Passion

I have never seen the movie Serendipity but D4 was watching it on TV this afternoon and I caught the end of it. I basically know the premise, something about destiny and finding the one person in this world to love. In any case, the guy in it was going to get married, settling for someone other than his soul mate that he couldnt find and he decided against it. His best man is like, oh good, because instead of writing a best man speech, i wrote an obituary for you. what? yeah because your soul was going to die if you married that girl who was not your soul mate.

Then the best man says, you know the greeks dont write obituaries they just ask one question when someone dies... did he have passion?

I spent the morning reading letters that Hubby had written me from Boot Camp and then all the months we were seperated and I discovered some really important things that I had forgotten.

We were bad. If I didnt have 4 children who would be horrified by more information than that I would clue you in... but for real we did some crazy stuff.

Is passion the same as lust?

Why did I think we were so grown up when our letters just proved how immature and unrealistic we were? I wanted a baby 5 minutes after we were married. Why? We were 18 and 19, just children ourselves and yet we, or should I say, I wanted desperately to have something that was just ours to love and care for. We could barely take care of ourselves at the time and yet there we were just 6 months later, pregnant and 9 months after that, parents.

Hubby did like hugs at one time and perhaps they were saved just for me but... again where have i failed my family that they do not appreciate a good hug from someone? Hugging is intimate, it creates a closeness that brings you together. I love to hug my family but they hate it so I try to control it. I love to hug my cousins and they are all great huggers too. When we get together and hug, it lasts minutes because neither of us wants to let go first. We hug each other tight and long because we have to make up for all the time we havent hugged. I would kill for a hug from my cousin Janice or Dawn right now.

Hubby told me he loved me after we were together for 2 weeks. I didnt remember that. In fact I thought I told him at 1 month and he didnt respond. That is how I remember it, apparently my memory was flawed because I found a letter today that said "I dont know if you know this because I never told you but I love you" The letter was dated August 15, 1984. Our official going out date is July 30th, 1984. So he loved me that quick. And for this long. I still find it hard to believe that this summer we will have been together for 25 years. And known each other for a little longer than that, maybe 2 years before. It's hard to love someone for this long, yet we have done it,so far, you know except for the snoring.

When we were together for like 3 months I couldnt stand how nice he was to me and I wanted the relationship to end. In my defense I think my parents constant fighting scarred me from truly appreciating when someone was being nice to me and I equated niceness with weakness not strength like I now believe it is. He wrote me a beautiful letter asking me what I wanted from him. Did I want him to leave me alone or could we still be together? I think it said "If you can still see us together we can go back to making more beautiful memories like the ones we have already made" He left a white stuffed bear on my car at work and when I asked him how he knew if maybe someone stole it off my car, he said "I waited in the parking lot to make sure you got it" I still didnt think I could live with someone so nice and we were apart for like 3 months until I came to my senses. I cannot for the life of me remember what made me appreciate him but I am thankful that I did because my life with him is something that I dont think I could have lived without. He has made me into a better person and besides the four amazing daughters I have, he has brought so much love and joy to my world, snoring and all.

Our early days together were filled with passion(or lust)I cant tell the difference. And so much constant confirming how much in love we were and how much we couldnt live without each other. We said it all the time and begged each other in an unspoken way to confirm to each other how important we were in each others lives. It was so desperate and so immature but yet so filled with love and caring. It is hard to explain and yet I am compelled to explain it. All we had was each other and that is how we wanted it.

We spent many months apart and contrary to popular belief, absence does not always make the heart grow fonder. Sometimes it plays tricks on your mind and makes you believe that life is just fine without that person. I always had trouble being alone and in my senior year of high school after hubby left for the Navy, I was lost and sad and desperate for company. I tried hanging out with hubbys friends and lets just say I didnt realize that boys could be so disgusting to each other. More than one of them hit on me, more than one time and then told hubby that it was me who hit on them. Needless to say we were not friends much longer and I felt more alone than ever.

I was fighting with a lot of people my senior year in high school and couldnt wait to get out. I tried to graduate early but the principal of my school said I should stay to enjoy the senior activities. I wished him dead every day of the rest of that year and low and behold it finally worked and he had a heart attack the night before we graduated. Sickly I did not feel sad nor do I feel any regret now. Yes the message is dont piss me off. My voodoo spells work if I put my mind to it and since I havent slept in over a week, I have plenty of time for spells.

I digress.

