I am. You are. And we're OK.

...My greatest personal growth has often come about during or after significant loss. Shedding my leaves is less painful when viewed through a wider lens, allowing me to embrace humility and prepare for the next productive season. Barbara Reid -- from her artist's statement

I have been angry for some time now. Not the throw a vase and smash a fist through a wall kind of anger but rather, the quiet slow burning that erodes the edges of my peace of mind, searing the ground of my tranquility.

I haven't really acknowledged this anger. Chosen instead to let it slow burn like a prairie grass fire not yet extinguished rooting around underground.

It is my way.

To not give my anger breath. To harbour it instead amongst my thoughts of being filled with peace, never giving voice to what I deem to be my 'lesser emotions'.

Even anger has a purpose and fire always seeks oxygen, even when it's burning underground.

I know I'm carrying this anger, husbanding its flame like a squirrel burying its nuts. I tell myself I don't mean to -- but I do -- mean to hold onto my anger. Sometimes, unexpressed anger is the only thing that fuels my thinking into clarity.

And sometimes, holding onto anger is me playing my best self-defeating game to ensure I don't have to come clean out of my victim's place into the light of 100% accountability for me, myself and I.

What I fear I create.

And when I fear being 100% accountable, paving over its expression with unexpressed anger, I create detours around peace of mind, always skirting the issue of where I'm at in any given moment in my quest to experience the rapture of now.

So, this is my 'fess-up' moment.

I'm kinda angry that my relationship with C.C. has hit such rocky ground. The fire's gone underground and I'm standing on the bedrock to my resistance of letting go. I'm standing on the cusp of what I perceived things to be resisting reality's embrace in all its complexity and simplicity and truth.

See, it was supposed to be easy.

I love you. You love me. Together we will always be.

Oh, and in that together, in case I forgot to mention, you will do it my way because don't you know it? I know the way. And my way is the right way unless you want to take the high way and high tail it out of here in your own direction. But don't expect me to follow. I don't follow. I lead.

harumph.

Leadership is lonely at the top when everyone else is busy falling down, because they've missed my way in their quest to find their own way to where they want/desire/need/can be.

Yup. That's me and my anger. It's not about him or anyone else. It's about me and my perceptions of right and wrong. High roads and low roads. Alleyways and byways. It's about getting stuck in my own stuff, being absolutely convinced -- I'm right. Which means, and do I really have to say it?, you're wrong.

Time to dance it off. To quit dancing around my stuff by poking at his stuff. Time to live. Fearlessly. Completely. Passionately consumed by the fires burning within, compelling me to be absolutely 100% okay with where I'm at and who I am in this moment.

C.C. has his path. It is just that -- his path. Neither right nor wrong. Just different than mine.

I have mine. And I tell myself all the reasons why mine is best -- because, as I said -- I know the way.

Uh huh.

gotta admire C.C. He has resisted my way as passionately as I resist giving into letting go of knowing the way.

And that's the beauty of this moment. I am lighter for having faced my fear of letting go of my knowing to tumble laughingly into the power of not-knowing.

I can only be me. And sometimes, being me gets caught up in my righteousness, my insistence that if you won't let me be me, then who can I be to make it 'all right'?

Ain't no 'all right' in love.

Love isn't about right and wrong.

Love is about letting go of right and wrong and moving with grace and ease into that place where who we are is perfectly okay just the way we are.

Harumph.

Time to let my lesser emotions rise to the top. Time to give them air so that I can breathe freely in this place where I am holding onto nothing but the truth. I am OK. Exactly the way I am.

Love is not war. Nor is it a battlefield upon which my ego dukes it out with yours until one of us gives in and let's go of our self expression to become another's self looking for expression in our self.

Hmmmm.... now that's contorted!

Love is...

an action. A verb. A noun. Intransitive. Intransient. Love is everything we make it to be. Believe it to be. Want it to be.

And... it doesn't have to be anything other than what it is...

A word we use to describe a feeling that sometimes confuses, frightens, inspires, enlightens, confounds, bewilders, perplexes, strengthens....

Time to shed the definitions of love and move from that place where love is defined by what I want it to be. Time to move into that place where love is what it can be when I let go of anger, sorrow, regret, the past, and anything else that would keep me believing I am not who I am meant to be in someone else's eyes.

And, time to take my eyes off of seeing someone else as not being who they are meant to be, or where they're meant to be right now, right here.

Time to take my sights off anger and fear and hope and promise to move with grace and ease into humility where I surrender and fall....

In Love.

I am.
You are.
And we are all OK,
just the way we are.
Because where we are
is where we're at
and what could be
better than that?

Special thanks to Maureen at Writing without Paper for the essay this morning on Barbara Reid. You inspire me!