Why I May Have to Break up With Santa.

  

As a child, it was almost too painful to bear when I realized that no one was coming to rescue me.

I think in all the attention given to the Divine Masculine and Feminine these days, we often overlook the paternal/maternal aspects of these archetypes.

I like what Sunyata Satchitananda has to say about the King (Father) aspect of the Divine Masculine:

“His wisdom carries a transpersonal selflessness—like a kind father. He is an agent of the divine having reverence for all life. He is benevolent, evenhanded, calm, caring and thoughtfully present…”

The same aching anxiety woke me this morning. It made my chest hurt. It has been waking me earlier and earlier every morning now—it’s the same pattern every year as we approach the holidays.

As an adult, Christmas has always been a time of dread for me.

This morning when I looked at the clock, with my hand over my heart hoping to calm the frantic, heavy beat and ease the pain, it showed 3:52 a.m., and I quickly rounded up to 4:00 a.m., so as not to make the panic worse.

That’s only one hour before the alarm would go off anyway, I reassured myself.

Instead of adding more fuel to that tight, painful fire, I have learned that when I wake up like this, I do better if instead of trying to force myself back to sleep, I make a decision on how best to see it as a gift of more time.

So I sat up, adjusted the pillows and attempted to meditate. I attempted to explore, once again, and find the source of this yearly, seasonal panic. I know it is connected to the holidays—mainly to Christmas.

Being a hypnotherapist, I have traveled to and opened so many Christmas-related recesses of my own psyche that even I roll my eyes when I begin this process all over again, when I think of even more spelunking through those twisted, dark, mind caves.

In the past and in hopes of healing this issue, I have dredged up gut wrenching, Christmastime past lifetimes of being so poor that I can’t afford anything for my children—so poor that I watch my children die of starvation while I hold them close, already grieving.

The good news about all those lights turned on in all those formerly dark caves, is that I’ve done a lot of healing around the holidays. The bad news? I’m apparently not done.

As I sat in bed in the dark, I tried to distract myself with good Christmas thoughts—the magic, the lights, the hope, Santa…

And that is when I suddenly understood the problem. I opened that mental door and Santa stepped through it in all of his kind, gentle, paternal energy, and I felt absolute rage and betrayal at his smiling, normally benign presence.

I felt betrayed by him. How dare he look so innocent, so loving, so fatherly?

In meditation mode already, I took my foot off the ranting throttle and attempted to coast, to simply let myself feel the pain, the loss, the rage—just observing, on some level, to see where it would take me, what it would present to me for healing. I felt, again, the devastating despair of learning he was not real.

Because you see, as a child, Santa was my last hope.

Growing up an abused and neglected child, Santa represented the hope that I would one day be saved. Even as a child, I had already given up on God. All that praying had not reaped one bit of difference in my life that I could see.

But Santa was God to me—only a much more jolly, happy version.

So Santa, in his all-knowing capacity would hear me asking for rescue. I knew he would save me. I mean it was right there in the song, wasn’t it? “He sees you when you’re sleeping; he knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.”

If he knew all that, then he knew I was in big trouble. He knew that I really needed his help. He knew I deserved a better life. And he delivered goodness and gifts. Surely he could deliver me from this.

As for the requisite “goodness” needed: I was good—as good as a very intelligent, quiet and creative girl-child could figure out how to be in a perverse world where the definition of that word was constantly being twisted to fit the dysfunction du jour.

“Being good” was part of the sick, crazy-making game played by the abusers. “If you’d just be good, then I wouldn’t have to do this.”

So if Santa always knew what I was thinking, then he knew I needed his help. For me he represented all that was good and normal and magical and possible.

He was Father Christmas.

I could easily slide right down into the magical, cinnamon-y, shiny, red-velvet-with-white-fuzzy-trim happiness of Christmas, the hope. I longed for a life like I imagined he could provide—firm but loving, gentle and kind.

And then came that dark, devastating, crushing time when I learned that not only would Santa not help me, he was not even real.

