The Universe at work...

It's a strange thing this Universe...  You can call it God or Allah or Buddha or Herbert for all I care... I tend to call anything that seems to have greater power than we mere mortals "The Universe".  Back in mid October I wrote about the kind of pessimistic optimist I can be and then showing my inconsistency only a few days later I sent  some wishes out into The Universe .  I was wishing for the woman of my dreams to come into my life.  Again on 11/11/11 I posted a blog with a wish list which included the wish "to love and to be loved in return". 


There have been some times in my life when I have been 100% certain that forces were at work that were bigger and more powerful than anything a human can cause.  Once this was a "Universe" bitch slap designed to make me pay attention, another time it was a serendipitous moment of stark perfection.  To be honest I often think I am getting messages and that I am too dumb to acknowledge them until it becomes REALLY obvious and then I think "Duh. Of course!"  


For quite some time there have been things going on that have brought someone I used to know into the front of my mind.  I have been calling her The New Connection in this blog for a while now, but I think I need to change her tagline...    More on that later though...

I'm not sure how I came to find her on facebook about a year ago but she accepted my friend request.  We didn't message or anything... maybe I said hi on her wall...  I NEVER saw her online and I am online a LOT.  Then I moved home to Australia and started reconnecting with old friends including The Best Friend who of course knew The New Connection from when we were all in high school together... so naturally her name came up...  Then a somewhat strange thing happened when I got a facebook friend suggestion for a young boy who shares her last name and it said we had two mutual friends, her nephew is in the same school class as The Horsewoman's daughter (who I live with).  She just seemed to be "front of mind" far more than at any other time.

I'm sure you know that facebook tells you when people have a birthday and I received notification of hers.  So I left a birthday message on her wall.  Later that day, for the first time ever, I saw her come online.  I vacillated between wanting to say hello and not wanting to intrude.  I even started writing and stopped before starting again...  Then I thought "Oh what the hell I'll just say a quick happy birthday".  This was the day after I wrote my 11/11/11 wish list.

Things suddenly stopped being normal.  I am really quite certain that at that moment something enormous dropped into place.  Giant gears in the machinery of my life meshed.  Jigsaw puzzle pieces fell into place.  The erratic became calm.  The poles were reversed.  Life changed.

When I look back over my adult life, all the time that The New Connection and I were not connected, I can see that I have had two really good chances at finding/making happiness.  The first was my first serious love, a really wonderful woman with whom I was incredibly compatible, but I was very young and too damn scattered and stupid to know a good thing when I saw it and I screwed it up.  About seven years after that I began a relationship that was to last almost ten years.  That relationship was very comfortable but it stagnated and we grew in different directions, I had wild oats to sow and adventures that still needed to take place.  I loved and still love both of these beautiful women and I have had the pleasure of seeing them both since I came home.

As little as three weeks ago I genuinely believed that I would never have another chance to find that kind of relationship.  Then IT happened.   We started talking and we haven't stopped.  First on chat, then text, and then on the phone.  At other times in my life when I have had relationships develop online I have always had that niggling doubt, that wondering if ... well if she has two heads, if she is a lunatic (she often was), if she has more than one personality and I'm only seeing Dr Jekyll while Ms Hyde lurks in the shadows waiting to take over as soon as I have made some kind of commitment!  There are no niggling doubts this time.  I know her,  even though we have not seen each other since we were girls, I still know her.

It's interesting, I think, that when you are just emerging from school into your adult life you are in some ways a clean slate.  I know that most of us carry some scars from our childhoods but I kind of mean that we are our real selves.  Then we embark on life and the battles and experiences we have shape us in a variety of ways.  Yet somehow when you reach a certain point in your life you stop playing other people's games and you begin to shed the elements of your personality that were assumed or adopted to please others.  You distill down to a more raw version of yourself with an attitude of "here I am - like it or lump it".  In some strange way I think we are again more truly living as our authentic selves than we have since childhood.

So here it is, The New Connection.  We are both happy alone and neither of us needs another person to complete us - and yet we are irresistibly drawn towards each other.  We both have an overwhelming sense that this is "right" that we "belong together".  Against the caution of our friends, and ourselves for that matter, we have both decided to just enjoy this experience and let it play out however it is meant to play out.  We have agreed that the worst that can come of this is a really lovely friendship.  We have agreed to take the responsibility for our own emotions in the event that something causes this to take a different path.  We have agreed that regardless of what happens we will love each other for this time if for nothing else.  We're big girls all grown up and able to handle it if something goes amiss.  We're big girls falling in love.

Soooo... From now on The New Connection is going to be known as TLOML.  My mother always said (in reference to trying to achieve something) "Punt high and follow on!" (I think it is a football metaphor LOL)  So here is my high punt.  The New Connection - The Love of My Life.  (And if I turn out to be wrong you can all tell me I'm a hopeless romantic and, as Rodgers and Hammerstein would say, a cockeyed optimist.)