My Dog Days Are Over

~Happiness hit her like a train on the tracks…~

I’ve written about love, maybe even before I truly knew it. I’d like to think of love as someone I’ve seen but never the pleasure of becoming formally acquainted with. I knew what she looked like all the way down to the way she walked. I knew her well enough to write about her frequently. I guess I thought as many times as I’ve seen her that I would have enough preconceived notions to write about who I thought she was. And I did, I had much to say like we were best friends, as though we sat together with our legs stretched out on opposite sides of the couch with a class of red wine laughing through the night. I admired her, I wanted to be her. So I would write about her because I had felt some of her in my past relationships. I mean it wasn’t the real deal but that doesn’t mean there weren’t fragments of her lingering around special moments or touches. It wasn’t like she wasn’t there when meaningful words were spoken because she most definitely was, it’s just that she never stayed too long. It’s probably because she knew what I didn’t at the time; that she shouldn’t be there. I care deeply about the men I’ve dated and I have a special kind of love for them but I still hadn’t seen her as a permanent fixture in any of the relationships I’ve ever had so I was in search of her, waiting for the perfect moment that I would find him and there she would next to him; complacent, without the slightest intention of ever leaving because I had finally found the man that would make me believe.

Then something changed in me. I wrote this on my Facebook status when the greatest epiphany hit me like a bullet in love…

“I'm really really lucky and just really really happy and it occurs to me that no I'm not lucky, God is just in the process of swallowing up the last traces of doubt I held on to when I thought...when I thought it just might not be in the cards for me. But He's holding this ace, I still might not win, but He's holding this ace and I believe...”

Not only was I doubtful of this "love” but it was the kind of love I created in stories because that was the only place I could see it. What I saw, many believed was just not reality and in the end, that I should simply be satisfied in a good man and be glad. But I would like to think in an ordinary world, there are sparks of extraordinary that go beyond the law of science. There is a magic or miracle slipping through the cracks of the sky and into our hearts. They are so rare that an unbelieving heart would simply be a skeptic from the beginning but our God so giving, still spies with a keen eye of the few lucky enough to witness or feel more than this reality could ever give. So a piece of heaven He gives; a piece of true love He gives.

I had a plan for myself I thought, just in case I no longer understood Gods’. In case I had to watch the luminance of the sunsets alone. In case my fingers would have to roam the cotton sheets of my bed instead of the touch of “his” skin every morning. In case I had no hands to reach for me, no arms to hold me, no kiss to surrender in. I know I wouldn’t blame God for it, knowing He knew better than I. I trusted His plan even if I didn’t understand one bit of it but it didn’t help that I was undermining Him with my own secret plan; I really wasn’t trusting at all. I wanted to be prepared for the outcome that marriage may not happen, that the love I had always written about or dreamt about may not come. Now that I come to think about it, my plan was simple, not to undermine God but to accept the fate God had given me; to be content with the fact that I could be alone. That I could watch the sunset alone and find contentment with it and much more importantly; happiness. Essentially, I was finding the assurance to do what I knew inside I was more than capable of doing. I would travel, I would fall in love with strangers, I wouldn’t stop living just because I had to live alone.

I’m still unsure of my fate when it comes to love. I have no idea if I’ll find my storybook love or if I’ll just moved to some far off island but I do believe and I think that’s all that matters…