I fully admit I let myself get caught up in the Eat Pray Love phenomenon, but I did not read the book. I will eventually, but I do not need it yet. I am, however, listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's new book, Committed, on CD...it was at the library especially for me the day after I saw her speak in Burnsville. I cannot say what other women found in Eat Pray Love that resonated with their personal journeys towards love, but I can attempt to speak about the chords it struck in me.
Being single while wanting a partnership I have never experienced personally is very different from being single after experiencing a marriage that did not work. Elizabeth Gilbert and I are living our own roller-coaster rides, as everyone must, but a good memoir jumps the tracks and sidles up to a wider population than lived its story. Seeking for answers, understanding, and even love belongs to everyone.
My search for love feels like a compulsion. Part of me would be glad to be rid of this desire for that feeling of connection, harmony and passion. I am not at all surprised that there are similarities between infatuation and drug addiction at the neurological level; love is a blissful high! Am I slave to my desire? Drawn on like an addict to her drug? Perhaps this is why monks and other spiritual people attempt to overcome desire...to rise above our human programming. Unfortunately, this is not an appealing approach to me, devoted as I am to fully immersing myself in the human experience. I have to accept my longing to be partnered.
Making the decision to accept is far easier than doing so when finding a partner proves to be so difficult. I loathe the advice from married men and women who are happily or just contently partnered already about how I should go about finding someone. I have never liked preachers. And anyway, who believes that their love story is so prototypical: the test case for everyone to follow? Their unconscious arrogance is as amazing as their {selective memories}.
[A brief message to all my would-be advice givers: Thank you for your love and concern about my happiness. I truly know you mean only good in offering me your wisdom, but if I want it I will ask you, directly. With me, you know when I want something from you, but a blog about my murky love future is not in itself a plea for aid. Instead of telling me where I should go, you are more than welcome to compliment me on the steps I have already taken, the obstacles I have overcome or the lessons I have learned the hard way.]
I know I have not fully wrestled the demons that guard the path to my grown-up love, but I am content with this awareness. Through all of my relationships, and my many almost-relationships, I have changed and learned enough to know that I am not a mess. Self-improvement, such as this, makes me so excited that I want to impart my fresh wisdom to the world! However, no one can teach another through words what must be learned through experience. We all do not live and love in the same way, nor should we want to.
As for me, I would not change a thing about my love journey. I have tried many kinds of love on for size and would not have wanted to miss any one. For those people who are happy to marry their first love, my lessons may act as a small pickaxe weakening the walls of a once-sturdy structure should I choose to espouse what specifically I have learned. I have no desire to crack anyone's happiness, but am shamelessly comfortable with the knowledge that my heartbreaks will make me a stronger and better lover than I could ever have been had I only had one man I loved. So I raise my glass, in a solitary toast, to meeting, playing with and, if need be, shoving away men as I wind my way along this path.
