Not Normal

Let me take a moment to congratulate you on being normal! Congrats on having normal desires that God gave you; congrats on being able to express your desires in an institution called marriage, so that you can live without the weight of Satan using your desires against you. What a relief it must be to know God's great love for you because he established a way for you to love and express your love behind closed doors in a sensual, even erotic way (you wouldn't tell your friends about!), but also that you can express affection in public with the one you love - in fact, just be grateful you live in such a great Nation where you can hold hands with the one you love! You can propose to them in a restaurant and people will clap! How awesome is that?! You must feel incredibly blessed that you were born normal, with natural desires, and your first crush was considered "cute" in your household; what a blessing to know that you don't have to live a life of celibacy to stay away from such evil enticings that will lead you down a road of misery. Congrats on not having to ever turn off such a core part of your being - you must feel so blessed! You can look at your husband or wife as if they're dessert and you've been on a diet for a month! That's awesome! Life must be great for you! No wonder you're trying so hard to help everyone have what you have! No wonder you're trying to save them from a life ruled by Satan! The happiness you have is fantastic, and it's no wonder you want everyone to feel the way you feel - it's a shame they weren't all born that way! That's just their trial in life, to put off the natural man, and to feel the spirit and let go of unnatural desires, turning all of themselves to God - I mean, you've done it right? You've had to shut off the part of you that is attraction, desire, and the need for comfort from the ones you have feelings for - it wasn't that hard, right? The love for your spouse is completely based on their beautiful soul, and no amount of sexual desire is ever present, right? You have given up "the natural man" completely and have lived a life of angelic, pure, love that has nothing to do with desire and everything to do with the service - right? Oh. I see. You haven't done that because your desires expressed behind closed doors in your marriage are acceptable in God's eyes. You've never had to feel wrong, or sinful, or evil for something so natural in your nature as expressing your love through intimacy, creating a bond between you and your spouse through shared physical joys. Hrmmmm.... perhaps you should handle those not born "normal" like yourself a little more delicately since you've never gone through that and aren't forced to live the life you're telling them is the right way to live. Perhaps you should be a little kinder in your approach. In fact, maybe you should go home and hug your spouse and think about your wedding, and the benefits of your marriage, and how lucky you are to have the life you have rather than trying to convince everyone they should have the same life as you. But what do I know about it? I wasn't born in a way to understand where you're coming from. I was born to understand where THEY are coming from. I know God still loves me regardless, and I know He loves you, and I know He loves everyone and wants everyone to be happy, not miserable. Life is so short and so hard just as it is, surely you can make someone's day a little easier without feeling the need to tell them they're unnatural desires are being used against them by Satan and that you will love them as a sinner but you just can't accept the sin. Surely, you could have looked at them and said instead, "Have I told you lately how much I love seeing you happy?" or "What a beautiful place this is when you're around." or, "I love you just the way you are." But what I do know? I'm not normal.

