“You’re fucking this up!”

Her words hit him like a knife in the chest.  He blinked slowly, deliberately trying to absorb what she was saying.  He didn’t want to defend his position, he just wanted her to understand it.  He wanted her to hear him, and to for once make a decision based on how he felt and what mattered to him.  That’s all his statements had been about.

He loved her dearly, and she him.  Each had their own crosses to bear, and while he so wanted to shoulder hers as they walked across the desert she demanded he leave her be.  It was her desert; not his, not theirs, but hers and he was not welcome here.

An Unusual Love

Their’s had been a love unusual from the start. They had fallen in love before they met physically, sharing intimate details about themselves long before they had ever touched.  They had walked through gardens together before they had held each other’s hand.  They had forged a romance that was only solidified by their meeting.

This meeting was short but intense.  Each had seemed to have found their Twin Flame in the other.  They saw it in their first glance, found it in their first embrace and knew it in their first kiss.  When he first entered her they found Paradise; finding that which binds the Universe and sets galaxies ablaze.  They seemed to be on their way to perfection until the mind took over and the war began.

His battlefield was often set in his own mind.  He knew how he felt, but he had this belief of what he wanted.  He wanted a relationship that touted love beyond all measure, where he could be the man of a woman who so loved him as to set the world to destruction to defend him.  He would, in turn, die for this woman in the blink of an eye if need be.  They would support, defend, and love each other beyond measure and without question.

She had a different idea.  She wanted a relationship absent of existence outside of it.  She didn’t want him involved in the minutia of her life and didn’t want him mix with her life outside of the time they shared together.   She would do battle with the world around her without him, and when she turned to him he would be an island untainted by the wars waged and battles fought.  Each had their own crosses to bear, and while he so wanted to carry hers whenever possible she wanted nothing to do with the sharing of either hers with him or his with hers.

He wanted to share his life with her, and she wanted no part of it.  She didn’t want to know his circle of friends or the roles he played within them.  She had no desire to know or be with those he loved.  She didn’t see a value in getting to know his world or to journey there with him.  He, however, wanted to share his world and dive into hers.  He wanted to share her joy with those she loved, be the one she reached out to in the crowded moments of her life.  He wanted to know those who made her enjoy her life away from him.  He simply wanted their lives to meld into one another’s like the day melds into the night.  Each are separate while each are the same.

A Mindful Battle

There is no making sense to pretense of the mind.  He could hear her fear and anxiety when they discussed the topic.  He just wanted to cuddle her and pretend the world around them did not exist even as the winds of change blew around him.  God he loved this women, and yes he would stretch his comfort zone to new limits in love with her.  He would cope with not talking to her for days and not knowing a thing about her life outside of what she felt necessary to share.  He would deal with the unsteady moments of anxiety and doubt because he trusted her beyond all reason.  He would stand like a rock beside her even when his mind spoke words he never wanted to hear.  He could close his eyes and see her even in her absence and know that at some place at some time she was living her life in the way she needed to.

There seemed to be no option.  He had checked his ego at the door many times in their past.  He didn’t mind, he didn’t want to have much use for his ego anyway.  He could not fathom what he would need it for.  There was no need for protection here, no need for selfishness beyond that which would make her smile.  He fought back the voices of ego in a mindful battle waged each and every time he wanted to be a part of her life “beyond the bubble” (what he called the boundaries of their relationship).  They had a glorious bubble indeed, but he so wanted to know what it was like outside of it.

Yes, the mindful battle he waged was worth it.  Yet, there were times when he would sound the retreat and he would need to know.  He wanted to know why he couldn’t step outside the bubble.  What was wrong with the minutia of her life?  What was wrong with him being a part of it?  Couldn’t he be her island and still walk the world by her side?

He heard her say “no, I can’t live that way.”  He heard her say forcibly that what is “normal” is not always what is right. “If you are happy and I am happy why ruin it?  You’re only thinking and analyzing without feeling a thing,” she would protest in the heat of battle.

He knew she was right, but he knew he was right too.  He didn’t want to live in a bubble devoid of outside contact with her world.  He loved the bubble but he wanted it to be so much more.  He wanted to be her man here, there and everywhere, not just in the solitude they had created for the “them” he so loved.

“Should I Forget It?”

He could hear himself asking the question.  He asked it in the context of forgetting his own needs in favor of meeting hers, but soon found himself wondering if he should forget the bubble instead.  It pained him greatly to even consider such an option.  He simply loved this woman, but knew that in the very human way he lived he needed to be open in the world whether his, hers or theirs.  He needed to walk with her wherever possible regardless of the terrain and continent they were on.

Still, how could he forget the way he felt in her arms?  How could he move beyond the ecstasy of the moments they had shared?  How could he forget the promise he made to himself; the one where his heart openly swore to be her Rock, her Mountain, her steady Lion?  He couldn’t forget, and he knew that he could not cave to her fear.  He could not walk away from her in her moment of need.  Yes, it seemed to him that she needed him if for nothing else than to prove that there was a man in this world who could love her without control and who could stand by her even when she was the force driving him away.

So it seemed.  Love’s own vow demanded he return to her when she was ready.  It felt right to be by her side even if it were only in a bubble.  It felt perfectly necessary to move onward even if that direction took him only a few inches from where he stood many moons ago.  He was her King, she his Queen, and such a bond created by the gods could not be usurped by the bastard thief called his mind.  He would stand by her; bloodied and wilted by the battle but standing tall all the same.  Her hand in his he would face the demons, accept the reckless abandon of his Soul’s mission, and move on toward the place where they would meet in utter and complete ecstasy.

They had met where the Sun met the Earth at the dawning of the New Day.  They had walked from there to here, and they could not be defeated by the momentary illusions of the ego.  They were home.  They were the island.  They were one, and that was his choice and his vow.  He would follow Love’s promise toward wherever that oath would take him and as he looked at his now empty hand he would wait patiently for hers to once again fill it.  That was what the stars and the moons and the tides demanded, and that was the way it would be.