As I lay in the dark, trying to ignore the bright clock display across the room, I let the sense of betrayal and sadness and despair walk all over and through me again, trampling me.

It was hopeless then, final; there would be no one coming to help me.

That same crushing hopelessness I felt upon learning the truth as a child mixed with this new sense of betrayal. I had been betrayed by the archetypical Divine Masculine father figure.

You could very easily think that my problem is not with Santa/Father Christmas. And years ago I would have agreed with you. But I have done the work on my childhood and have even forgiven the abusers, have seen and grasped the bigger, cosmic design of this sad but very informative plan.

I don’t want to be around such dysfunctional people and haven’t spoken to them for years, but I am a survivor, not a victim. I have a damned good, and normally happy, life—except at Christmas time.

Later That Same Day

So now it is almost noon, and I have been awake and aware of this issue for eight hours. And I am switching tense, which as any real writer knows, is verboten. This morning I have let the emotions wash through and over me, wanting them to come up and out.

They’ve been fermenting in there for over 40 years; I don’t feel the need to hang on to them anymore.

Indeed, I’d like them to go away—not just away as in still stuck in here somewhere bumping around and bruising but buried where they can still yank me around by the proverbial nose ring, but away as in healed—done.

I’ve been through anger, sadness, loss of hope, betrayal, rage, despair—all because I feel I have lost my trust, not in men, but rather in maleness itself. And I am having particular issues with the protective, paternal type of energy.

And am I deluding myself? Have I ever had trust in maleness? Will I ever be able to look Christmas in the eye again? Will I ever be able to trust the father aspect of maleness? Or any aspect thereof?

These are the questions I am dealing with right now, as I sit and type.

I am searching for a passage inside me that leads to the place where I forgive Santa for not being real. I want to be able to forgive him for not rescuing me, a helpless child in such dire need.

Some of my favorite people are men—many of them fathers.

A Few Days Later

It’s been several days since I began writing this. I walk the talk of alternative healing in my life. I have spent those days meditating, praying, processing and ended up doing some EMDR and then also some EFT on the issue.

I have found that these tools work wonders for me.

In my quest to heal this, I have also watched several classic Christmas movies—many of them deal with father issues, I’ve noticed. I never made that connection before now.

I want to be comfortable with maleness. I want to be comfortable with the paternal aspect of maleness. More to my heart, I want to be able to love and trust maleness—of all types. I want to let go of this anger, this sense of betrayal.

I will continue to do the work, the digging, which will finally, at some point, release me from this annual, holiday-induced panic. I know I can heal this, because this is what I do.

I am the bulldog in my own life, holding onto to each process, each false belief that comes up until I have shaken it to death—until it no longer holds power over me, and I can spit it out, always surprised to see it laying there so small and limp in its benign shapelessness.

I really want to believe in the magic of Christmas again, the magic and power of fathers. I don’t want to be that cynical, bitter adult who gives up on magic and trust.

I don’t want to be Scrooge.

A Past Life Regression – Finding a Soul Mate.

 

I entered the lifetime behind a donkey sliding down a narrow, steep winding pathway on the side of a hill. It was hot, dusty and dry and daytime.

Dry, white, chalky rocks and pebbles of all sizes were clicking and rolling downhill all around and under us as I attempted to push the donkey down the hill.

My dear sweet friend Sikh (pronounced “Seek”) was pulling the donkey. He had hold of the rope that was tied around the donkey’s neck.

The donkey was sitting in the path, refusing to move. I was bent over, my body shaking with laughter, my hands under the donkey’s butt, my face necessarily pressed into his shaggy fur to get a better grip underneath him, lifting, heaving, pushing and cussing—but mostly laughing.

I was laughing so hard that I wasn’t having much effect on the donkey.

Sikh was looking at me over his right shoulder with his usual, disgusted look reserved for my antics, and that was what I was laughing at. His dark eyebrows were drawn up and together in his characteristic scowl of disapproval. He was angry with me for laughing, but I couldn’t help it. It was just too funny.

