Walking, Talking Contradiction

I feel like an enigma to myself sometimes.

I try not to be skeptical in regard to love and romance. I mean, really...if I didn't believe in it, I wouldn't write it, but there are times when I wonder how much of it is a great lost art and find myself scoffing at the cheesiness of movies and stories that I would normally love and need a box of tissues for. It makes me question why I'm straddling the fence between being a hopeless romantic and a cold-hearted cynic.

It's then I start to wonder when I lost my touch. I used to have it...I would swear to it! I used to know how to flirt and get a response. It was second nature- not that I was some sort of seductress or anything...but I had my fair share of men who were attracted to me in my youth.

So what happened???

It bewilders me how I can describe the perfect kiss, the pulse pounding first flirtation, the soul binding connection of a love scene, but when I try to flirt with my husband, it falls flat and isn't taken seriously.

Of course, that could be because I am confusing fantasy and reality—Youthful ignorant bliss with the sober naked truth about relationships between men and women. I'm feeling a bit jaded today.

I'd like to strip away the delusions and find the purity and beauty of love again, for I fear I've lost it somewhere beneath the layers of motherhood, of being a "spouse" more than a lover, and the simple complexities of living life day to day without giving any real thought or meditation to really LIVING and FEELING.

I live in this void- caught somewhere between this paradox of ambiguity....Accepting that I feel nothing most of the time but a sense of responsibility to everyone around me but myself.

When life slows down momentarily and I find pause to really contemplate where I am, who I am, and what I'm doing with my life, I find myself wishing I could feel the way I have before- in the past.

I wish to feel the freedom and wild abandon I once did when I loved without reservation- when I loved with all my heart without question. When a flirty touch of the hand or a quirky smile could set my pulse racing and looking into the eyes of the man I loved could nearly pound my heart right out of my chest because we belonged to each other and we both KNEW it without a shadow of a doubt. It was destiny- fate....

The soft pressure of his lips on mine could send a quake through me—a quickening—and when his hand rested over my left breast at the very same moment he looked deep into my eyes, I knew he could feel my heart beating in time with his, forever beautiful, forever bound to one another. It was hard to separate where one of us ended and the other began, but I lost that somewhere.

I believe in love- I really do- I believe in the happily-ever-after kind and I believe in soul-mates, but I also know that losing your soul-mate destroys a part of you and it screws up your ability to believe in those happily-ever-afters. Maybe that's why I find myself mocking true love and romance so often. Maybe that's why I sometimes struggle so hard when I'm writing because I'm not sure I believe it anymore and I don't understand why I bother to write about it because it feels like ancient mythology to me. Maybe that's why I lost my mojo- my touch.

So now—when my husband doesn't take me serious when I flirt with him, I feel like the brunt of a really bad joke. I want to feel needed—wanted—accepted and desired. I want to feel that ethereal glow and the beauty of a deep abiding connection again, but instead I get teased.

Nothing hurts an already damaged heart more than being scoffed and poked at. Or worse yet- disregarded as silly foolishness...especially by the one who is supposed to guard and protect that heart forevermore, who's supposed to understand that human touch and interaction is a necessity for the heart to carry on. Maybe it's neediness—desperation—but it matters.

It really does...even to a walking, talking contradiction....