The Love Matrix

Sounds like a good title for book, eh? Oh all the unfinished books in my life...

Today an old friend stopped by as she was in town for a few days. She moved away over 6 months ago and though we rarely got together when she lived here, we had grown quite a relationship via Facebook. So it was natural to want to see each other when she came into town for the holidays.

As love would have it, she has in her care, a young family member from a distant relation and she is going through many, if not all, of the same types of issues we went through in our own dependency process with our own adopted daughter and her baby sister.

And while my friend visits....
                                                  .....I begin to recognize the matrix.

I note through our conversation, that he probably has many  attachment issues, that she and I have many similar feelings toward these kids from the hard place that are in our care and that their hearts are as painfully pressed in as mine. As I explain how we have to open up new channels for love to flow...and her eyes brim with tears of understanding...
                                                   ....I again  recognize the matrix.

We talk and talk and her husband sits quietly looking off and occasionally speaks and it is glory to my ears. For I too, am familiar with husbands that are quiet. But when they do speak, you see their interest, their intellect, their caring. The DO care. And I feel good when she says, "You ready to go, hon?" And he shrugs it off as if saying, "No, I'm good here...with this."

                          ....and I sense the matrix overtaking me.

The love matrix, as I am coming to call it is an intricate design of the most finely woven web...so incredibly delicate...so heartbreakingly beautiful but so often broken, destroyed, left in tatters...only to be rebuilt again and again and again and again....sometimes daily, despite the pain of it. Despite the agony of it, despite the beauty of the old one.

The web is being rebuilt when I recognize that this hour visit, that I thought woudl be spent talking crafting and new digs, was replaced with an accompanying husband and a serious discussion about dependency and attachment disorder...and pain.

The web is spinning and spinning, faster and faster as I sit there...she doesn't know, he doesn't know...that this new web of love is spinning...and that my feet and hands are beginning to stick again, to this new web.

And it hurts.

The love matrix is filled with tears and bitterness and so. much. pain.
And a sometimes staggering, instant recognition that you are "supposed to be here"..."supposed to be going through this".

It hurts because the matrix overtakes you in the new spinning....it hurts as it demands the total shedding of the old web...and the new web is already capturing others as it is being spun- before you are healed from the pain of your old web being destroyed.

The love matrix MUST be constantly destroyed and rebuilt as it is meant to capture new and different people, experiencing new and different circumstances of their own, causing new ones of your own as well and often causing their own web to capture YOU for help and sustenance, and vice versa. It's complicated. What can I say? It's a Matrix.

The love matrix COMPELS you to let go of the stickiness that binds your feet and hands...and heart to the old web..and you have to let go of the ones you love....and the ideas you love...and the plans you love... and for awhile, you tumble along into the abyss until a new thread catches and the web begins to be spun again, catching new glimmers of sparkling love-light. Like the kind I glimpsed this afternoon.

Good, easy, love is fun, exciting and glorious.
Deeper love channels flow with rivers of pain and tears.
It isn't fun. It isn't easy, this new way to love...this deeper channeling that love  requires you to excavate in your heart. There is no anesthetic, no reprieve, no relief. And yet, there is this deep, deep knowing that regardless of how you feel, you are going to have to let this new thread catch and this new web spin, or you may just keep tumbling downward.

Catch and spin...catch and spin...catch and spin....oh the awful but refining power of the webs of the Love Matrix. May we continue to let go,  fall and be caught....by new beautiful webs of love.