New skin

I love three year olds because they're in constant revelation. Revelation with the world and what the heck is going on. I think I spend so much time with little people because they refresh me to what was once divinely new but has become mundane with time. Like: this fish will die if it stays in my hand too long or sandwiches have crusts until someone cuts them off and the like. Most adults are like, yeah yeah, the fish needs water and crust just happens when you bake bread. Even if we don't like it. Old news. We get used to things and comfortable in their consistency. But revelations are remarkable, grand or tiny. They bring a certain openness to life.

One worth revisiting: New skin. Dig in the cache of childhood. Do you remember the moment of discovery? Can you recall the first time a quiet stitching and transformation arose miraculous after a rupture, itch, scrape, slice, or bite? When your body made impact with the world and it left a mark? Then, the following day, or week, new skin emerges: bright and fresh and a little gentler than the rest of you. Maybe accompanied with strokes of watercolor like purple an odd yellow and deep blue. And this just happens. Pretty miraculous, and pretty easy to write off after a few decades.

A hot day in late July I was privy to be reminded. Beneath the swaying of trees, a three year old shared her obsession, spitting straight passion and facts. She tested me, first, if I knew of this phenomena. When I admitted, her body went to dancing about and eyes widening and voice rising. The evidence was everywhere. Knees and elbows and the soft underside of a little arm. New skin, new skin, new skin. Incredulous, she moved like a car wash dinosaur in 40 MPH wind. She settled down, after some time, content I understood. But, she reminded me again, hours later between trampoline tumbles, that the new skin was indeed still there. Her revelation captured, the reality suspended in wonder.

It hit me again today. This new skin thing. Rather unexpectedly, if I'm being honest. This summer I fell completely in love with a bright soul. It certainly wasn't something I planned on. It just happened because we had a funeral for a ladybug and it spiraled from there. And life likes to surprise you, anyway. This love arrived fast and pure as all hell. And today, after a rather remarkable chapter, we broke up. It was a perfect Sunday morning, though. Dream re-call, laughing and crying, breakfast, almost crashing on the skateboard being pulled by bike, calling him a dutch shit in an Irish accent, usual stuff. Then suddenly we were walking outside. And it was one last kiss, and maybe one more. No matter how I felt about it, this moment arrived and nothing could change that. I stepped back, slightly, and with a smile his truck peeled out of the parking lane to drive ten hours across the country. In a matter of moments a chapter closed and everything changed. In the next one I found myself sobbing on the stairwell.

Historically, I'm a dweller. I get lost in the sauce. Good or bad, nurturing or chaotic. It's innate for me to be taken by something completely, like a newspaper flying through a multi-state hurricane with no end in sight. I just give myself fully like: fuck it, I'm going to ride this thing to it's end. It's an aspect I've realized is absurd and authentic, but needs refinement all the same. Nothing has wrecked me like heartbreak. To the point it has frightened me. Yet, this kind soul and I came into this relationship aware of patterns and ready to shift. And, we came into it knowing the day it would end. What a whirlwind.

The beautiful thing is, we are marked by every experience. Brief or lapsing. Each one gives our life a bit more shape and color. Moments birth new patterns and we are beings who build on billions of them. It's easy to repeat history and even harder to create (and believe) in new ones. Any powerful experience (and person) marks us in some way. A little or a lot. And love has gotta be top tier shaper of the soul. However it goes, however things end, each moment we are alive and listening life is mysterious and ripe with possibility.

I cannot begin to express all that was either unknown or dormant until Ryan came in my life. Truly. It's been a damn healing love. I have never experienced a break up so kind and thoughtful and a result of life being life. Because circumstances change and comfort makes a break for the window. Life surprised us with the gift of meeting and ache of change. This revelation feels like my bridge out of despair.

So there's this hurricane raging in my heart, naturally. It's not going to quiet down anytime soon, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm going to surrender to the throws of this loss because nothing shapes us like love. I'm going to cry and have fat, puffy eyelids. I'm going to dance to the ACDC record he left like a mad woman and eat chocolate and visit the river that brought us together. And maybe in a few weeks, or whenever it shows form, I'm going to invite my grief and all the other parts to watch a quiet mystery unfold. A wonder so miraculous only a three year old could have foretold. Something new will come to the surface? Who will it be? What could be born in the bitch of this sting and the unexpected wonder of being in love? New skin, new skin, new skin that's what.

And like they say, you just don't know until you know, and suddenly, you're there already. Happy new moon in Leo