"True Love"

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."  - William Shakespeare

     When I was a little girl, probably about four or five years old, the thoughts of falling love with someone were always on my mind.  I wanted to be in love.  In fact, that day in kindergarten when I let Barry Nelson carry my books for me, I realized that I wanted to be in love, A LOT.   When I was nine or ten, I watched my sisters go to their proms and they looked so beautiful, princess-like and off they went with the handsomest princes I had ever seen!  Oh I wanted to be in love so badly.  As I got older, the frustrations grew.  There were no proms for me.  There were no dates really.  I realized that my fantasy of falling in love had been incredibly misguiding.  I gave up the idea of love.  I had the love of my family and my friends.  That would have to enough.  Of course as the years went by, friends would try to set me up.  All disasters.  On-line dating, disastrous.  Horrid.  For what I paid, I could have travelled to Paris and should have.  One other thing...I was not aware that I had to love myself first.  I did not love "me." I was not aware that I was hurting.

     I was 42, when I heard these words, "Do you need to be rescued."  I was at a singles dance and I had just successfully blown off a definite "NO."  For over 40 years, I was living my single life, in my single way and I was comfortable.  Very comfortable. I did not need rescuing.  But, those words came to me from someone I had not expected.  Those were the first words from my future husband.  John King.  I thought he was kidding and I said as much.  But contrary to the Shakespeare quote, I looked in his eyes and saw my future.  His eyes told me everything.  We were joined at the hip from that day.  We married five years later.  Still, I had not received the most important message for a couple in love.  You have to love yourself first before you can love anyone else.  

     Those first years of marriage were terribly difficult for me.  I was still married to my old habits and turning a blind eye to the real marriage in front of me.  King begged and pleaded for me to stop smoking, to take better care of myself.  These were the first years of my teaching career as well and I was just over-whelmed with where my responsibilities began and ended, still ignoring what my body was telling me.  King did try to rescue me and I couldn't see it.  This, THIS is love.  This is what love is...Love is when someone sees you better than you see yourself and they wait for you to figure it out.  Mind you, we learned to be extremely patient with each other because anger and resentment is exhausting.  It wasn't working for us.  Love made us.  Love had to keep us together.  We are both stubborn in that way.

     I did figure it out but it took a very long time.  On my own, I changed everything.  I stopped smoking. A painful process.  I now eat totally differently than I did.  I mean King and I could devour an entire pizza and not even think twice about it.  Thirty-five pounds came off of this body.  Everything changed.  I was rescued.  I rescued myself because I figured out, that I loved every ounce of the "me" that is flawed.  The "me" that is overly sensitive and can and will give a hundred per cent and never ask for a single thing in return.  Interestingly enough,  more than half of my life has come and gone, and I can now see that loving oneself is probably the most difficut thing we need to do for ourselves.  

     King is quietly proud.  He knows too well that at any given time, we can fall backwards.  I have disappointed him more than once in this journey but the comfort comes from the fact that I no longer need to hurt myself.  The emotions surface, and they then they leave. I let them leave but not before acknowledging they exist.  We had both set up expectations of each other that brought no happiness just disappointment. Nothing in our lives is guaranteed.  We need to remain kind and we need to remain mindful.

      That idea of true love has definitely changed since I was little.  Love came to me but not without finding out that the love of self makes us stronger, better people, capable of loving another with the energy and the dedication they deserve.