He told me about how months before we started talking, he had told a friend of his, “I love that girl and I’m going to go tell her right now.” He would tell me how he’s loved me forever. That he dreamt of me before he even knew me. He told me that he didn’t know why, but he always pictured me in a white dress. He would say that I was sacred to him. That our love was sacred. That he never even came close to loving anyone the way he loved me. See…on some level, he knew something long before I did…

The love was so immense, the connection so strong, and the potential so real that I started to freak out internally. It would physically hurt to be away from him. I didn’t understand it. I’m not a co-dependent kind of person, quite the opposite in total truth. I’m fiercely independent, always have been, and much prefer it that way. I often had a hard time dating and in relationships, because I hate that feeling of someone “claiming” me like some sort of prize you get after playing a game at a carnival. I hated feeling trapped. Like I had to sacrifice my liberty for love. It never felt right to me, and I fight it to this day. Unless you’re my father, you’re not claiming me, sorry.

It wasn’t like that with him. Not at all. He loved me in a way I had never been loved before…in such a way that opened up the whole world to me. Our love knew no boundaries. I now believe that the only limits it could ever encounter are the ones that we would place on it ourselves.

My mind couldn’t grasp what was happening. It tried. I became all fear with fleeting moments of an underlying knowing that there were other forces at work here. That whatever was happening between he and I was so much bigger than me. It was my instinct to run…out of self-preservation, self-defense. All self, self-centeredness in the extreme. All fear…this person had the potential to hurt me, to really hurt me…in ways that I wasn’t sure I would be able to bounce back from. I had to run away before he did, push him away…burn it down…

“The universe wrote fiction in us: It’s called fear,” Christopher Poindexter.

I would decide I needed a few days away here and there. I would go out to my dad’s and spend time with my family. All the while, nearly every waking moment, I would be thinking about him. I couldn’t even escape him in my dreams. Trying to understand what was happening to me. I remember him texting me during one of these times, “Take your space just please don’t run away too far.” My heart sank, because he knew. He knew the truth of what I was doing and why, and he was still there. I couldn’t run from him no matter how hard I tried. I told him not to worry, that I would always come back…and I meant it.

Imagine the lock on a safe, a mighty large and complicated safe. In this safe is every dream you’ve ever had, the answer to every question that’s ever haunted you, the exact ingredient needed to fill the void that’s been within you forever. If you’ve lost the combination, you’re going to be standing there a long time trying to get in. Every moment I had with him like this, I felt like I had figured out one more number in the combination with each crumble of my ego. I would get one more “click” closer to remembering how to open it with every demon faced. It would take a while more though…

Early on, I started to see the Hawk too. He began to come to each of us separately and together as well. Eventually we ended up naming him. It was only right considering that he had become so familiar to us…Henry (sometimes he would be with his partner, Henrietta). We would go crazy individually, collectively too, trying to figure out what it meant, what he was trying to tell us…

“Hawk denotes union with All That Is. The hawk is a bird of the heavens, arranging the changes necessary to prompt our spiritual growth. Having this power animal can be bittersweet. When accepting its presence in your life, you will be asked to surrender and give up anything that doesn’t honor the integrity of all life. Whether it’s an idea, feeling, or action. Although hard work is involved, the rewards to be reaped are great.”

That summer was the best of my life. Love had found me. Every day it grew by leaps and bounds, slowly smothering the fear. I met his kids and his family. He met mine. He comes from a good, solid family. They were great to my daughter and I. Being around them felt a lot like being around my own family. It was a funny, warm, laidback environment. A lot like how I grew up with a few minor differences. It was nice.

He invited my daughter and I to their family vacation at the beach. We were able to make it for the last few days. The one night we had planned to go on a nice date but couldn’t work it out. I’m telling you, my head would try so hard to mess things up (and it often did a fantastic job). It’s getting too good now. Time to fuck it up (for no apparent reason). The fear would grip me in its usual slick way, without me noticing. I was disappointed that we couldn’t go on the “nice” date we had planned. I didn’t tell him that, but, by this time, I didn’t have to. We always, always knew what the other was feeling. We could talk in the morning, and I would be happy, but if that changed, he would know. He would say it before I even got a chance to.

We ended up having an even better night than I could have imagined. We got pizza and talked out the kink of whatever was happening in my head. We went to a late meeting where he ended up speaking. It was a small meeting, but a good one. We went for a walk on the beach…laid on the sand, watched the stars. He could talk about the universe and its vastness forever I think, and I could listen to it endlessly without tiring. I adored him. In spite of myself, my icy heart thawing in his hands. We started play fighting, getting sand everywhere. Went back to the house, made love.

He was my ultimate best friend. We could act like children one minute and mature, intelligent adults the next. He loved all the things about me that were overlooked or disliked by the others. He accepted me for precisely who I was and loved me for it. The love was so safe and consuming…its essence influencing every move I made, every decision I would make. It really was sacred…truly. We would soon learn that it was so sacred that it couldn’t tolerate impurities very well, not until and unless they were dug from the dirt and brought to light. In this way, the love was quite divine. Consequently, it was both a blessing and a curse…