The Intersection of Love and Loss
My friend text me last night and said: “Woman, I’m going to kill you.”
What did I do?
“You knew that man was trouble from day one, so why are you surprised that he lies and cheats?”
The willing suspension of disbelief.
“Girl. Uh uh. You know you’re strong, yeah.”
Here is a photo of me being strong by Gus Bennett – this is my Tai Chi bow – a fist for strength covered by a soft hand to present my force to the world.
The morning after Sty slept with another woman I was walking down the bayou and a taupe-colored Challenger pulled up to the red light. The man was yelling something to me but I couldn’t hear so I got closer and closer to his window.
“Are you married?”
How old are you?
“40!?”
I could be your mother if I had started early – now go on.
My texting friend picked up the phone and told me: “You were enjoying Sty too much and you needed to be shaken out of it. That’s all.”
Hmmm, interesting parallel. I had a dream one night with Sty in Destin where my mother walked into the room and told me to “Stop it, right now!” Which I thought was odd, given that my mother was a bit of a hedonist herself. The dream haunted me a little, but I couldn’t make sense of it.
Okay, everyone (alive and dead), I have stopped it. Satisfied?
I saw the man in the Challenger again this morning and he waved and smiled as if we were old friends as I walked across the bayou with Stella. 40 isn’t that young, I thought. One door opens, another closes. When my last husband told me he no longer wanted to communicate because he had remarried, I met Sty nearly 16 hours later. When I told Sty I no longer wanted to communicate, Mr. 40 Year Old Challenger appeared in the same time frame, on the same corner where most of my undoings happen (Orleans and Jeff Davis) – there must be some powerful vibration going on right at that intersection of love and loss.
You cannot let someone in if you haven’t let someone out. Women refer to this notion as parking spaces. Women have only one parking space and if a man is pulled in or blocking entry or even doing a drive by, it stems the flow of traffic.
So you need to let love or the whisper of it (lust) go, so you can wind on down and clear the road . . .
[My texting/calling friend ended our call with this statement: “You are strong. You stopped the abuse. When a woman let’s a man use her and abuse her, it snowballs and he goes on to use and abuse. But you stopped the FLOW. Stay STRONG.] AMEN.