It became even funnier when I suddenly remembered the donkey’s name. It was a word that literally meant “stubborn,” but was also used figuratively as a particularly nasty expletive.

Sikh’s sweaty, dirty face was so dear to me as I looked at it over the donkey’s back for what seemed like the first time in a very long time. A part of me wanted to sit down right there on the rocky path and cry with relief and gratitude at getting to see him again. I felt a sad longing for him, like we had been apart for forever.

A part of me, though, was laughing at our donkey predicament on the narrow path—and the look on his face.

Hypnotherapy can be like that. One part of the brain is processing the inner events that seem to be in the present but that are actually the past lifetime.

Another part of the brain is kind of watching from a distance, processing information from the vantage point of the modern, true present lifetime, where we are sitting in a hypnotherapist’s office doing a past life regression.

Sikh always had that amusing effect on me. He was the serious, cautious one most of the time. I was the crazy, funny one—always the person to think up some daredevil, dangerous stunt that was likely to get us killed—or at least in trouble.

I loved Sikh like a brother—or even more so. How to describe the love I felt for him? I trusted him completely. I felt so much affection for him in his seriousness. I felt somehow responsible for him—for his happiness.

We were friends—young boys, dark skin, dark eyes and dark hair. My name seemed to be something like Anand. This was all happening in some vaguely hot, dry, “foreign” place.

We were taking some sort of drink (wine?) back to his house where there was a gathering of some sort. We were late because of this stupid, stubborn donkey, and we both knew Sikh’s father would not be happy at our lateness.

The Hypnotherapy Session

I had readily agreed to be a volunteer for a friend who was training to be a hypnotherapist. She was a novice at that point, and we started the session with the intention of doing some committee work.

So she began by doing a standard progressive relaxation induction. At some point, however, my brain jumped suddenly into this lifetime with me laughing and pushing a donkey down a hill behind Sikh.

I tried to ignore the donkey and Sikh and follow her instructions, and somewhere along this mind path I had picked up my Inner Advisor (IA) too, so when my friend asked me if I was standing at the committee room door and was ready to go in, I turned to my IA and asked, “Should we tell her or should we go into the committee room?”

My IA smiled, feeling like an accomplice in some crazy conspiracy, and told me to tell her where I really was.

“Uhm…that’s not where we are…”

I felt some anxiety come off her as she calmly asked, “Okay…where are you?” I could tell she was just trying to kind of roll with it even though I could also still feel her anxiety.

I began laughing then and told her where I was and what was happening.

She began to ask more questions to ascertain the reason for the sudden jump into this lifetime. A part of me was curious about that too. Mostly though, another part of me was just so happy to be with Sikh again that I simply wanted to stay with him and experience the joy of getting to see him again.

We finally, with much sweat, cussing and laughing (on my part), got the donkey and its cargo to his house. There were happy people everywhere—inside and outside the house.

His father was nowhere to be seen, but his mother acknowledged our arrival and thanked us, sending us off to have fun there too. No one seemed to care that we were late.

Indeed, a part of my brain realized, there had been no actual time limitation. This same part of my brain went on to analyze this lifetime the way my young boy self, actually in that lifetime, never had.

Sikh was a worrier—sometimes even creating dark drama where there was none. He was analytical and logical—pessimistic most of the time, contrasting starkly to my love of fun, frolic, mayhem and laughter.

I loved him anyway—maybe even more so because of all of this; he was my best friend.

When Sikh’s mother sent us off with a smile and head tousles, I began to feel a profound sadness, because this gathering was reminding me of another gathering at this same house—a gathering in that lifetime’s future.

My friend was continuing to ask pinpointing questions, and as she did, I began to know why I had come to this lifetime. I suddenly wanted to not be there anymore.

“I got him killed,” I began to cry. “It was my fault he died.”

“No, no, no, no, no; it can’t be true—no.” I was sobbing, heart-broken, guilty, inconsolable.

