From The Heart

It’s been an every day struggle as I come to terms with changes in life that  arise from something as simple as sexualtiy. Relationships, love and connection seem as though they would be the most simple things in the world. Follow your heart, treat others with the kindness and compassion that you would like extended to you, and be true to yourself. However, sexuality now means community changes, life changes, job changes, all for the connections that the heart makes in this life. Sometimes it seems completely absurd that anyone else should ever be involved in the connections that people make with each other. All that to say, I’ve been steadily coming to terms with the fact that even though it may not make sense to me, others are involved. Society is involved. Families are involved.

I’ve been vascillating day by day between wanting to hide in bed for months at a time, and wanting to jump up, run for the rooftop and yell from the top of my lungs, the truth about all that I am getting in touch with. I am finally getting in touch with a part of me that has been taboo and off limits for so long, but I am constantly wondering what to do with it all.

This week, I am starting a simple practice. Everything takes patience and recently I’ve been learning that the key to spirituality and the key to relationships and connections are three working points: openness, patience, and surrender. Anyone that I have ever really and truly admired as embodied these three principles as a part of their daily live as well as their spiritual practice, and I am trying an experiment to do the same.

This year, I made a promise to myself to live more from the heart. Growing up, I’ve had a problem feeling as though I had a thick layer of ice around my heart that allowed people to get close to a certain point, but never any further. If I let people get closer, then I would begin to need them in my life. If I needed people in my life, then they would have the ability to let me down, fail me. If they failed me, where would that leave my devastated self? So I built up walls, pretty ones albeit, but walls nonetheless. This year, I wanted to take some of those walls down. By all means, I don’t mean that I wanted to be any less discerning about the people that I let into my life, but I wanted to allow those people who had worked hard to maintain real connections with me the opportunity to know me as I know myself. I wanted the opportunity to learn who they were on that new platform, and I wanted that rare chance to make even deeper connections with them. I didn’t want to be the Ice Queen anymore.

Staying Open was the first step. If I was going to make those genuine, lasting connections, not only with others, but also with myself, I had to stay open. I had to go to that heart space and understand that love is one of the few things which is truly unlimited. Giving love to others never diminishes the amount that we have left in our heart. If anything, there are times when giving love, only increases the amount that we contain. Knowing that every opportunity we face in life is an opportunity to give love and receive love was a starting point where I finally began to extend some of that love to myself. I had to know that I was worthy of being happy before I tried to make anyone else happy.

Patience is next. This is one of the most intense periods of my life, and I have been gaining peace in the fact that no decision is made in a day. There are days when I never want to leave the bed. The fear of the future begins to choke me and I just don’t understand how I’ll make everything work. Those days, I am patient with myself and I begin with simply getting out of bed, writing what is in my heart, and doing some much needed exercise. I have to understand that there is time enough for everything if I allow it. There is time enough for me to heal through this period.

And Surrender. I have lived my entire life knowing that there was a greater purpose in things. There is too much that happens for me to deny that. Love itself makes me believe in that higher power. I have had a relationship with the divine ever since I was disillusioned at a young age and found out that people wouldn’t always be there for you. I am learning everyday to surrender to that greater power and that divine plan which includes me, and yes, even my sexuality. I am developing the faith to have patience while this plan is revealed. Even when it doesn’t look like it, life has always happened in my favor, instead of against me. Even in times of hardship, there have been lessons and wonderful divine intervention in ways that have only served to deepen my faith.

I am now learning to trust that plan. To trust in my heart, and to trust in how I’ve been created. It is a slow, every day learning process. But at the end, I know I will be more connected to who I am than I have ever been. If I can just trust that the heart knows. If I can only have the courage to remain open, patient and surrendered, then maybe, just maybe, the outcome will be one of the greatest adventures of my life.