Love can start at any time. I dont think there is an official time when you can safely say I love you and know for sure that the other person feels the same way or will say it back. Love changes so much that yes at 2 weeks you can feel something that seems like love. It starts off with passion and passion is as intense as love but it doesnt last. Passion is something that burns within you and replaces loneliness with a feeling that fills you up. It feels like love but it fades. Passion is great while things are good. Passion is quick to flee when things are bad. It is hard to feel passionate about anything when the toilets are overflowing and the kids have the croup and there isnt enough money to pay the bills. Or when you are overweight or have lost the perkiness in your boobs by breastfeeding too many damn kids. Or day in day out you go through the motions and dont have any time alone to rekindle the passion. It is hard to keep it going and that is why relationships fail. Because ultimately the only relationship that will last is a deep and permanent friendship, one that is cultivated over time.

If you cannot talk to your significant other about your hopes, dreams and fears now you will never be able to do it later. It needs to be there right from the beginning. Trust.. I trust that I can tell him my deepest darkest thoughts and he will be able to hear them from me. Really hear me say things that are important to me even if as a primitive man he only has enough blood to use for one organ and he chooses to use it for his brain when I need him to.

Passion is replaced by love, love is created by friendship. Time goes by and our love is changing, always changing. Did he have passion? Of course at one time we all have had passion. Did we think it was love? Sure we did, but hubby and I, we were lucky enough to have more than that. We were friends. We reached out of our loneliness and we held on to each other and through all the tornadoes and collapses we held on. We were so young and so naive and yet we both wanted the same things. We wanted it all, the friendship, the passion, the love, we wanted it and we wanted to make it grow. We built our life on it and over the years as things got harder, it was our passion for our friendship that made it last. It was our passion for respect that made it last.

Through all the letters i read this morning I remembered things I had forgotten about our relationship. How desperate we were to make it work. How us against the world we made our life together. How deep passion has grown into love, love that transcends time and distance. Distance forced us to evaluate the realness of it. We didnt have the luxury of blind passion, we had the luxury of long precious letters. Letters that can be reread when the going gets tough and the passion seems to have faded.

i havent looked at those letters in a long time and since this has been a seriously sucky week I am glad I looked at them today. It reminded me of quite a few things that I needed to see.

First, we are way better parents than our parents were, because for real, when I flew out to california at 17 years old and had my pocketbook stolen that first night and had to ask for help, what the hell were my parents thinking? they were so irresponsible in letting me go. and i was so young and stupid to think that i should be allowed.

Second, we made it despite some stupid mistakes. And I worry so much lately(which is why i cant sleep)and I spend my nights thinking how will my kids survive in this world. How will D1 find a job in this economy, can D2 really continue along partying her way through Europe, D3, oh forget about that, my anxiety over her ranges from decisions I made years ago to have her skip a grade to whether or not she will be ok next year in college to why wont they let her go to All State Nyssma, and D4, I worry that with the way things are going i will not be strong enough to continue my stalking of her when its needed and necessary.

But my kids will make it too. They have a good base and they will survive like we did, making their own stupid mistakes and going on, because they have to, they have passion for life, and that is what you need in the moments of darkness.

Third, we didnt have facebook, we didnt have text messaging, we had letters, hand written that i can go back and look at. So I can remember. when the going gets tough I can take those letters out of their precious place in my closet and hold them in my hands and remember what I was doing when I held those letter 24 years ago. I forgot we were that young, so full of life, so incapable of listening to our parents wisdom. We bared our souls to each other, leaving us raw and exposed and together we healed our wounds so that we could become the people we wanted to, the people we have grown into because of each others tenderness in caring for the other when it was needed.

Fourth, we started off with nothing and amidst the chaos of our life we have built something that is unique and precious. We accomplished what very few people have. We are in our 40's, we have amazing children that are out paving their way in the world and we love each other still. I dont know that the things we said in those letters could ever or should ever be repeated but it was fun to look back and remember how little we had and how much we have now.

I stay up nights wondering what I did wrong and why I didnt notice it sooner. Why at 41 years old do I feel incapable of handling my children and how at 41 am I going to be the mom I was years ago, planning special things, doing for everyone equally? Where did my passion go? How can I get it back?

I found my soul mate. I never doubted for a second that we would be able to make it through. In the old letters I found today, there was desperation, there was immaturity, there was lust and neediness but underneath all that was passion for a life that we longed to have. And we do.

and all because two people fell in love. At 2 weeks. And forever.