Love Like Water

After re-reading yesterdays post, I keep coming back to something... Being accepted "as is." I have had more than one romantic partner (and non romantic partners too) refer to me as damaged goods and broken. These things were said to my face, and those beliefs were reinforced in the way I allowed these people to treat me. I take full responsibility for my actions here... I let them treat me that way. I refuse to hide behind being the victim - bad things happened and I let them. Do not misunderstand me - I am not victim blaming anyone else here - I am only speaking of myself and my own experiences. And that's not to say I asked for bad things to happen to me, not directly anyways.

I did not ask to be drugged and raped in a room full of strangers watching. I did not deserve to have that experience. But I also refuse to let that moment in time define the rest of my life. I can't be the victim of that circumstance, and I refuse to use that term. Survivor? Yes. Victim? Fuck no. Shortly after it happened I was traumatized to the point I refused to leave the house. 2 months I stayed in my townhouse. I stopped attending classes. I stopped going out. My boyfriend of the time and I broke up shortly after it happened - it was my fault in his eyes: I had been unfaithful. Not to mention his drinking becoming out of control. He took one swing at me at a drunken rage and I was done. I called the police. After the breakup and agoraphobia, I made the decision not to be the victim anymore. So I went to the Dean of Students and told them what happened. I had to sit down in front of books and books of fraternity class pictures, being asked "who was it" and the campus security and police rolling their eyes when I couldn't produce a face and a name. I dropped out of school (with my semesters tuition returned to my parents, and a letter of recommendation from the Dean to where ever I wanted to transfer to) and I moved home. I felt pretty defeated at that point, but I wasn't beat. I still had fight left in me to brush myself off and start again.

After that I was a little more guarded towards people, but I always had this overwhelming sense that I had so much love to give the world, and by cutting myself off from people, I was essentially damming up the flow of what I had to give. What good does that do? I offer Mark Nepo's thoughts:

Most things break instead of transform because they resist. The quiet miracle of love is that without our interference, it, like water, accepts whatever is tossed or dropped in or placed into it, embracing it completely.
In truth, the more we let love flow through, the more we have to love. This is the inner glow that sages and saints of all ages seem to share: the wash of their love over everything before them; not just people, but birds and rocks and flowers and air.
Beneath the many choices we have to make, love, like water, flows back into the world through us. It is the one great secret available to all. Yet somewhere the misperception has been enshrined that to withhold love will stop hurt. In truth, it is the other way around. As water soaks scars, love soothes our wounds. If opened to, love will accept the angrily thrown stone, and our small tears will lose some of their burn in the great ocean of tears, and the arrow released to the bottom of the river will lose its point. 

I want to love like water. Letting it flow from me and touching everything around me. Accepting myself and all others "as is." I am not naive, however. I know what is necessary for my own needs to be met, not to be a doormat, taken advantage of. But that doesn't mean I have to stop loving people exactly as they are in each moment - the good, the bad, the ugly.

Richard Rohr offers a similar sentiment:

When we truly love, we simply love, regardless of the worthiness or value of the object. No wonder that we speak of being "in love," because it is a state of being more than an occasional, deliberate action. It will often feel like wonder, and our eyes will be temporarily wide open and receptive.
A similar thing happens in the presence of great suffering and grief. The many forms of dying also pull us into the Now, even though I hate to admit it. I know none of us like it, but simple suffering (not getting our way) is often the quickest and longest-lasting form of transformation into love. 

In my present existence, my life is about the transformation into love - and letting that love flow through me and from me, with no expectation of return.

I am Loved.