My Problem With Friends

My biggest problem with life seems to be that my definition of friendship and loyalty is always different from everyone else's regardless of what they say or feel or what they claim to stand for. So, I'm constantly let down, or see the "true" colors of people and I get upset - but why?
I can't expect everyone to view things as I do, or to put as much into relationships as I do; I must have been a knight in a former life or something similar. I'm the type of girl who when I give you my all I give you my all. If I am on your side, I tell the truth, I don't hide things, your enemies are my enemies and I will stand by you through it all - - - but then I realize, sadly, that those who I suppose will act as I act don't feel the need to do such things. I realize most relationships are shallow, technology based, or rather relying on the convenience of technology, and most people lie and hide things - a lot.
They say everyone's a liar. True, but I think it comes down to why and what the lies are about - I mean, there's just things you aren't supposed to do if you love people. There's things you're supposed to share. There's supposed to be some type of fierce loyalty involved in the strong bonds of any form of a relationship - but where the hell did it go?
So, I'm left with brief encounters, texting, small chit chat, etc etc etc.
The fact it upsets me is my own problem, I guess.
We're all busy.
We live busy lives.
We pass briefly, smile, and move on.
I'm beginning to think this notion of always having someone who has your back is non-existent.
Maybe if I let go of wanting that I'll be able to be happy.
Happy with the lesser form of friendship the world offers.
It just doesn't feel right.
It feels sad.
I always wanted someone I could stand by until I take my last breath because I said I would and I wanted someone to want to do the same for me.
I know I have a purpose here in this time and life, in this place, in this sense of "now", but if I had a dollar for every time I felt like I belonged elsewhere in a different time I know I'd have a lot of useless paper.
Loyalty.
Define it.
Define it again.
Define it better than you just defined it.
You don't know what it is.
You probably lie and make excuses and avoid and gossip and turn your back on, ignore, pretend, hide, covet, mock, accuse, and judge the very people you shouldn't and then, you probably put cute emoticons in your messages, or give fake smiles, or pretend to have fun.
That's what this life is reducing us to.
We don't have to fight for each other's lives, or stand guard to defend each other, or toil side by side in order to stay alive - we just exist from one moment of hanging out and catching up to the other and all depth or bonds of loyalty needn't exist in such a shallow world.
So I'm fighting it.
I'm upset by it.
Why?
Because it's wrong.
But no one has the energy or desire to change it.
No one has the time.
I'll just be swept up in these shallow waters of rapid moving life
           I'll travel the currents near the shores
           I'll hit rocks, and I'll hit sand,
           and one day I'll change course
I'll sink beneath the surface and swim down to a deeper life
           I'll travel into waters seeking more
           I'll go down, and find a hand
           leading me to what I was looking for

Love and Heart Ache

She loved him not knowing how her heart could have such a cavernous capacity to contain the eruptive force that spread into her limbs like a dam breaking, flooding villages and eroding the land into a quaking mess.
Her whispered words in the darkness caressed the air like moths flying towards a light on a hot summer's eve, wings beating against humid air, mesmerized by a glow against a velvet world.
In ever facet of her life, she marveled at his ways, his movements, his voice and the way his heart beat beneath her fingertips, sure, steady and rhythmic, so full of life and passion; a carousel of joy.
His shoulders became the platform from which her lips propelled themselves over and over in sequence to the frenzied beating of her birdlike heart making music that could only escape from her when translated into touch.
The way his eyelashes graced his eyes reminiscent of the finest thread would weave upon her aching mind like weighted dreams wherewith she could never quite recover from the image she had seen.
There would never be another quite like him to ease into her world so perfectly and plant an everlasting garden of joy and wonder to spring upwards inside her soul.
For this, she loved him not knowing how her heart was ever granted such depth to contain such an emotion as the one overflowing from her in spiralling rivulets that surely he felt every time she smiled and said "I love you."

~**~

At night, the darkness is an anchor to keep one at bay in a bed of linen, like a prison, to contain ones grief, longing and need.
The air is the sorceress giving the power to continue while the edges of sanity unravel into tendrils of woe.
This is not love, but a breaking heart; not hope, but an ageless sorrow.
They do not prepare you for the weight of the pain that sinks down around you like a shadowed fist to steal away the life you once had known.
They do not prepare you for the way a heart breaks, slowly, in increments, then all at once.
Translate that feeling into sound and you'd go deaf.
Translate it into sight and you'd go blind.
If you could taste it, you'd never taste again.
The scent would leave you unable to breathe.
That is why the only way to understand it, is to feel it -  inside.

What If....?

Where would we all be if all ship builders believed that the only means of travel is to travel on the sea?
Where might we live if all mothers did believe that only in the mountains are children meant to be?
What would we eat if all farmers hated corn and only planted beans inside their fields?
What would have happened if soldiers only carried swords and never carried shields?
Where would you go if the train conductors feared the tracks beneath the trains and where would you sleep if no one thought to build shelters from the rains?
You want all the world to match your views and believe all that you believe yet you never stop to think or really to conceive
What might the land look like if all gardens hated green and if all children were taught to see only what is seen?
If the world were all the same, we would all be like drones, little robots in lines not like multicolored stones
The beauty in our faces comes from the stories that we tell and what we tell depends upon what we all see
If our eyes were all the same then our stories too would be and nothing would be rare and nothing would be free

~Elizabeth