It Hurts Like a Mother

We've all felt the sting of love that ends. Felt the pain that is associated with the sometimes disillusionment delivered by Love's delicate hands. Felt the pain of love lost abruptly and love lost without warning. We get disappointed, deceived and deflated from the realization that what we thought was ... really wasn't. The realization that what we once had ... is now gone.

I'm not talking about the love that springs from a crush. I'm not talking about surface love. I'm not talking about infatuation and neither the love for Love's sake kind of love. I'm talking about the steady, know it deep in your bones kind of love. Mature love. Grown up love. Real love. The kind that settles in and quietly takes root, intertwining thought and feeling on a deep and abiding level. Intertwining friend and lover into one person, one being and one soul. Love that wraps around us in entirety but doesn't choke or limit. Love that envelopes with steadiness and comfort. Love that is rooted in friendship, fed with mutual respect and grows into the most incredible experience imaginable.

Love that, when it ends, hurts like a mother..

One day we wake up. Everything seems as it should be. All is right with the world and with us. Everything proceeds as planned and suddenly ... POOF.... something happens and it's gone and we don't know what happened. Nor do we know how to begin to understand because there's no one to ask, no one to provide us with an answer. The proverbial rug gets yanked out from underneath our firmly rooted feet. We feel blind sided. We feel foolish. We feel used. We feel cheated. And we are. And we have been.

Foolish, blind-sided, used or cheated whatever the feeling that doesn't mean we have to be defeated. There is a line from the novel, Jazz by Toni Morrison. It's one that I've always loved and thought of as representative of how I feel about falling in love. The line is: "'Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.'

Falling in love doesn't have to mean literally falling. It doesn't have to mean we lost our footing, lost our balance or lost our control. I like to think that I rose in love. Rose up and rose in it. Grew up and grew in it. And to whatever end, however the end, I can rise and stand firmly rooted and knowing that it hurts like a mother but I didn't fall.

Nor will I

Indeed.