This is not a philosophical essay on embodied love. Nor does it attempt to define love or speak about it from various angles exploring its breadth and depth. It is a personal reflection of a profound impact of (romantic) love felt and love lost. It is about sadness, acceptance, grace and hope.
I had a great love. I had many great loves throughout my life, but this one was the kind of love that allowed me to experience a whole new level of being. It up-leveled my understanding of unconditional regard, selflessness, openness, vulnerability, and the profound interconnectedness of pain, loss, grief and love. My heart had burst open at some point of active connection with this human being, and from there, there was no going back.
I remember most vividly the times we cried. Cried from a deep desire to continue giving ourselves so profoundly to each other; to continue experiencing the unstoppable outpouring of love that we both felt toward one another, fully aware that soon, we would be unable to do so in person. There was going to be, quite literally, an ocean and some between us, with indefinite time between the physical expression of the beautiful pain that we felt in light of the necessary separation, and the overflowing gratitude and joy of being back together. If that time ever came.
The inner knowing that this connection was going to be my guiding light throughout my life came from the depths of my soul. If it wasn’t him, it was going to be someone else with whom I was going to be able to connect on such a deep level, and experience our humanness fully. Intricately interconnected. Deeply vulnerable. Endlessly caring. Unconditionally loved.
There are many beautiful people I have come across on my path through life; people who have touched me in a profound way and moved me in a direction that has made me – and continues to make me – the person I am today. I am deeply grateful for each one of them. I could write poems and dedicate pages upon pages of words celebrating the magical moments of time spent together as well as lessons learned through the experiences. And while never quite reaching the breadth or depth of the intensity of connectedness as I had felt with my great love, each experience reflected at least some aspect of it. In retrospect, I can certainly identify a path or two which necessitated turning around and finding another, yet even those travels have brought a certain kind of – in some instances quite palpable – magic which I cannot imagine my life without. I treasure every redirection because each has brought increasing levels of insight and compassion. There is a certain kind of wisdom that I have been able to gain from various life experiences of which I have been an active and willing co-creator. It has enabled me to offer support to people whose lives have brought me to them. At each level of awareness, I have come across people vibrating on the same frequency as well as those people whose vibrations I could help lift. I love my life.
But there remains a deep longing for an in-person, emotionally intimate connection just like the one I had experienced with that specific human being as a young person. This is not to diminish the existence, or significance, of energetic connections – it’s just that as a soul living in this body I long to experience all that I know can be experienced within the context of a physically manifested relationship. It is as though witnessing that potential as a young adult had been giving me fuel, and inspiration, and hope, and determination to keep on being the best version of myself I could be, because somehow, only then could I possibly be given another chance to experience it in this life – because who gets multiple chances at something so profoundly wonderful? (Welcome to my subconscious – now made conscious – thought process).
I didn’t set out to write about this with any end goal in mind other than to let the words pour out. It’s messy and there might be no clearly identified take-aways for anyone who happens to read this. But looking at a photo he had sent me mere hours ago in as close to real time as one could get, brought up rivers of tears that needed to be released. Granted, I am aware of how easily emotionally moved I have been these past several days, so I am not entirely surprised at my unexpected reaction. Yet, there is something deeper here. It is that pain, that loss, that grief over never coming back and surrendering to whatever life would have brought with my great love that has been brought to surface. Just like that. Over a text. A photo. A face of a man I admire and respect, one that I have seen in pictures many times over the years, and for whom I wish all the best in a life that does not include me. A person with whom I relate differently in my conscious mind than I do subconsciously.
So I wanted to feel it. The full weight of sadness. The emotional pain of love lost that resurfaces from time to time, one that I wouldn’t want to let go of even if I could. I wanted to feel the heaviness of the wave that envelops me whole and stays with me until I face it. Only when I surrender to it, do I start to feel increasingly lighter and emerge from the experience ever more grateful. For there would be no sadness had there been no love. We live in a society that shuns pain and sadness, as though it is something to be avoided at all cost. We live in fear of experiencing sadness. Yet we forget that learning how to embrace it and let ourselves feel it fully, while being aware that it is intricately connected to love in its purest form, is essential to healing. We have to learn how to dance with sadness while recognizing that we are simultaneously being held by love. We have to trust that in all the bending and swaying, love will never break us.
Let’s dance.
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