It seems in that lifetime that I was always the one breaking the rules in the name of creating fun. I was the one who had come up with our usual MO, something we had been doing all of our young lives.

We had this understanding, Sikh and I, that whenever we were sent on an errand, we knew we would dash about the errand as breakneck as possible, because that would give us more time, away from our families and homes, for goofing off—for finding interesting things to amuse us. If we got the errand done quickly enough, no one would know we also had time for a detour or two.

This is how I got Sikh killed.

My mind fast-forwarded to the evening when Sikh’s father sent us on an errand that would take us past a small lake we liked to swim in. When we heard the directive, we looked at each other and knew the drill.

Laughing, we took off running, already turning a deaf ear to the, “be careful” and “go straight there and come straight back”—the usual send-offs from our mothers.

To our credit, we nearly always accomplished our errands before detouring. It was no different this time. We accomplished the delivery of Sikh’s father’s message, then we raced to the lake on our way back to Sikh’s house.

We stripped down to skin and jumped in—couldn’t have wet clothes convicting us upon our return home.

And after one of his dives, Sikh did not surface.

It was beginning to get dark; the sun had already set some time ago and the light was fading. I dove time after time—frantically, crying—snot and tears mixing with the lake water.

I screamed his name; I cursed him for not appearing; I begged him to show himself; I bargained with god; I prayed; I ranted at him, the gods, myself, almost drowning myself I was so exhausted.

I finally gave up diving and ran to his house, bursting in upon the group, naked, wild and crying.

We were searching in the black water, candles and lanterns of some sort on the banks and held high by family members and friends—many more had joined us.

Finally, one of Sikh’s older brothers brought his naked body up and out of the dark lake.

The women set to wailing at this sight and their mother fell to her knees when presented with this affront, this horror. His limp, blue body was so small and deflated in his brother’s arms.

The contrast between the two bodies, one small, blue and still, the other so large and vibrant and colorful, was obscene and shocking.

I felt a weird, sick anger at his older brother for being so alive while Sikh was so still.

I also felt the guilt settle squarely on my young shoulders in that lifetime with me standing on the bank of that black lake. I felt it sink in and grow roots. I had caused this. It was my fault.

Sikh would never have done anything like this without my suggestion, or more to the facts, my persuasion, because I had nearly always had to talk him out of his doubts, out of his worry at detouring from the normal, sane plan.

So I had jumped into this lifetime to observe and disassemble this guilt.

As that lifetime progressed within my friend’s pointed questions, I began to learn that no one blamed me for Sikh’s death. I was able to feel his parent’s emotions, and I felt only sadness there—both for his death and for their loss—but also for my loss. They knew how close we had been.

As I processed, as she asked me questions, I began to feel guilt’s grip on my throat loosen and then finally fall away. I felt my breath settle lower in my belly; I asked for Sikh’s forgiveness, sending it out into the Universe. I felt only love and warm regard in answer.

I felt me forgive myself. I sent my love for Sikh up and out, hoping it would find him somewhere, in some lifetime, some timeline.

As my friend was finally counting me back up and into the present there in the office, my Inner Advisor turned to me and said with a smile, “He is returning to you this lifetime. Get ready.”

And my heart went into a wild, wiggly dance of joy, gratitude and anticipation at this unexpected and welcomed news.

Soul Mates

Originally published at elephant journal as Don’t Miss Your Soul Mate Flags

It can be exhilarating to meet a soul mate—that feeling of having known them forever as I look into their eyes is familiar and strange all at the same time.

It can be pleasant, funny, loving and soft. Or it can be like two freight trains colliding head-on. It can also be hauntingly sad.

I have met and loved several soul mates—in many different forms and relationships. Years ago, a soul mate came into my life and only stayed for a few weeks; it was very intense and somewhat confusing. I came home to a Dear Jane letter. I have neither seen nor heard from him again.

