Fibers of new do not naturally know how to link with old, and why should they? At the beginning the new feels stronger, bolder… and, above all, separate. And so we go, with the covering and uncovering of intimacy, which I call “blankets of love.”
Perhaps some of us have to recall how blankets of love are woven before we can fully wrap ourselves in them. I don’t really know. I have stumbled around inside myself, even as I held my physical self-poise. I have wrapped myself in my masks of confidence, yet was always looking for my savior — my blanket of love. In the past, I have mistaken my partners as my blankets of love, and, of course, they were looking for their own security blankets. As I hadn’t found my own self yet, I eventually drove them away.
We have children, and they become our blankets of love — as we are theirs, until they wish to have their own. We are left holding onto threads, trying to piece them together so they become enticing enough to have the children return to “normal” with us — us — their blankets of love. Of course, this doesn’t work and we are left with our own selves to wash and mend.
We have businesses, or work for companies where our identities become our uniforms. We look to our home life to supply the nakedness a blanket provides, on a bed of warm sand and ocean. As we don’t know ourselves yet fully, we aren’t sure what we really need or what our partners and families need, so we end up wondering why our homes aren’t fulfilling our hearts’ needs… and we stamp off, and become more engrossed in our uniformity of careers.
Some of us have affairs with food, alcohol, humans. We dance between the false intimacy and the guilt it all brings. For a while, we feel full… until we fall into logistical hell. How can we remain functional with all that is happening to us? We start to blame and shame those closest around us, until we eventually lose our balance and fall to our knees, realizing after months have passed that where we landed was on our own blanket. There it was, under our brokenness all the time — simply and softly looking to be recognized.
If we are lucky, we wake up and start to do the work — the work of self-intimacy. We start the hard and also magical process to learn the fibers of our own blanket and wrap ourselves in its warmth, wisdom, wit and wickedness. The All of Us we suddenly feel and find comfort from, and within. We start to laugh at ourselves, and at the numerous paths that we’ve taken to get to this point. We become friends with ourselves, where we can sit with our blanket and simply be.
Ah, yes, the blanket of love is our warrior cloak. Savor its touch — it’ll protect us always, if we simply allow it to.
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