I never expected to see a person like you in that sterile classroom preparing for the business graduate exam. But there you were – long black hair raining down your shoulders and back – hair………black as a panther ……..touching beautiful olive colored skin. I had seen women with features like yours before when I was traveling through the Mediterranean, but it wasn’t just your features – it was the way you carried yourself…with so much ease and grace. It wasn’t until the last class that I got the nerve to linger longer than is appropriate…and ask you out.
Do you remember that first night together? We had a few drinks, but that wasn’t why we were laughing – it was because our personalities were so alike…as though we were brother and sister. I discovered you went to a special high school where the curriculum centered around the classic Latin language…yet another heart piercing arrow hit the mark. It wasn’t long after that I asked for your hand in marriage. Of course we had to have two ceremonies, one in the church (you were an hour late!) to appease your family, and one on the beautiful coast of Rhode Island. You looked so beautifully surreal on our wedding day…I don’t know how we lost it along the way. Life, it seems, can grind Love down. But, I don’t want to dwell on that, rather, I want to say some other words.
We moved to the Northwest after graduate school, not for a job, but so I could pursue, in my free time, photographic excursions amongst the Cascade Range and along the Oregon coast. You were so patient and giving on those journeys. Thank you. We created a beautiful son when we were still in Love – you can see this is true by observing who he is and the essence of his being. We have both overcome our lost Love to ensure we are both there for him….until the time comes when he earns his wings. Through him, we have learned about another kind of Love – one that places another above oneself.
You may not have known, but you also were no longer in Love. You know now, the importance I place in Love between two beings – perhaps it is a fault, but if Love is gone, you must face that realization and not linger for the wrong reasons. You are stronger now, independent, making your way, finding your way, and perhaps one day you will find Love once again. You may have recently sampled its power, but that wasn’t Love. Love has to be equal between the two beings. And it seems, Love is comprised of a dual nature — the freedom for each to purse their own ends, but to also put another above oneself. Enduring Love…perhaps… is a fragile balancing act. You are free from him now – find it…or pursue something of interest…whatever that may be.
Contemplating The Human Direction 
You say “I don’t know how we lost it along the way”. I can tell you. At first it was just the two of you, like starving artists from La Boheme, in Love. But then, she was introduced to the family. She became enamoured and blinded by the glitter of its wealth, which became more important than her–or your–soul. Your creative and artistic ambitions became useless liabilities–spiritual follies in the way of the next better car, the next bigger house in the next better neighborhood. In the beginning your closest ally, she began to side against you with those in the family who derided and deplored those ambitions. She became your closest enemy, an intimate corrosive of your spirit and your most personal, profound, and sacred dreams. She was no longer the dreamy-eyed young lady you fell in Love with, but the dead-eyed philistine sedating you like a needle every time you turned to her and incessantly needling you to be done already with your childish dreams and passions and to consummate the sale of your soul into lucrative death so that she could take her rightful place in the upper crust of Philistia.
LOL…Philistia…now that little summary would be the makings of a good book Dragonstrand. That is an interesting perspective. I tend to put more blame on myself in regards to the sale of my soul into lucrative death…for in the end it is ourselves that make the choices. But, I will say that a woman (you can reverse the genders) can be an ally in the making or breaking of a man. Imagine a woman, in the context of this capitalist society that has gone corrupt and bankrupt, whom actually acted as a catalyst for a man to become a man…to really make something of himself…to drive him to go along “with his grain” instead of against it…a woman that would say…”why the hell are you waking up today to go make money at that human meat grinder…what is wrong with you…did your balls fall off?”
It’s difficult perhaps to grasp the toll it takes upon one’s psyche when one subconsciously realizes that the closest person in one’s life has given up on and betrayed one. The outward forms of “trust” and “belief” remain in place, but inwardly these forms are devoid of any true content. Devastating, to say the least. The realization of this leads one down some very convoluted and lonely paths, which I know you have traveled. Yet only the most courageous will disinter the covert truth of this scenario and act upon it in such a way as to expose its hidden ugliness and then break with it in favor of something beautiful and true. So you should be proud of what you did, and not blame yourself for what led to it.