Engaged

Now, oh yes now, I am going to speak about being engaged.... (again).

Being engaged is pretty different the second time around. I feel the old joy and love and hope and excitement to tell everyone, but I also feel rather a bit more cautious. This all makes sense and is well and good in its own way. Perhaps this is too big and pressing of a subject for me to tackle so soon...

Ok Now a month later I will actually tackle the writing of this post... (again).

This is a cheesy faith I let myself keep. I believe or at least very strongly want to believe that one happy couple and eventually one happy family truly can exist and really does change the world.

Disclaimers aside for how very infrequently I reveal this part of me and how scared I am to show it and how aware I am that I am probably wrong and how much love has already sucked for me in the past and how much more love prolly sucks for so many of you...

I think a relationship can be a partnership. Two people can remain independent but supportive. Freedom can be maintained and even increased. The two people can open up possibilities for each other and continue a cycle of positive energy between each other that can project out to every person they meet.

Positive energy, another ill defined Hope belief. I feel there is so much negativity in the world and my life work will be to counterbalance that with as much Positive creation as I can muster. Yes, a relationship is a creation, a collaborative art piece, a dance. So hard to do well, especially with the two different artists having their own unique aesthetics and on top of that the imposed aesthetics of our society.

Think of all the different and often contrasting portrayals of love in the movies, music, books of this culture. And indeed, love varies. It is different between different people and our petty labels of "love" or even more specifically "romantic love" "friendship love" "puppy love" fall short. It is in the nature of love to remain unspeakable but to want to be shared.

I never feel like I am crazy or stupid when I am talking to Bob. We both try to start with the assumption that the beauty we see in each other has some kind of wise and worthwhile creator behind it. I try to express what I see, Bob is less inclined to try and put the unspeakable into words. So maybe part of this positive energy is more specifically beauty... putting beauty into the world as a piece of art should be the noble aspiration of any relationship.

Some things I have confused relationships for in the past: a support group, a fortress, a promise, a mutual understanding, a game, a battlefield, a painkiller.

I am not sure I know where I am going with this, and really this is hard for me to talk about at all. It is hard for me to talk about because I am so scared that I am wrong or that you will see how wrong I am and think I am foolish. Always so friggin aware of what people might think.

This is what I know... I am taking a chance even though I am scared. I am letting myself become engaged, wrapped up in something complex, fascinated by it. I am hoping. I am trying to believe, to have some faith.

It is amazing how much better as a person I have become. The very idea that someone has put this faith in me, loves me, boosts me up and makes me become so much more. It is like in my past relationships I have enjoyed the beauty of the art created but felt like a secondary artist to the other in the relationship. All I needed to know was that I am the one making a lot of that beauty, and my artistic expression and side of me in general thrives now. Always this impetus to create with a decreasing concern for how useful what I create is. Beauty, positive energy, but also a structure to hold all this. The form, the useful structure, will follow as in my poetry. I am not sure I am being clear. I don't usually put all this into words.

I know the last time I was engaged there was the same hope the same dream of more positive energy a lot of faith in what the relationship could do. That faith was misplaced. Now I am aiming for faith in what beauty Bob and I can create. Some days it is very hard for me to believe, especially since I was so wrong in the past. It was a big blow to my pride as well as my heart when that relationship ended. In a way I guess I just want/wanted to prove that this can be done, and that might lead me to rush and push for it too much. I have so many weaknesses, and I no longer think any relationship is enough to make me strong, hold me up. I know some days I won't be strong. But every time I get off track I notice how much Bob still admires and wants the best for me and I allow myself to get caught up in all the awesome power and beauty and potential I see in him and we begin to thrive again.

*Blushes* I feel like I have just revealed a lot.