Finding Unconditional Love

CHAPTER1 On the Precipice A Recollection He was a very nice person when I married him, and I imagine he still is. We divorced less than a year after we were married. I just couldn’t live the lie, and that’s why I put the gun to my head and pulled the trigger. He didn’t deserve this. He had been married before. He confided in me that he had married a lesbian without knowing it. I couldn’t tell him he had made the same mistake again. How could I; I wasn’t even sure of that myself. All I knew was, I could not live a lie; I did not love him romantically or physically. I had to be true to myself, and in the process, all I was doing was hurting everyone I loved and everyone who loved me. The guilt was too much to bear. I had had my doubts before we got married, but everyone said it was just pre-marital jitters. Anyone who experiences pre-marital jitters should not get married. It is one thing to be a little apprehensive about the future, but there should be no doubts about with whom you wish to share that uncertain part of your life. I had doubts. I married Brent because that was the thing to do next in my life. I was twenty-three and single; I had graduated from college, secured (or so I thought) the dream career of teaching high school, and was dating the future son-in-law of my mother’s dreams. He was bright, a college graduate with a great job, and was very handsome in his Air Force officer’s uniform. Perfect, or so it seemed on the outside. Inside, I found myself being physically attracted to one of my students, an eighteen year old senior, female student! What was wrong with me? Needless to say, the gun did not go off. To this day, I don’t know why. All I remember was the deafening silence after I squeezed the trigger, and then my hand shaking, and then me becoming scared to death that the gun would go off and my putting it down so it wouldn’t. I didn’t know anything about guns since my father had wrapped my brother’s BB rifle around a tree after Bobby shot me in the hand accidentally one day when we were young. All I know is that I had watched Brent put the pistol together and then take it apart, and put one portion of the gun in one drawer, and the other in another drawer. I didn’t bother to try to put it away after my failed attempt at suicide; I was too shaken. When Brent came home, he asked me why the gun was out, and I made up some excuse about wanting to fire it in the back yard to see what it was like… the back yard of the home his parents had bought for us as a wedding present. Oh, had I forgotten to mention that Brent’s family happened to be very wealthy? He did not question my explanation as he took the gun apart; I was very good at hiding the truth of my real crisis, so he believed me. I simply said, “I think it jammed,” and as he returned the gun to the bedroom, he said, “Well, it’s a good thing it didn’t go off, they would have heard it all over the neighborhood.” And I said, “Yes; it’s a good thing it didn’t go off.” It was shortly after that I announced I wanted a divorce. Of course, nobody understood. How could they, neither did I. But it was a must; that’s all I knew. Well, not all; I knew guilt. I left Brent with $.76 in my pocket (yes, 76 cents), no job (I had taken the place of a teacher who was not expected to return, but…), and no place to live (I would not live with my parents), and I was determined to never take a penny from Brent. I never wanted anyone to think I had married him for his money; I had not married him for his money; he was a good person – I loved him as a person, but I had come to know that I could never be in love with Brent. CHAPTER2 Time My Thoughts Time is an enigma. Time in the physical world is always linear, and is, of course, measured by the rotation of the earth around the sun, but time has many facets. Philosophically speaking, I see time as merely a man-made measurement of change; if there were no change, there would be no time. My time with Brent changed me. Time in the mental world is not linear at all nor dependent on change. Some people have experienced moments that seemed like an eternity and hours that seemed like minutes. Time in the mental world is measured by the degree of the intensity of our focus. Time in the emotional world is not linear, nor is it dependent on change or focus. Some of us have been marinated in a tragic moment from childhood that seeps into too many hours of each day, and some of us have had fleeting moments of joy we wish would last forever. Time in the emotional world is measured by our attachments. My time with Brent was brief in the realm of the physical and mental, but emotionally it impacts my life even today. Time in the spiritual world is infinity and eternally tied up with the ribbon of a single moment – a moment called The Now. Time in the spiritual world cannot be measured at all; eternity can only be experienced. Some people have experienced spiritual timelessness and its timeless wisdom; if we could but shutter ourselves into that awareness for more than just a blink. Time in the spiritual world does not exist – there is only the eternal now, but in the temporal world our spiritual lives are measured by our experiences in discovering, living, and being the unconditional love we truly are. I wish to live my life in the Eternal Now of the spiritual world, for that is the time in which peace and joy and freedom and unconditional love abide.