Black holes and stars.

Some days I wake up in a panic. My heart is racing and my mind is sprinting toward the finish line in some sort of self-deprecating marathon. My self esteem is in the trash can and my outlook on life is as bright as a black hole. These mornings I reach for my pills.

I had one of those dreams again. They don’t happen often…the ones where I see him. In this one I ran into him in a restaurant. I saw an empty table and somehow I knew that he had been sitting there. I turned to flee the establishment and the potential awkward encounter and there he was, right behind me.

My heart breaks a little. Not because I miss him. I feel like “we” served our purpose but I miss those moments that made me believe that someone could love me, because I never felt worthy of someone else’s love. We were not a good match at all, but I can clearly remember fragments of time where our connection felt like the universe itself had taken its hands and bound us together with an invisible rope made of stars, hope, and dedication.

I remember when I would cook or bake. He’d be right there beside me. He’d clean up behind me. Be the taster. And he always loved everything. Maybe in reality he didn’t, but he made me believe that he did. For someone with such fragile self esteem, it was like two warm arms wrapping around me to let me know that I wasn’t as broken as I thought I was. It was a gentle voice saying that I deserved love and acceptance.

I was bitter about a lot of things when our relationship ended. Most of those things were influenced by personal demons that I’ve carried around since childhood. He wasn’t the bad guy. He was kind and supportive, and did the best he could with someone who a lot of the time was a destructive hurricane of emotion.

I’m by no means a “glass half full” type of person. I’m still repairing damage that was dealt to me many years ago, but the connection that I was able to make with one person offers me a glimpse of hope that there’s something beautiful within me. I’m not all fractured bones and broken puzzle pieces.

Gary Zukav said, “Eventually you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is.”  Love started to heal my battle wounds. I’ll remain forever grateful for being graced with its presence. Perhaps I’ll find that kind of love again one day.

Until then I’ll hold onto that invisible rope and remember those stars that I carried in my heart.