Because I’m your Mother, That’s Why.

The last song on Anticipate This, the mix CD I’d made for him, is Dave Matthews’ Say Goodbye. It includes the refrain, “For tonight let’s be lovers, and tomorrow go back to being friends.”

The line from Alanis’ Thank You has been repeating in my head: “Thank you, Disillusionment.”

And, finally, if I was “craving cupcakes,” well, a cupcake isn’t a sustainable meal, is it? It’s never actually intended to be, and so you've got to enjoy it while it is there, savor, relish, cherish it, and then you let it go. Then you move on.

We had a “debrief” conversation last night, during which most of the above sentiments where shared by us both. Acknowledging the loveliness, the heights, the calm, the titillation. And yet, that it was what it was. That it was a moment in time that we’d both signed up for, participated in, and get to let go, get to allow its sanctity, without marring it with all those Whatifs that spun in (both) our heads.

To allow the sanctity of beauty, to allow it its singularity is a challenge and a lesson of adulthood. To be disillusioned, to know that moving isn’t right for either of us, that fantasy can overtake reality and crumble it. To have had the hard-won experience of knowing that selfishness and possessiveness can suffocate a beautiful thing, is perhaps not “romance” as we think of it. But it is, in itself, a mercy.

Relinquishing the ties to future, to “meaning,” to purpose, we can allow it the simplicity and integrity of its joy.

I wrote a poem once about trapping a moment away in a mason jar, locking it deep inside for fear that the moment would get marred by time and eventuality. But the problem was that I forgot what that moment smelled like anyway; in my possessiveness and fear of losing it, I forgot what made that moment so precious to begin with.

The same is true here. And, smartly, maturely, rightly, and a little wistfully, we both, or at least I, have to allow the experience its autonomy and “string”lessness.

I called my mom yesterday. I’d spoken to several friends about my conflictedness, and my sadness in letting the moment go. In knowing, surely and deeply, that I would have to. This knowledge all the more painful since it was such a thing of beauty, since it was, for me, a lesson in intimacy, vulnerability, and ease that I haven’t felt with anyone in my past.

As we spoke, I told my mom it was like tasting ice cream in a shop for the first time, and having to realize that ice cream is available elsewhere, all over the place, in fact. That I don’t have to go to this one place to experience it. That I’d be missing out if I thought this was the only wellspring of deliciousness.

Part of the beauty of it at all, is that I get to see that ice cream is in fact available to me. (Ice cream! Cupcakes! Sheesh, can you tell I don’t really eat this stuff anymore!?)

But, I did. I got to experience, savor, relish, and cherish, and I get to decide to believe—DECIDE TO BELIEVE—that I can have similar dishes elsewhere. Somewhere a little less complicated.

My mom told me that of course it was available to me. That we all deserve to have the kind of love we want in the world. That we all are worthy of finding it, searching for, letting the non-fits go, and working toward creating in ourselves a person deserving of the highest order this life offers.

Why? I asked her.

Why? Why is that so? Where is the cosmic contract we’ve all signed that says that we'll get that kind of love? Where is the agreement that we sign as humans that says, Work and open and heal and (for)give, and you shall receive? Really, honestly, who the fuck says that any of us get any of that?

It was important for me to play my own Devil’s Advocate. I’m the one with all the woo-woo affirmations posted around my apartment about abundance and light and love and serenity and security and radiance. I’m the one who’d easily and believingly tell a friend that things work out. I’m the asshole who believes all this muck.

And for once, I needed someone else to tell me it. I needed to be the petulant asshole who says, “Yeah, Says You.” I needed to allow my disillusionment of that kind, too. I needed to allow that it sucks and hurts, and is disappointing, and hard fucking work, and that we (I) do this with absolutely no promises whatsoever of any kind of “reward,” or change.

There is no rule that says, Thou Shalt Not Toil Until Death.

There isn’t.

So, I need, sometimes, someone else to tell me. Because, truly, somewhere (a little out of reach at the moment), I believe that we all do deserve the precious and gorgeous things in life. I believe that none of us are meant to toil and suffer and be beaten by life. I truly, somewhere, have a faith that is unalterable. A place inside me that has never known fear or scarcity or sorrow.

But, despite my friends’ ears and wisdom and empathy, I simply needed my mom, former Miss Cynic of the Universe, to tell me, Molly, It’s going to be alright. There is ice cream elsewhere. There is love, abundant and resplendent. Not that it isn’t without its own challenges and lessons and compromises, but there is love, and I am worthy of it. That I “deserve” it.

Despite the “adultness” of letting go and loving detachment and equanimity and allowing what is… in these moments, in this one, I simply needed the maternal “all knowing” assurance of that which I actually believe.

Dear Egregiously Gorgeous Moment in Time: Thank you.