On Romance with Age

Well, I've already written what my obstacle course is along the path to Romance - in a notebook, not on this blog. Yet. I've moved beyond it and I would like to quit reliving it. :) God only knows what my partner's ostacle course was, but if his childhood was anywhere as painful as mine, and it was, we'd barely have a chance in hell in the romance department. Those white hot sheets of blinding emotional pain layered on top of one another to the vulnerable who have no protection, getting at the core of who they are and destroying their confidence ... Because anytime something happens to remind me, it sends my Venus running for deep cover. In a way it's too bad our psychological scars and wounds aren't ... more obvious. If they were as evident and easy to see as a disfigurement or a missing limb, or blindness, or whatever, our fellow men would have a better shot at understanding us, and thereby sympathizing with us and knowing how to approach us.


But my spouse and I have experienced many nice Romantic moments with one another (obviously, or we wouldn't be together). :) Sometimes more by accident than design - at this stage of my life, however, I'm wanting to design the accidents, ha! At least make them more frequent. It's interesting that when my psyche is bruised, I just want to shut down and go to sleep - and how everything's better the next day when I wake up. I guess that's the best healing - but you do have to explain yourself when you go to bed at 7 pm. I usually say I have a headache or stomach ache or feeling like I'm coming down with something. Because any family I've ever been involved in doesn't talk about things easily. Another obstacle to surmount.

So this morning I have a clearer understanding of when it comes to initiating Romance, I feel like I had to outrun the sadness, dodge the pain, in order to persist and succeed. What I've concluded is that if I have to continually confront the sadness, I won't have a chance in hell - it's stronger than I am. Always has been. But if I can frame the whole issue a little differently - move it into a different arena - see it as a problem to solve or a solution to design, as a learning challenge, or way to help and to contribute, I think I have a pretty good chance at achieving my objective. I'm pretty good at puzzles and so is my psyche and my unconscious. They just need to be free to do what they do without undue pain and agony. So I guess that's why I felt I had to "outrun the sadness. "

And I feel that in spite of all the times I have been traumatized - I think our development just sort of gets "frozen" at those points - by various ... men in my life ... fathers, grandfathers, husbands, bosses ... who didn't understand how to respond to issues but by brute force - whether physical, but more often verbal - and how the hurts of those times bleed over from one area of life to another - but God has created us to be a garden. And unless we just get totally nuked or something, we are going to grow our flowers. They may get stamped, trampled, and walked upon, but God made us a garden. We are resilient like grass. We will revive and grow again. God sends a little sunshine and a little rain ... a little inspiration. For me this year it was Blood Ties and the Bourne Trilogy and listening to Christmas music by the crooners and the jazzers from the 30's and 40's and 50's - Satchmo, and Bing, and Doris and the gang. :) In past years it was Prey.

It also makes me think that I need to faithfully contribute to the United Nations for the nation of Iraq. Oddly. In hopes that it will be a garden that will grow once again ... it has as much right as anyone to take its place in the sun along with all the other nations of the world.