Life's Paradox

Life is a love story that is being written every day. Love is magical! Love is bliss.

Love is a rainbow of glitter that rains down on every single one of us every day!

We love our friends and our families. We love things that bring us passion and make us feel alive! Love is alive and breathing in all of us on this planet. Why don't we feel it as a whole? Is it because focus isn't where it should be?

What happens when we fall out of love? When we have to let go of a love that is no longer healthy to one's soul. It shouldn't matter what other people think and yet, sometimes love keeps a stranglehold. It's up to you to decide what is right for you and not worry about what other people have to say about you. It is healthy to mourn and let go.

I haven't been here with you because I have been falling in love with my life. I fell in love multiple times yesterday and a few times in the days in between. I have fallen in love with the people around me, I have fallen in love with the earth and the clouds. I fell in love with the sunshine and the water. But I have fallen out of love and freed myself too!

I say "fell" because it feels like I am seeing and feeling life like I am living it for the first time. I don't feel old, and I don't feel young. I feel like I have both won and lost at life. My past seems irrelevant and now is right before me, but in the moment, I have to ask, "what happens next?"

I'm doing what I have always done when push comes to shove. I am following my heart and listening to my intuition. I believe life's chains had me complacent in surviving rather than living. The constant anxiety of am I measuring up to the world's expectation of me?

I was.

I had my "career/job". I was raising my children to be good people. Doing my best with what I know, while learning my mistakes every day. Making a mess out of being a wife like I had a degree in "marital messiness". Barely living in the shadows of the things I did do right.

"A little bit 'hot' and a little bit 'mess' + caffeine and there you have it, the hot mess express." A successful recipe for life. I didn't die and there have only been a few casualties. I can proudly say, even my children survived their childhoods. Maybe one day, they will tell a different story of survival.

I wish I could see myself through the eyes of others, but all I see is a paradox of contradictions. I act brave but yet walk with fear. I am who I am but a little less like the younger versions of me but not yet the best version of me. I'm in between, hanging in the balance. I project what I cannot see in myself. I have been falling in love again, with me.

Remember the first time you saw your ex, or even your current partner? --- And if you have yet to meet the one that will steal your heart, trust me, you will know --- What made your heart skip that beat? How did you know they were the one? What made you choose them again and again, or until you didn't?

Love is a choice. The paradox arises when it is time to choose. What happens to the current or the old? Can you love more than one person at a time? Not by society's standards but Love doesn't care what society thinks. Love doesn't play by the rules.

We all want it, but we all don't want to give it. The world is full of givers and full of takers. They say love is free but at what cost?

Am I both?

Am I the paradox?

Yes, I believe it is Love that is the paradox of life.

Love is my life's paradox.

I have loved so much and yet, I have loved so little.

"And still, I have so much love to give."

--- Musing from the mind of a Nightmare in Red.

"Life's Paradox" can be found in the "Eternal Ties" Collection