Crumble in my arms...

There's a specific moment in which you can fully empathize with what Neruda and Wordsworth so eloquently described...amor, love. And it's in that exact instant that everything becomes more clear, more defined, more real. Traversing through life’s pathways and detours one can fall in and out of love quite frequently, easily even. At times, it is a joyful and fascinating journey complete with roads paved with kindness and sweet emotion. Sadly it is more common that these roads devolve into a somewhat treacherous and painful path lined with forks in the road and even sinkholes. But all in all, life’s loves are all intertwined and designed to tear down and rebuild the loose fitting walls fortressing our naive hearts and all in front of our disillusioned souls.

Lessons learned, desires realized and then here we are...left with fragments of our once innocent and ever-trusting souls, like pieces of a well worn out puzzle aged over time and with jagged edges that don’t seem to ever fit each other quite right anymore.

And then it happens, what once seemed surreal, imaginary or even illusory becomes your reality carved out of the rocky path you stumbled through up until this moment. This is the moment you may come to understand as the reason behind it all. Serendipitous at best, it’s the final culmination of all those scars left behind, ill-fated choices and sad goodbyes.

Paths cross where they may even collide into one another and without notice. It comes as a shock to your system, altering every protocol you’re accustomed to, shaking you to your very foundation so much so as to make you re-evaluate every tenet you thought to be word of time and circumstance. It may hit you like a bolt of lightning, a ton of bricks or better yet, a sunshine that blinds you in its radiance. And that's how I'll take mine, a shine so bright that I'm blinded and have to squint to really see it. It's just as peaceful as it is illuminating and shaking. Let it move your soul to places undiscovered in years past. Let it introduce you to sensations unknown previously. Because it is these newfound territories in which you will find what your soul ached for all this time. Fascinating how something so new can seem so natural, as if you've known it all along and yet it is so different than anything you've ever felt in your soul before.

Maybe it's due to the years on your own road that somehow you know your own wheels and speed, but when you find a synchronicity with another and on a new path that takes two, its blissful, natural, comfortable, real. It's a recompense for all the years you've denied yourself this happiness, whether due to self-remorse, or worse yet, self doubt. And in this exact instant for some reason the feeling of safety, of love, of belonging, yes, it may seem distant or different or at the very least...undeserved. It is nothing but perfect.

You've survived decades through your own recognizance and self-will. Doubtful that anyone could ever complement what was already a fantastic spread. Having had to spend years being your own Joan of Arc may seem daunting to most but it was normal and moreso completely opposite from ever needing to allow anyone else in to your world. When you live and love as a single mom your world becomes telescopic, focused on your child and your job as a mother. That is your only goal. Your work has always been complete in its own way.

And then there's this shock that shakes you to your core. You were always perfectly content with the life that your puzzle had designed for you. Each piece skillfully placed. Edges worn but you made them fit by force or sheer will. You jammed each puzzle piece in because you wanted them to fit, only to find out, the puzzle was better off without the ill-fitting piece, almost as if it belonged to another puzzle altogether, and not yours.

And then one day all of a sudden what seemed so foreign to you becomes your normal. Our lives are nothing but an amalgamation of various instances of self-deemed importance and circumstance and yet we rely on chance to bring us our fortune. We want to find our future in a hurry and it's really only our past that comes with a fury. Your past may be a a stain on your soul. We've all done wrong, we've all caused harm and we all feel guilt to the point of not wanting to accept anything positive out of regret. And this may be the most poignant repercussion of that self-deprecating existence. And then you find you discover the piece that completes your puzzle. And all of a sudden your puzzle is complete, the piece you thought you’d never miss that got lost in the shag carpet, the one that completes your forever, finds you.