TRUE LOVE..AS I SEE IT!

I think we all go through life wondering what this THING IS called TRUE LOVE. In all of my years, since a child, there has been many forms of a true love, from my mother, to my grandmother, to my sister, to friends, and to close people in my life that have given to me without an expectation. So is that it? True love is giving without expectation? What does it all really mean?
I am proud to say that this month I will be 45. WOW!! Look at that "number", as it IS only a number.
I can say that there has been some pretty great "true loves" in my life. I do have to say though, that as I get older, that definition changes, and as I mature, I see that it is NOT about what we GET from someone, but accepting the whole of someone, and RECEIVING that whole, however that shows up, and practicing TRUE LOVE in being able to step away from the self, and to allow humanness, and altercation, and differences, and to be able to be vulnerable enough to take some punches when you don't feel like taking punches.
To be able to listen without interjection, and to be humble enough to let your stuff out, as if it is going to be hung out on a clothes line, not being sure if it will even be hung out to dry. You just know you are putting yourself out there, wet, hanging, and feeling a bit cold and hard.
You wonder if you will dry OK.

True love doesn't always show up as the "coming home with roses on the table" sort of thing, although, that is always lovely to me. Flowers are a sentiment, and dear to me. Maybe it is the old fashioned girl in me who likes to be courted and sent flowers just because. I'm that way, but then again, I am a mushy kinda girl! Who DOESN'T LOVE flowers?

I am learning that just because I am a softy, it doesn't mean that life or situations will always be soft and the way I like them. It isn't that I didn't know that, but when it comes to love, you kinda hope and wish that things will be this way and that way, and hell.............I am in love so it should show up like THIS. It just isn't that way, and it is not a bad thing. I think we all have our ideas of how that should show up, and the whole picture is set, because who doesn't want their perfect fantasy of love to come true?
But when love shows up at your door, and it doesn't show up when you want, and how you want, you start looking at the age old version of how" romantic love should look", and if it is not happening, you wonder, if you are stuck in a time warp and just have grandiose ideas, or that you are just not caught up with the times that encompass all of the daily stresses, the economy, the reality of time and space, and the humanness of where we are all at in our evolution, take that all into consideration, and find the TRUE LOVE within all those REAL LIFE situations and begin a new way of looking at how to love, without a fixed idea of how things should go or not go.
Love is so beautiful to me. Love, TRUE LOVE, does not equal the three times a week MUST that we should have the big O. I mean, seriously, let's get a grip!!! Half the time I hear people say, "Oh yeah, we have it at least 5 times a week", I'm thinkin' ... Oh, go right ahead.....have fun! Hope you had a conversation or two that week.
Oh god, I'm sorry. I am so crazy when it comes to all of this. Kind of like the, "Honey, why don't you wear lace anymore for me", statement. "Because, honey, the honeymoon DOES IN FACT END, and the fact of the matter is, I LOVE WEARING BOXER SHORTS OK?"
I want fun and spontaneity, love and compassion, to be listened to and to listen, to understand and to be understood as much as possible. I know that being understood is almost impossible as we are all eclectic human beings with a mysticism about us and we cannot all be understood, ever. I KNOW THIS. The human mind and soul can never be truly understood. And that is OK. It is that beautiful thing where you just sit back, as if at an art opening, and watch someone, without having to understand their ways, and revel in their eccentricity and not have to know all of the whys and how's but appreciate what is before you.
Maybe I am boiling this all down to TRUE LOVE IS....ALLOWING??
I don't know, I am on this ride like you are reading this.
I write as it flows through my soul.
It's the very thing I love about writing.
No one can tell me if it is right or wrong. It is here, inside of me, I listen, I write, and I allow it all to flow onto these blank pages.
I learn as I go.
So amazingly precious to me, honestly!!
Today, I feel like a baby learning how to love and how to be open, and to allow myself to be vulnerable again.
We all have been hurt before and I am not a believer in allowing our past to dictate our present moments, or future.
I think we have the ability to heal ourselves through prayer and meditation and the willingness to be open time and time again, because not one situation is the same.
I do not want to walk around like a suit of armor, fighting off anything that may seem of "harm" or of a danger to my heart.

I would never want to miss out on any beauty that life has to offer because I have been scorned in the past.
I think life is "scorning" in general, and so if I go by that reality, I will know to love that much more.
People are deserving of our presence. The here and now with them. Not the past that we dredge up, because we are afraid of being hurt again.
"In life honey, we get hurt, that is the reality of it", says my mother before she passed. "It's not a bad thing, it's just the reality of life"." We love, and we get hurt, but NEVER, EVER, STOP LOVING". I live by my mothers words. I listen so intently from a woman who has been hurt over and over again. She NEVER stopped loving ANYONE who had "hurt" her.

So, I never was interested in getting my PH.D, but if there were any subject that I would like to master over, it is that of LOVE.
I always want to be allowing, and loving, and present!!! I want to listen, and listen closely with no interruption.
I want my love to be my only love, and create something so different and bold that, to me, will shatter glass.
Allow people to see the beauty in a TRUE LOVE, that stretches beyond ideas, and beyond the norm.

There is a formula that I keep to myself, and when the moment presents itself, I want to unveil this phenomenon and see if not only myself, but the one who I invite in will cherish the 4th of July the rest of the 364 days that remain.
I giggle at my own revelations, and too, feel charmed by a life that makes me sick, and mad, and all at the same time, utterly grateful for my very existence here.
What a wild, wild ride. That fantastical magic carpet ride beckons me, every last second of my days.
I'll never veer from that ride, for it is the ride of a god damn lifetime!!
Thank you for all of my moments in this wondrous, wondrous life!
Before you know it, it will all be over and I do know for sure, that I would have been grateful!!!
Pissed some people off, but nevertheless, extremely grateful!!!
I love you, as you so well know.
Gabriela