One was only in my life for a week or so, before vanishing back into the universe again, exiting my stage to step onto another one somewhere else. This relationship was so intense and immediate, that we burned the karma quickly and completely, no longer romantically/sexually attracted to each other by the end of those short days, but still loved each other.

Upon meeting, we tried to play by society’s rules. We really did. But we couldn’t.

Within a day of meeting we were naked in my house, breathing each other’s breath again, just like before in other places and times. His mouth was familiar, his kisses exquisite; they felt like coming home. I have not had such beautiful, satisfying kisses since. Just the memory of them can make my breath change tempo.

As soon as we immediately, easily and mutually rotated into one specific and unusual sexual position, we looked at each other in exposed recognition, “Having you right here, right like this, is all I have been able to think about since I met you yesterday.”

I could only agree. It was exactly how I had seen us together too.

This was a man for whom I had no attraction whatsoever until I looked into his eyes. When I looked at his body, I felt no attraction. When our eyes met each time, however, I fell in love all over again. I quite literally, for the first time in my life, felt weak in the knees every time he looked at me.

All I wanted to do was be as close to him as possible as much as possible. It always felt like he would be taken from me. I felt almost desperate to love him as much and as intensely as possible in what felt like the very short time we had together.

Perhaps needless to say, we spent most of our time together naked—talking, crying, laughing, making love, f*cking; it was intense, beautiful, raw and cathartic.

We split amicably a few days later, having processed through whatever it was we needed to process together. We gave each other those karmic gifts and were done. We did, indeed, it turned out, only have a few days. But this time we were not torn from each other. This time we truly were complete at the end of our time together.

I have come across many soul mates in many different lifetimes over the years. As a hypnotherapist, I find them all the time—mine and for clients too—in past lives and in this current life. So much so, that I had to change my definition of “soul mate” at some point.

 I now define “soul mate” as a soul with whom I have had so many meaningful encounters in so many other lifetimes and dimensions, that I feel I know them almost instantly upon meeting them again. They feel so familiar, like family, like instant friends. We can play just about any role for each other too: friend, lover, child, grandchild. I think most folks think of soul mates only as lovers, but I have found that is not necessarily the case.

From so many years of working with past lives, it is my understanding that we, as pure souls/energy, get together before each lifetime and kind of plan out how we are going to meet each other. We set up “flags” for ourselves, so that we recognize the significance of the meeting.

A “flag” is anything that happens in our current life that grabs our attention enough to make us stop and take a second look, or make us become aware that we need to pay special attention to someone/thing. Flags often look or feel like déjà vu, or like something weird and surreal. It gets our attention. It causes us to “wake up,” to come up out of the habitual, treadmill, hazy state we usually coast along in.

“I knew I had known you before, because when I saw you, time seemed to slow down and everything was moving in slow motion,” was what one lover said to me, explaining the flag he experienced on seeing me for the first time.

I have met and loved soul mates that feel like friendly companions—like the only reason we agreed to meet again was just because we love and miss each other and want to be together again. We don’t necessarily have any big lessons for each other. We just want to give each other the gift of resting into a nice, easy, calm relationship.

The ones that are heart breaking, though, are the ones where timing is an issue. We meet them as planned, we experience the flag and know it is important, but we have made past decisions that prevent us from being lovers.

It is not that I love my current lover less after I meet a soul mate, but I can very clearly feel the missed opportunity with the soul mate and must accept it—maybe even mourn its passing. I have never broken up with a current lover to be with a new soul mate, but I have been very attracted to and tempted by that idea.

It can be so sad when it happens—to meet them, recognize them and maybe even admit and discuss it with them, but to be unable or unwilling to actually do anything about it.

Brian Weiss, the famous hypnotherapist who has written several books on the subject, writes about this in Only Love is Real, a book about hypnosis and soul mates finding each other again.

When I think of them, those unrequited soul mates, I can still feel the sudden sting of recognition, how my heart seems to fly up out of my chest into the sky when I look into their eyes, followed quickly by the descending realization that we will not be lovers this lifetime, the heartache, and finally the soft longing and sadness that still linger for paths not taken.

