Perhaps Love.....

I'm in love.

Of all the places one can find herself during a lifetime, in love is about the best.

I came to love late. Real love, true love, healthy love almost eluded me, but my guardian angel, who is as real and important to me now as she was when she was alive, found a way to help me overcome the obstacles I faced, and I found my soul mate.

Christine.

Here I sit, in tears, in our warm, peaceful, safe and happy little home. The tears are okay. More than okay, they are welcomed. Sometimes the emotion I feel when I think about the blessings I have received just spill. I'm good with that.

I know there are no accidents. I did not accidently meet Chris at a Lesbian discussion group. I only attended the group because I told someone who cared about me that I would go. I planned to skip the meeting, but didn't want to disappoint the woman. Christine had all but given up on the group, and planned to stop attending after that fateful day. The group totally sucked, but that's okay. It resulted in the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Long story short, we connected, we made it past the second "date" (that's the one that generally involves a U-Haul for Lesbians) even though I lied about liking Chris' chile. I moved into her bunker-like apartment, we moved into a house that had more mice than charm, we adopted Madison, then Kirby, plus we fostered probably a dozen dogs. We adopted Nikki the hedgehog. We moved from Calgary to Burnaby, then to Vancouver. We adopted Tucker the Hedgehog. We had a Commitment Ceremony. We lost Tippy, we adopted MacKenzie and added Jasmine to our family. We adopted Clio. We got Bella. We met new people, we made friends.

We got married.

Through all of this there were highs and lows. Some serious lows. We worked at our relationship, we made compromises, we adjusted, changed, grew as a couple.

And now I am truly, madly, deeply in love. This love makes me a better person than I once was. It gives me strength and courage. It gives me the power to change things...thoughts and ideas that I have long held, my future, the present.

I never felt that I was worthy of love before Christine. I had been taught, and grew to believe that I deserved pain, fear and self-loathing. I thought sheer survival was all I had to look forward to. Chris gave me the gifts of hope and confidence, a powerful one-two punch in my fight against self-hatred. I now understand that to survive is not enough, I deserve to thrive.

I tease Chris mercilessly. I give her a hard time about so many things, but she knows I adore her and will do anything I can to keep her happy, safe and healthy. When she graces me with her laughter, I am like so much putty in her hands. I can't imagine my life without her and our furry little family (which now includes Booker the Hedgehog).

Christine is beautiful, inside and out. She is an intellectual heavy weight with the compassion and understanding required to make her native intelligence work for her. She is funny, generous, hard-working and honest. She is patient, gentle and sensitive. Christine is as decent a human being as I have ever known.

One of my definitions of love is very simple. Love is doing for your partner something that you both absolutely hate doing, even though your partner is totally capable, just because it will make her life easier.

Perhaps love is not the be-all and end-all of life. Perhaps love is something we can live without. Perhaps love makes us dumb and careless.

Perhaps love can save the world. It saved mine.