i swim.

I remember going to confession when I was a, by default, Catholic.”Forgive me father for I have sinned. It’s been ‘thirty years’ since my last confession.” So, aside from cleaning up your sins real quick before entering the confessional, you also cut the time since your last confession by 2/3 or so, to an amount of time that made you not sound like a bad Catholic. If only I had confessed the sins of prepping my confession, perhaps truth would have come sooner?

Anyway, that’s not where I am going…

Hello blog, it has been one year and five days since my last blog and I am not lying because it’s right there on this page, and I have become a huge fan of truth since leaving the Catholic church, officially.

I am here sitting at the computer thinking about some ‘homework’ I have for a project I am doing. The homework is to write an essay about love and about how to care for my own heart. I sat here for ages and the only thoughts are about what i don’t do for my own heart.

I had this flash, “oh, didn’t i write something about love and swimming or something on that blog of mine?”

I did. It’s a funny piece. I like it. It’s confessional, open, and honest, a moment. It’s got self-pity, often a good read (joke), definitely a good hind-sight reference marker, no? You go back and read something you wrote and when you hit the self-pity section, you say…”oh yeah, that’s where I was at that point, right” But overall I like the metaphor of swimming in reference to love.

I think that piece was about beginning to accept that I am worthy of receiving love. Acceptance. Acceptance is an open heart in action, no? Acceptance is an open heart, swimming.

That piece is about the external, it puts love outside as I slowly let in the elements of it that suited me. It paints my abilities as inferior to those who have loved me, in my ability to swim, and it measures the love between us with my own expectations, they loved me even if my swimming isn’t good. Expectations which really were requests to myself to come up with exactly those goods, for myself. Feeling inferior to others and to love, I put the responsibility or expectation outside of myself. My definition of love was not connected to the self, another human, nature, or universe at large. It was this tiny little speck, microscopic and wearing a cloak woven from threads of low esteem, victim of life, unworthiness, and ego.

What happened. Quietly sitting and watching the movie of my life between that july 21, 2010 post and today, i can see many of the gifts that happened in these 370 days. The biggest is unexplained by tangible events and I like to think that it was sent to me as a gift from my father who passed last May. My father loved me unconditionally, he didn’t outwardly express emotions very much but a sensitive person could read them.  He never saw the glass half empty, laughed when it went 3/4 empty, and taught me there is always a way, if you maintain grace and respect, there is always a way. In his passing, he pointed me towards who would be a great love in my life and an extra dose of courage and with that courage came a note and on the note was written: keep your heart open.

Keep your heart open. What does that mean? What does that mean to me? This seems to be the part where I do my homework. How do I care for my heart, essay. I’m noticing, this actually frightening to write down. I instantly start feeling my thoughts getting jumbled, scrambled, turning to jibberish. Ahhhhhh. It feels like I can’t answer this until I can define love on a personal level, not universal. I know what I have always done has been to put myself out there to please and give and give and give to please, then hope i get love in return. Rarely afraid to jump in and rarely discriminating about what i let in. If I got love in return my life was wonderful, if I didn’t, my life was meaningless and I became a cripple until time healed me, yet often, magoada (deep hurt) always stayed like a badge of honor or something. My ability to see the love was one-sided, my ego eyes and nothing else. A surefire way to guarantee you will feel pain for most of your adult life, I’d say.

Love is love. It’s my unconditional acceptance of me having value to me and to my family, being worthy of another’s love, and sharing my love for another where it is welcomed. Love goes through rough moments, hard times, sad times, joyous times, and remains simply love. Taking care of my heart is to respect it enough to not throw it in harms way just to not feel lonely. It’s to not beat myself up about not getting things perfect or missing a sign, compassion for myself and others. It’s to let others be who they are and love them, to love someone who loves who i am. Love feels like you are a part of everything and everything is a part of you. Personal love begins with that acceptance of the self and extends to a merger with another soul who feels like part of you, and to them you feel apart of them… separate and individual and part of, at the same time. That may be the hardest part of a relationship.

To care for my heart I must retain my integrity, grace, and courage. I must value what i bring to my small world, the one at large, this existence, and to a love relationship. See what my others bring as a treasures. I must nurture and accept growth and change in myself and others, to never fear change. Love is a commitment to communicate and to trust and to be honest.

In the blog of last year about swimming and love, I was a terrible swimmer being loved regardless of my ability, or a self pitying lover. A person treading in the middle of the sea asking, where is the water? Today, I am still in the middle of the sea, treading water and saying, i can swim.