Looking for Love

I think every young girl has this innate desire to be “the one.” We all start out life thinking that someone is going to come along and love us more than we love ourselves. Someone who will think “we hung the moon.” They will cherish us, revere us, put us on a pedestal. Take care of us, love us and never, ever leave us.
I guess these dreams come along just about when we see that our parents aren’t as great as we had once thought. When our needs become more than just hugs and food, and we see that our parents can’t fix everything. They get angry with us or disappoint us with their actions. Their humanness is revealed. I think about then, somewhere deep inside, we start to think, “there’s got to be someone out there who will love me totally and just love ME alone.”
So along comes romantic love. We take our dreams and wrap them up in his eyes, and then whether it be a few months or seven years, it happens when we realize that this man has not fulfilled that longing inside. So we have babies, because, as anyone knows, there is no purer love than that of a baby or a dog. They have no hate or resentment, we can meet their needs, and in return, they will smile and cuddle up to us. But somehow it is just too simple. It is not enough. We still feel that longing. And then the babies need more and more and cry and leave us feeling inadequate.
So we come to the conclusion that we have just been turning to the wrong guy. We either break up with the first guy or just sneak around his back, adding a whole new element of “ours.” Affairs are like that. They are fantasies that no one else knows about, so no one can taint them with their truth or their reality checks. We live in this made up world, reeling in our fantasy of love, till we or someone else bring the truth to the table – and then we see that it was not real either. It was not that love that we had shaped in our minds and had been seeking out. It was all just a projection.
For many people, not just women, but that’s what I am, so I can only tell it from the female perspective, but for many people, this trend, this pursuit of love, will continue on for their entire lives. You hear of people being married several times, others who have several affairs, and some who have a consumption problem. All of them, though, have one thing in common; they think that the craving inside is going to be satiated by some source other than they themselves can provide.
Well, anyone reading this can predict what I am going to say next. We have to find that feeling inside. We have to give to ourselves what we are wishing to feel from someone else. Our inherent love, the love that some might call God’s love, others will call it soul or Universe or nature or whatever, is the only love that will ever fulfill and never disappoint. Yet, you and I will ask, how do I find that? How do I get there?
Personally, and I have found this to be true for so many others, as well, seeking out this love is a scary thing. It means entering into a world of accepting. Many of us have experienced this love and turned away, time and again, because we have a difficult time accepting. How many times have you been offered a gift and you say, “Oh, no, I couldn’t, but thank you so much anyway”? Yet, I have found that it is very easy to give. I have often thought I could give away anything in my life – except my house and my loved ones. Yet, if someone came up and said, “No strings attached! You can have this million dollars!” – I would probably hesitate. I would think it was stolen or something. There would have to be some ulterior motive. No one just gives things of value away without conditions. We are programmed to be suspicious of love – and rightly so – but there is the love inside that is there for the taking and all of our programming keeps us holding it at a safe, comfortable distance.
I have been down this road and have finally reached a place where I realize that the best way for me to feel that love inside is to be creative. When I write or when I quilt, I am transported to that place of quiet, peaceful, exciting, anticipatory fulfillment. Some call it “the zone.” When I am there, it does not matter if the world is falling down around me, I know I am where I need to be. Isn’t that a lot like new love? I mean, who hasn’t been so wildly smitten and in (new) love that they would have walked through a million lightning bolts with barely a flinch to get to the person they had projected that onto?
It’s an amazing thing to realize that what I have been looking for has been right within me that whole time. The things I had been avoiding were the things that would bring me what I had been looking for.
I guess some of us have to take the hard route. We don’t believe what we already know, because we already know it, and if we already know it, well, it can’t be true, right? It was too easy. So we find ways to make it richer, more dramatic, so therefore, much more valuable.
Well, looking back, I wish I would have spared myself and those around me all the drama and the scars that I inflicted upon myself and others in my searching. Even so, I am sure that I picked up a lot of wisdom to share along the way, and that’s worth a lot. Too bad I didn’t realize my pockets were already full!! I could have been spreading love instead of pain!
Life still has its ups and downs, and there are times I still forget what is right within my reach if I just go there. Even so, now that I have weeded every other possibility out, I can get down to the real stuff. I am sitting right in the middle of a garden full of love. And whether I am alone or amongst others, I know this love and where to find it. As we came from creation, we are here to create!