Of course you are thinking, “But you can still be friends with them, right?” Yes, that is possible, but I find it can be difficult, because as the friendship grows, so does the longing. Have you ever had a friend that you fell in love with, only to know (or find) that they cannot or do not or will not reciprocate? It is not fun for anyone involved.

My wish for you, Dear Reader? May your flags be obvious and your timing and decisions always impeccable. Godspeed.

 

 

Grace is a Certified Hypnotherapist and Registered Psychotherapist in Ft. Collins, CO, USA. She sees clients and facilitates Divine Feminine Hypnotherapy workshops for women. She’s a flaming, Earth-loving, tree-hugging, save-the-Planet, believes-in-faeries, bike-riding, card-carrying, spiritual but not religious, hippie cowgirl liberal poet—yep, they do exist. You can find her blog here and her creations here. You can also connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.

Past Life Regressions in Hypnotherapy

Keep in mind that Hypnosis, in general, and especially past lifetime regressions, may take practice before you get the hang of it and feel comfortable enough with the process and how it feels to be able to have a full, vivid experience. Although some people will go instantly into a deep Hypnosis and then to a lifetime. We never really know until we give it a try. Even Brian Weiss, the author of Many Lives, Many Masters, and recognized expert in past life Hypnosis, admits it took him quite some time before he had a past life experience of his own, even though he had been helping his clients do that for a long time.

Your mind is 15 – 20% conscious and 80 – 85% subconscious, and when the conscious and subconscious minds disagree, the subconscious thought/belief will always win. When the subconscious supports and agrees with your conscious goals, you unleash your maximum potential. And hypnosis is recognized as one of the most effective ways to affect the subconscious mind. Ninety percent of men, women and children easily learn hypnosis.  It is an education-communication system that allows the conscious and subconscious to communicate and then believe the same message and be on the same page.  Hypnosis automatically reduces stress, creates greater clarity, improves focus and enhances subconscious functions. You can even teach your body to regulate ‘automatic’ responses like blood pressure, wound healing, etc.

Past life regressions, in Hypnotherapy, can be very helpful and are always fascinating, in my opinion.  Many times, when working on healing a specific issue, and we ask the subconscious to take us to the origins of that issue, we will go to a past life, b/c that is where that issue first began. In our quest to heal the issue by going to it’s birth/origination, we end up in another lifetime, working on the same issue in that life that the client is working on in this lifetime. The issue often gets passed on to each lifetime until the lesson is learned or it is no longer needed. When the issue gets healed in the past life during the Hypnotherapy session, it is often healed in the current life.

Some reasons to visit past lives include but are not limited to:
Find the source of
~ A fear or phobia
~ Karma with a specific person
~ An aliment, disease or pain
~ A limiting belief                                                                                                                                           ~ To find their current friends/lovers/family in other lives and explore certain dynamics of those relationships
~ To alleviate or ease the fear of death—this will often ease the grieving process, as the client then knows their loved one who recently crossed over is not really ‘dead.’

Something that might be important to remember is that most people have had many other lives – most probably as a human, but some people have been other species in dimensions other than the Earth plane. We also have all been both male and female at different times in different lives. We may have not always been the upstanding, fun, good people that we are now – we have done just about everything there is to do in those lives – this nearly always includes killing and hurting people. Usually the people/souls closest to us this lifetime have either killed us, or we have killed them – usually both, at one time or another.

So don’t be shocked if you jump into a lifetime where things don’t seem to be going well for you, b/c these are usually the types of things that have been passed from those lifetimes into our current one and that we are needing to work on.

It is also very possible to access “good” lives – lives that were easy and fun and where we had everything we needed and had a great childhood, etc. I will sometimes have clients visit this type of lifetime if they are having a bad time of it this lifetime in order to get them to remember what that feels like. We can also ask ourselves, in other lifetimes, what knowledge and wisdom we, in that other life, have to offer us now, in this lifetime, to help us succeed at something.

