This Is What Unconditional Love Tastes Like

I met him in the ocean, she said. His friends bugged him because he was jumping off waves before they ended to paddle by me. And when I left the ocean, he followed. He never followed, he surfed until the waves ran out. But he followed me. He told his friends that I was his girlfriend the first moment he saw me. He told me he was going to marry me 5 days after we met. We’re now married, we just drove from California to Ecuador with our dog on our honeymoon and that was my dream.

She laughs and speaks and walks and moves and loves with the love she gives herself–it falls like fireflies from each letter that drops from her full heart.

Her words vibrate into the ventricles of my heart so deeply the world goes still.

This is an unconditional love I have not felt since a man sat at a coffee shop in Roberts Creek, captivated by me. I was working away writing like a mad woman downing americanos. He called his friend and said, “There’s a beautiful woman and I’m afraid to talk to her.” “Beautiful women always like to be talked to.”

And then you found me the next day, with the intensity of a relentless thunderstorm that drowns the roads with a sneeze. I walked out of the ocean and you went right for me. You went for me like you had a spotlight attached to your heart and blinded me. I was not available for the taking, but you told me I was going to be yours anyway.

And then I was, and when I wasn’t you told me, “I am not jealous of any man who may try and love you for I will love you better than anyone.”

And you did, and then you left–you stopped your life.

And then I learned that some soul mates are not here for a lifetime, they are here for a season or a reason.

And I have felt the breeze of that unconditional love once in the sweaty nights of Austin, Texas but not yet again until this morning.

Watching her eyes gleam.

“Ah, that’s how I want to be loved.” Part of me says.

And then everything inside clicks.

The ones that are there but not loving are less sparkly.

The space is held without a choice.

Unconditional love is a lesson that comes in different packages and containers and the strongest container we may have is ourselves.

Thank you to the two men who have loved me with the might I did not understand, and thank you to this woman who today taught me the same lesson again.

Maybe I’ll listen today. Or maybe I’ll need to hear it again through the heart of a man who kisses the feet of my heart consistently without instruction.

We show up in this world how we are loving ourselves and how we are able to love.

The rain falls through the green and onto my face as the taxi rips on to the next moment of contentment and my heart sighs in relief.