The Different Faces of Love (The Moon, the Crazy Moon, part 3)

This started out as a response to a comment on my last blog, but it was getting so lengthy, I decided to just post it as a separate blog. It may only make sense in the context of my last blog, though, so you might want to go back and read that (and the comment) if you haven't.

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Perhaps it all boils down to me being an abysmal communicator (that may have been my problem then, just as it is now). . . or perhaps it's the dramatist in me, embellishing in the wrong way--adding a flare of romance to the story when it's really a different sort of love I'm speaking of. I mush it together in my description because there are similarities, but really what I'm talking about is more like the love and loss I felt with my sister and when she passed away, and yet my own failure with words paints it as something silly. It may be that I'm thinking too much of an audience--what words could I use that they would understand? I can get caught up in the idea of trying to word something in a clever way, a universal way--such pride, however, is not conducive to successful communication.*

Call it two-faced, but I feel misunderstood. And I'm using the backspace key a lot now in trying to explain. How should I expect my words to be clear enough for my readers understand me, when it's all still so much in process? I don't even understand me. Does denying that you have questions and making haste to cover the holes over with the quickest biblical patch to be found make one's God bigger?

I feel like I'm being pushed to action out of the expectations of others that I figure it all out already and DO something. That probably wasn’t your intention, but that’s how it felt. Why is reality so hard for me? What reality? How can reality be hard when you don't know what it is? It's the inability to identify reality that is hard. Of course, I could simplify it by ignoring the intricacies--the threads that don't line up with a particular presumption of neat, tidy fabric. But that, in my opinion, would be the sign of a belief in a small god.

Yes, the recent line of questioning with Doug may be a distraction, but I wouldn't call our friendship a sideshow. It's a distraction just like maneuvering all the kids' birthday celebrations, skinned knees, and last-minute homework and costume needs is a distraction. It's a distraction like my parents' waning health and a friend who needs help moving is a distraction. It's a distraction like the stopped up sink is a distraction. Life is full of distractions. True, the way I've worded things in the three blogs in which I've talked about Doug may make it seem like I've been obsessing, but the reality is, we have a deeper history than I have even come close to putting into words here. If anything, I’ve given voice to an over-active imagination in the “he hates me” or “he doesn’t care” side of it.

When I read “You are acting like you are trying to solve some hidden hurt, but you are justifying flirting with another man who is not the one you are pretending to be yoked to. You can't honestly love someone from that long ago to whom you have never lived with or spent much actual physical time with. Love is more than fatal attraction, or fantasy boyfriend love affairs of the mind,” that hurt. Don't stop commenting, though. Hurt is okay. We grow through it. And do keep praying that my eyes will be open, because that has been my prayer, and I do believe in the power of prayer and since I have also been praying that God would reveal to me any ways in which I’m deceiving myself, I believe He will.

What may have been missed in that blog, probably due partially to the Moonstruck references (which are about a romantic love), is the longevity and depth of the friendship history Doug and I have (and the connections he has with my family as well), and the fact that if a close female friend or one of my brothers or parents would have come to me with the same news that Doug shared yesterday, it would have sent me reeling in the same way. To me, all love is important.

It’s interesting timing that yesterday a boy came to ask Todd and I permission to date one of our daughters. The term “just friends” came up in the discussion--they no longer wanted to deny that they were more than “just friends.” I cautioned them about the logic behind that term, saying that romantic love, if it is not built on a firm foundation of friendship, will actually grow into something that is “less than friendship.” The love between friends is not something to be trivialized, and it can in fact have a more enduring quality than love that is contorted to fit the mold of romance.

Even though I wanted to know if romance was the cause of the dark period between Doug and me, I am NOT interested in romance with him now. Our friendship has weathered too great a length of time and too many storms of life to ruin in that way. Even if it seems like an excuse to some who read this, my main reason for digging and wanting to know that part of the past truly was because of the questions about relationships that my daughters have been asking me. I want to understand, so my advise to my girls will not be born out of my own dysfunctional confusion. I take it as an answer to prayer that even when one of my daughters broke up and another started a new relationship, in the midst of my own personal struggles and without me having yet found “the answers to that dark pivotal day in my past,” I was still able to offer them what I think was wise counsel. Maybe I don’t have to know the specifics of what happened back then in order to be able to find mental and emotional health now.

The appearance of silliness confirms to me that some ground is better not to be dug up because it stirs the flighty emotions of that time period. (Yes, I did get a bit caught up in it.) Doug and I have grown past that--there is no need to bring it back up--that was proved when I was able to talk to my daughters with confidence. Also, I don’t want to confuse Doug by stirring up emotions from the past that he has already worked through, so I will be careful what I say from here on out. Maybe I feel like that wounded little girl more because of my current hurts than because of anything “back then.” I will try to not let the past distract me from dealing with the issues of now, mainly the issues with Todd, but I don’t think God would have me deny the impact of a dear friend who is facing a very serious disease--that is also in the present. You would understand that he is very much like a brother, if I were to share our full history.

Hey--that just made me think of a slightly silly, yet related, little side-note:

When I was in elementary school, I had crushes on at least two of my cousins. I even said with certainty that I was going to marry one of them. All these years later, I can interact with those cousins at family reunions and there isn’t any weirdness or shame or romantic attraction, but I still love them... and I grieved when one of them was very sick... and I rejoiced when the surgery he required was successful... I sobbed when he lost one of his own children...

Love affects us that way.

It doesn’t have to be romantic (and it may actually help if it isn’t romantic). So, I’m sorry if anyone judges me for expressing my love for Doug. I was probably misleading in connecting the Moonstruck clips. The wording of that statement about love just gets me, and I tend to apply it to all sorts of love. When you love someone, they are capable of driving you crazy--there is a much deeper truth to that than what we see on the surface of Loretta’s mom’s words. My love for my dad drives me crazy. If I didn’t love him and desire his love, it wouldn’t drive me crazy when his words and actions lead me to believe that he is more proud of my brother than he is of me. Talk about issues--I’ll have to blog on that someday. Any mother knows that her love for her children can drive her crazy. And, I can't even tell you how long it took to be able to function again after the sister I loved passed away. Love can drive you crazy.

Anyway, if you’re able to get past the apparent “inappropriateness” of me admitting that I “love” Doug (realizing that it may not mean to me the same thing that it does to everyone else), I would appreciate you saying a prayer for his health. The initial blow when I got the news wasn’t like, “oh no, I’m going to lose my fantasy boyfriend if the cancer takes him!” It was more the fear of going through what I went through with my sister again. Not another sibling! Selfish, I know, but I’d rather be the next one to die than have to see another loved one go through such a painful end.

* At the risk of drawing more parallels with films that confuse, I'd like to share a clip from a favorite that touches on the complexity of love. Not saying that it has anything to do with the kind of love I was referring to--just that love is not always as neat and tidy as we'd like it to be.

Richard to Clarissa: “Oh Mrs. Dalloway, always giving parties--to cover the silence....I wanted to write about it all, everything that happens in a moment...all our feelings, yours and mine, the history of it, who we once were, everything in the world, everything all mixed up--like it’s all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed. No matter what you start with it ends up being so much less-- sheer f-ing pride and stupidity. We want everything, don’t we?”