TOkens

this week has been galvanized by change and my birthday; i am no longer of the tender, idiot stage of my 20's. when i was 22 years old i thought i met my prince, while hiking in Maine late one fall; i had started preparing my future with him even though our paths would not cross for several more months. i am lucky however as he is still in my life and one of my bestfriends; he was a token a gift i never would have expected.

tokens come in many shapes and sizes, some can be good others can be bad; i am grateful for my foolhardiness last summer. it was token, i moved in with someone i thought i could trust, that i discovered not only was lying but cheating. when i confronted him on his behavior he put my forgiveness on a timer, namely his. on the expected day, he wanted to be forgiven i was not ready and our relationship was terminated.

this post is about seeing our choices and how even bad choices can have good outcomes. i am relieved that i discovered that i was no longer in love with him before he left for his trip; i have blogged about this before see bottom. anyway, what i realized was that i didn't have a healthy sense of what love was. the way our relationship operated; i do say operated: as his maid, training his dog and made sure he had clean clothes for work and dinner waiting. conversations about feelings, issues or anything regarding our relationship was not something he could handle being the topic of discussion. they would eventually turn into tirades, emotional language that gave him very little but usurping control over what i was saying that he didn't want to hear. this i now realize was not love and could not be love.

it became a token-a gift showing me that this was not the guy i was supposed to marry. i think in many ways i was blinded by my own constant excuses for his behavior. i could tell you exactly why he had the right to berate me for standing up for myself over simple relationship issues. i walked around on thin ice; i re-call walking on this ice in europe as a kid and hearing it crack. his outbursts and anger rose often so quickly i had no place to seek cover.

as i said before tokens are usually hard to see, when it first happens. we become defensive and find reasons for what we're doing and why, when sometimes the simplest thing is to quit. i recall the day we ended-i met him for lunch and we fought in public, the way we had since we started our relationship. he sought to humiliate me, and to make me feel inferior-it was win/win for him. although he acted that day no differently than all the other times in our constant shifting thin ice.

the day i ran and discovered that i could forgive someone i thought i hated; i also realized that love was not the relationship i was in. love is an open feeling and when you truly feel it like i do for my friend i have nearly known for a decade i feel lucky. he is still my prince even though we're not married and we may never be. he simply is a token in my life because he has always been there; regardless of the curves in my road.

what last year brought me the ability to see myself; being happysingle, seeing my own past& my future-a future i thought was soo certain on cracking thin ice. i am in my 30's now and i love more people than i can count. forgiveness to me has become easy, so easy in fact that the tirade and character assisination of me i can forgive not because of love, but because he has been crying out for attention in a destructive way by sabotaging the very people he had/has in his life. i forgive him and i hope that oneday the anger,will build him inner-peace.

love is a great token, a powerful one. we can have everything we thought we had imagined, but have it not come true when our expectations become grand. love is simple, i sleep fully and deeply and am grateful for everyday someone holds the door open. conversations that extend into mornings & people that make me laugh. i no longer walk on thinning ice hearing it crack and wonder if i will fall through-only that i will have a new day,& a new chance. chances that would've escaped me had it not been for the token of a childish relationship that has shown me how truly great i can become.