Where's the keys?

My soul has been bugging me to share my journey over the last year. You know how those souls are, hard to ignore. So in honor of all soul's day, here it goes:

Have you heard of those rituals where you marry yourself? Well, I did the marriage to myself  thing over a decade ago but I don't think it really took. Frankly, by now, I would have divorced myself if I could have found the right lawyer. At least until very recently. Within the last week there has been a tectonic plate shift and something within has finally begun to emerge from the goo. Something that feels unbroken, not defective, dare I say, whole? My  quest last year was my need for a “w”. I was running around as a big hole and realized I was just a “w" away from whole. I’m finally closing the gap on the “w.” 

A year ago my life changed from one day to the next. I was just  living my life when I had a huge fireball of energy descend on me in the Denver airport. I paced the corridors of the airport shaking like I was connected to an artificial earthquake machine as the charge ran through my body. I got on the plane which was then grounded for hours until we got stuck in turbulence for hours more. I wasn't allowed to get up so my seat companion had the pleasure of watching me blow my nose in a magazine as I sobbed away. Big fun.

What, pray tell, had brought on these convulsions? I had decided that another's behavior was not reflecting love to me. I have worked on this idea of not being loved for decades. Years of therapy and workshops and this charges still flattened me like I had never even begun to touch the depth of this wound.

Well, my ever reliable soul told me after a few months of hell, not to worry. By October 23, 2010, things would be better, in fact I would have basically licked this one. All I had to do was hang on. And hang on I did as waves and waves of grief, terror, desolation, panic, anxiety, joy, hope, compassion washed over me month after month. October 23, I can make it.  October 23 was the 23rd anniversary of the day I met my husband in Mexico. It was one year past the anniversary of my Denver debacle. I waited with bated breath for my big release. As the day approached and it didn't look like I was going to have some huge awareness change my life, I decided I'd settle for a sign. Well, midnight that day came and went and to make a long story short, I thought I'd been had. I thought on that day someone would confirm to me that I was loved or that at least I'd have some kind of bloody sign that someone somewhere adored me and then I'd be healed of this  @#%*)%*#)%*@)#%**) charge. No such luck.

Which brings me to the keys. First the mailbox key went missing. We looked high and low and it was never found. Then we lost one car key. No worries, we have a second. Then the second one got locked in the car in a rather bizarre fashion. I'm slow on the uptake but this third loss of the key finally got my attention. Was the Universe trying to tell me something here? 
So here's how it turned out. First the mailman calls to tell me the key has been locked in the mailbox all these weeks. Then some sweetheart from AAA pops my car door so I can retrieve the key. And I finally REALLY REALLY got it. What I  have intended to know all my life. I have payed lip service to this truth for a long time while secretly say "no way, Jose" inside myself. My whole life I have sought love outside myself. First in men, then in the love of a young child. Boy, that one really hit the spot. The love of a young child is incomparable and bathed me in the ecstasy of unconditional love. Wow! So my new life plan was to have another child every five years so I'd always know unconditional love. I'd have stuck to that plan but I realized that unfortunately I didn't have the energy. Damn. 

Flash to today. The 23rd has come and gone and my child no longer thinks I walk on water. No one else has signed up for the job of unconditionally adoring me so this key thing somehow woke me up to the truth, beyond the level of thought, that I was the only one that could actually provide the love I have sought my whole life. I had to face the fact that I had truly believed that if someone didn't love me and prove to me I was lovable, I could literally die from it. Sounds crazy yet my body let me know that that was what I truly believed. So when for the millionth time I experienced someone as acting in a way I didn't perceive as loving and I was able not to flip out, not to panic, to be really O.K. with it, miracle!!! I found the key! And like they've been telling us forever, it really is inside. It really is the connection with the Flow, Source, whatever you want to call it. Unborn, undying. And we're it!
I am finally willing to be my own best friend. I am finally able to embrace this confused, delightful, frightened, loving, needy, courageous being and accept her exactly as she/I am. But really. At least for today, I finally found the key.