, always cared for in the heart of the earth which bleeds the same thing you do. It is what binds us all together as the dirt on the earth and the clouds in the sky. And it is love.  

And so the the question becomes, can I give it up to God? really? Can I turn it over to the Universe? To great Pachamama who holds me so delicately from every angle? And the answer is yes, of course. As soon as I can. And I will try. I will try over and over again until I do. Until I give it all up. and I know this is growth. 

And I know I am held. And I may hurt and I may cry and I may laugh and I may dance. and I may forget who I am. and I may forget who you are. and I may go looking for you, and I may go looking for me, in him or him or him…. But that won't matter, not really because you run through me, you breathe me and you bleed me. You bleed all of us. You are love. I am safe in you and I am safe in me. truly. Deeply.

and I will always, always eventually remember who I am as sure as my heart bleeds, as sure as my heart beats because it beats and bleeds who I am and I am love.