In doing past life regressions, it is nearly always possible to access “between” lifetimes – when we have died in a past life and have crossed over. It is in this state that we often receive very high, big-picture type of information for the client’s immediate use. Accessing future lives is also a possibility.

With any of this, and as always, don’t hesitate to contact me for more information, as I am happy to share what I have learned with you.
cooley.grace@gmail.com

Heal on.

a very potential friend

I saw you for the first time in my office building – if you can call the old, remodeled-into-offices house where my office is an office “building”.  You were looking at a couple of the vacant offices for rent. I came up from my basement office to get my next client, b/c I heard you up there walking around and assumed it was my client. So I was surprised to go into the waiting room and find you instead, walking around looking, talking to someone on your cell phone. I smiled a toothless, polite, slight “hello” and “excuse me” for looking at you while you’re on the phone b/c I thought you were my client. And I went to sit on the back porch to wait on my client, b/c it had started to rain and smelled so wonderful out there.  And the present-time synchronicity is that as I was thinking and then typing the sentence just before this one, Pandora, several tabs down, was playing a song in which someone was repeating the phrase “it had started to rain”.  And now Nellie McKay is singing P.S. I Love You and sang:  “…yesterday we had some rain.”

You came out on the porch and we said hello and were making polite, stranger conversation, b/c I treat everyone the same:  like they are my friend or a very potential friend. Then you turned to me to say something and our eyes met and I felt a little jolt – like I had been zapped by electricity (and as a former house renovator, I actually know what that feels like, having changed many a light switch and wall outlet).  I fell into your eyes – kinda – it’s hard to explain. I felt comforted and electrified by your eyes all at the same time – how is that possible?

Just writing about it now is birthing butterflies in my gut. You volunteered information about yourself without me asking:  you had just moved here, what your business is, etc. I tried to keep up, trying not to look like the dumbstruck person I felt like. We made lots more eye contact during this exchange, and it was difficult to hear your words. Your energy was so loud to me that it was drowning out your words. I heard you say you were leaving to go and look at other offices over on Stover St. As those words penetrated my brain, I felt like a child whose first, bright, proverbial balloon had just been popped.  Please don’t go, I wanted to say, yet I had a client that would soon show up any second; she was late. Please come back, I also wanted to say.

It felt like you would rent in my building. I tried not to latch on too tightly to that idea, though – or onto you.

I saw you again yesterday before my first client. It had been over a week since that first encounter, and I was really glad I hadn’t latched on too tightly to my reaction to that eye contact thing. I was already thinking you had rented the Stover space. It probably was a lot nicer – my building/house is so old and has plenty of weird little, old-house quirks:  uneven floors pretending to be normal by a covering of modern carpet, molding and trim that run into impossible angles and then just give up and end abruptly without a miter, etc.  I was thinking things like:  I give it up to the Universe. It was not what I thought it was. I was mistaken about that energy/eye contact thing, it wasn’t meant to be, etc.

So I was surprised to see you yesterday. I noticed again, as I approached the building and saw you come out, that there is nothing about you, physically, that particularly stands out for me. Except your clothes seemed very rumpled. It made me wonder. And I thought:  I am mistaken; I imagined it. But then you looked at me and smiled, and I felt that jolt again, and I fell into your eyes again – or whatever that thing is that keeps happening when our eyes hook up.

“So you took the office?” I ask, trying to appear normal and just nice and not like the energy stalker I feel like, b/c I am receiving your energy again, and it is, once again, very loud.  I am trying, again, to not get too excited about this news. “Yes,” you say, “I’m here,” sounding and feeling like you moved in days ago. Where was I?  I’ve been here nearly every day since we met that first time. My client shows up, and there is more eye contact and smiles, as the client and I start down the stairs.

The horribly wonderful thing? B/c you are in the same office building, I have the potential to see you every day.

This morning I put way too much thought into what I would wear to the office today…