.. Maybe we'll live and learn; maybe we'll crash and burn. Maybe you'll stay, maybe you'll leave, maybe you'll return. Maybe you'll never find, maybe we won't survive. But maybe we'll grow, we never know, baby you and I, we're just ordinary people, we don't know which way to go…
-- "Ordinary People" as recorded by John Legend

You love her. She completes you, makes your world round and full. She understands you, better than you understand yourself most of the time. Your Selves are molded together; she pumps your blood, you support her organs, you and she breathe on the same beat and feed good stuff to one another's soul. She thinks your thoughts; you finish her sentences, even read her mind. You feel her touch, hear her breath, smell her scent even when she's far away; she's all over you. You see inside her and find what you need to just be. She's your strength, your security, and the place you find your truest, easiest Self. You grow with her; come alive with her; create, advance, and improve because of her. She is you, the woman God ordained and appointed for you; the one to whom you have given your rib.

But, good Lord, she infuriates you so badly sometimes that all you want to do is snatch that rib back and chew the gristle into little itty bitty pieces, then spit it out, sit on the couch, and watch a game or a Clint Eastwood movie! Geez, this woman!

But, then, you know you can't live without her. So you just go to another room or sleep on the couch. Or, maybe you just hang up the phone, don't call for a day or so. After your frustration subsides, you pick right back up where you left off loving her. And she loves you so she's there to receive you... until the next time, when it happens all over again. John Legend sings, "Sometimes it's heaven sent, [then] we head back to hell again, we kiss and we make up on the way."

And so love goes…

The love of fantasy, the light-hearted, sugar-coated things that you grew up believing about love and relationships fade in the throes of living love in reality. It's not all roses and daisies. It's not picture perfect, and sometimes the picture is so out of focus and indistinguishable, you wonder is this love at all. Your relationship has no blueprint. There is no instruction manual, only reminiscences of love you've seen or tried in the past. Your really don't know which way to go.

We bring a lot to our relationships. Sometimes we're emotionally healthy; most times we aren't. Sometimes we're bullheaded and selfish, and crack under the pressure and responsibilities love places over us. But sometimes the weight of love is what we need to stay grounded. Sometimes the up and down is what keeps us attuned to one another and fighting for the life of one another. And while, on a good day, love only makes sense in your head, it's up to you and her to make love look like and work the way you need it to. No guidebooks, no standards or true archetypes. Just you and she, ordinary people who love each other, trying to figure out which way to go.

Sadiqqa © 2007