Love & The Broken Colon

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.” ~ Pablo Neruda

In highschool I discovered this sonnet by Pablo Neruda through a friend who choreographed a modern dance for us to perform to this by reciting & recording it one afternoon on her boom box. The words spoke to my 16 year old soul. I used it in my Original Prose Poetry on Love for Speech & Debate tournaments. I believed in love even through the dark haze that surrounded me in the late nineties. Love was a rollercoaster and relationships/marriage were just the slow steady creak to the top of the exhilarating free fall ride. Scary. Fun. Exciting. Short lived.

I was not the girl who was looking for love. I was in search of an Oscar. I looked forward to award season, not wedding season. I was not looking for love, but love found me. I gave myself, willingly. And now? Now, I’ve just put on another coat of this scar serum over the patchwork job I did to mend my broken heart. I stand in the face of single mother hood with stretch marks, an Ostomy scar, loose skin and a missing organ. THANK GOD, my hair grew back!

But seriously, sometimes I look at my kid and I look at myself and I try to remember how I loved a single man so hard and without question. Because I figure if I remember the secret or how to do, I will find love again. But I forgot is that love found me. It found me when I wasn’t looking and it made me stay without question. There is no formula. There is no right word. It just is. And now as I look toward the future, learning how to open my heart and mind to sharing my life with partner meant for me, I know that when you find the right one you can easily melt into them. And I’ve learned that there can be more than one right one, because the right one is the right one for a reason. My first was for miracle, the second for my patience and the third will hopefully be for my lifetime.

Somehow the idea of having this broken colon, this autoimmune disease made me believe that I had to do more, but I don’t. Because the person who doesn’t love the broken me, won’t love the whole me and is looking for someone who isn’t me. My colon, my disease or my child will never go away and will not deter the one. I have to believe more in love and in the people choosing love.

I do. I do believe.