This One Doesn't Need a Title

When I was a little girl, all of my favorite stories had an epic romance in them. Disney movies, old Hollywood musicals and Broadway shows...they owned my heart. I 1000% believed. I felt it. And I fully expected love. I believed it was natural that I should find my own Prince Charming, my own epic love story. I was seemingly born for it, I felt like I was built for that kind of love. How could I not be? Anybody who felt things as deeply as me would only be putting all that feeling to waste otherwise. I was a huge fan of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, anything that showed me how a woman could be smart and passionate and romantic at the same time. Because that was me. I had three books with complex love stories published as well. My sense of love, romance, destiny, was untouchable. Until it wasn't.

No one was more surprised than yours truly when the lovelight dimmed and went out, believe me. I wouldn't have thought it was even possible! Somebody like me? Become jaded and cynical about love? Unfathomable. Such a thing could never happen. Until it did.

But rewind a minute. After my relationship in Missouri ended, my inner romantic still lived on. Even after feeling lost in the void of a new decade`s identity crisis, grieving the death of a loved one, my own struggles with depression, a short-lived relationship that didn't go very far, and a whole bunch of fruitless dating all around it, my inner romantic was really embedded quite solidly. I still believed in the inevitability of my own love story. So I was shocked as anyone to find that apparently, even my inner romantic had her limits. I think a lot of us have that happen inevitably - that experience that screws us up so deeply and so badly in so many very personal ways that it changes the internal structure of our spirit for a time. For a few years, that happened to me. I encountered my own personal Achilles heel injury to the heart.

Now, I know I'm hardly the only woman who has suffered a major trauma to their system in some kind of screwed up relationship. But, for whatever reason, I never imagined, in my younger years, that I would ever be a member of this group. I was too smart, I told myself - too discerning - and such things could never happen to me. I would never let them. I would never get myself into a situation that could potentially damage me. That was something other women did, but I had too much dignity and I was smarter than that. Until I wasn't.

I came out the other end of a colossal mess completely altered. Every deep and passionate romantic notion I'd ever had, every concept I'd written into song, and novels, and my own dreams, became moot. I was numb. I felt nothing. I couldn't stand to watch a movie with romantic themes. I gagged at them. I hated love songs. I couldn't tolerate the sight of a romance novel. I couldn't feel any of the necessary emotions anymore. Only annoyance and mild disgust. Something in me had broken. Something was wrong. Even quite some time removed from the aforementioned situation, my heart remained the same. Closed off. Void of any romantic feelings or desires whatsoever. Something that had once been such a huge and inspiring part of my entire being had gone out, snuffed like the tail end of a candle. I had no way of knowing if there was some smoldering ember buried under the ashes somewhere. If there was, I couldn't find it. I wanted there to be one though, I wanted it so much. I just couldn't feel anything but hollow and empty where those emotions used to be. I wanted to WANT to date. I wanted myself back whole. I wanted to feel something....ANYthing of desire or attraction. But I couldn't. I talked to my best girlfriends about it. I even voiced my concerns to my little sister. Considering that she's a nun, she listened patiently with love and prayers, though it was hardly her forte. I even prayed. Yes, I prayed to God to help me get my groove back. I did that. And it didn't work. Until it did.

I don't know how, not certain why, and I'm not really sure when, either. But one day I seemed to wake up, and it was back. I was back. It was all back. I could swoon again, I could feel sappy things. I could desire love and passion. I could fathom writing love stories once more. Not only could I tolerate a romantic movie, I sought them out. Apparently there HAD been an ember under all that soot and it had roared back to life all on its own. I guess it had only been incubating, licking its wounds, growing some scar tissue. When I realized what was happening, I excitedly told my sister and my best friends. One of them said, "I'm glad to know you have healed". And even though I knew it was true, her statement struck me as so strange. I couldn't believe my core self could actually have been that damaged. I'd heard other people talk about such things, but the fact that it had actually occurred within my own psyche, that I had changed so much, and had zero control over it until it had chosen to resolve itself, was quite the phenomenon. Human hearts can truly heal from trauma and pain and recover themselves when given the safe space and time. I found this remarkable. Miraculous even. And now I'm thinking about writing love stories again. And songs. And I'm thinking about what I want for my own romantic life as well. More than thinking... I'm feeling. I had been so afraid that these passionate parts of me were lost. And they were...but only until they weren't.

Peace,
Jen