I think I really am in love. How odd! I am generally very careful about those words "I love you". I have a dear friend and lover that I didn't say them to for years and years. And I am very careful not to say them just because I feel deeply moved by good sex. Yet I have known this man for only a few days and I have already found myself saying it. How did that happen? Somehow he seems to slip through my guards to touch me in a way that others have not. The intensity of emotion and desire he engenders within me is something I haven't felt in a long time. Memory is odd too so I don't want to say that I have never felt this way before. But if I have it doesn't stand out right now. And if I have the relationship didn't last. I love my spouse, partner, and friend of 30 years deeply - we were deeply entwined and involved early on but I don't think that any other relationship I have had was so involved. Perhaps this one won't turn out to be either, I don't know.
There is something incredibly compelling to me in this man. He combines so many traits that I am attracted to and have never found in one person before. And of course, I don't know him well enough to know his faults or those things that will probably annoy me to balance out the depth of my attraction to him. I love how verbal he is - we talk quite a bit. He shares stories of his life that give me a sense of how he came to be who he is. And he is highly complimentary to me, not in the flowery sense although he is well able to do that, but in a way that leaves me feeling he truly believes the words he says, truly sees me in that light. I think it is rare to have someone see the best in you and reflect it back so powerfully. It certainly affects me. But the wary and cautious side of me keeps trying to tell me that infatuation is a powerful emotion, easily sneaks up on one, and has a tendency to knock out our ability to see beyond our desires and so that part keeps warning me to reality test, to wait and see, to be careful not to let him in too deeply so quickly when the major part of me is ready to take the risk and dive in whole-heartedly. Perhaps it is a good thing that the relationship is long distance because I don't hear that cautious side very well when I am with him.
I have a strong drive to surrender to and in relationship, to merge, to find the deeply magickal connection and bonding, to reach a level of intimacy that is not really sustainable in our mundane world but is nurturing and sustainable on other planes. At the same time I like to have time to myself, time for other relationships (perhaps that is the poly in me:), time for my projects, time for meditation and ritual, and ideas, and writing. I dream of relationship that is so secure and supportive on the emotional and energetic planes that it underlies everything else so that one always knows it is there but does not have to be constantly immersed in it. Then my personal pursuits are enriched but not hampered.
Perhaps in some ways I am overly idealistic (Moon and Neptune in Libra inclines to that) yet I believe it is still possible to have the ideal as long as one is able to balance it with the realistic. And realistically there are communication problems, areas of difficulty to work out, clashing ways of doing things, buttons that get pushed, old tapes that get triggered, etc. But when people in a relationship are committed to working things out, care enough to make the effort, truly respect each other (and I know that is a biggie), and have a level of care and love for each other then surely it is possible.
I still feel somewhat split in my life right now. Returning from Starwood or any long festival, it is hard to be back in a nearly mundane space. I feel split between the two ways of being. And also for me, we live rurally. So there is no one here but Tom. At Starwood I was surrounded by people that I was interacting with on various levels almost all the time, so here I feel suddenly cut off from those energies of connection and contact. I fell in love there as well and am now home and not with the person I feel this way about. That makes me feel split in a different way. I will integrate this but it may take a few weeks or longer as I will be at another festival in a couple of weeks.
Some money that I had already spent is coming back to me in the next couple of weeks. Since we already have moved on financially without it Tom is ok with it going into a travel fund for visiting my new love, if that should work out. So by next month I might have the money for a plane ticket, though of course, it is highly dependent on matching schedules and his desire for a visit from me at any particular time. I would like to spend some focused time with him to get a chance to know him better and frankly I would like to sleep with him in a real bed and not a leaky air mattress:)
Wow! I am really disoriented. I can't remember where the moon is and will have to go look it up. It is waxing now. I need to work on the wand of endings for the ancestral altar but I want to do that when the moon is waning. Hmmm, maybe I should do the research for my clergy challenge ritual instead then. This coming weekend is our nest's Lammas ritual and I should take a look at our old rituals and see what I want to do this time as well. Friday is a Pagan Pride organizational meeting and I should put together an agenda for it. I would rather continue to think about love…
Copyright © 2001 Kyril Oakwind