Love, Love Me Do: We Can’t Always Get What We Want

By Maggie Marangione July 25, 2024

24 tons of chicken shit. That was my Valentine’s Day present in 2024. This was much better than a bag of chocolate covered M&Ms that a man, who wanted to marry me and boasted about his net worth, gave me after two years of dating; I broke up with him. At least the manure turned my field green.

A funeral brought manure man and I together, despite living two miles apart. In 25 years, our paths had never crossed until I needed a ride to that funeral because my son, a pall bearer, was taking the car. Manure man was offered up as my driver, since he was attending.

We were both so down after this young person’s funeral that we drove up on Skyline Drive and just stared at the sun going down over the Valley. Perhaps that was enough for empathy, oxytocin and grace to take root in human loneliness and want for love, something we shared.

The manure man and I had tried on-again off-again dating for a few years, but we were like a bad sitcom and not as charming. Polar opposites in politics, religion, environmental issues, aesthetics, literacy, energy levels, and what we wanted in a relationship. We shared the same sense of humor, love of nature and the land, coping with adult children, eating well, trying new things, and for whatever reason, genuinely liking each other. But our differences would always overshadow us.

Enlightenment and Bunions

There is a lot we can do for another without being in a relationship with them. Not every attraction should lead to a paring up; not every acquaintance can lead to friendship. It does not hurt to try and see if the shoe fits, but it is more important to realize that a shoe is pinching our toes.

In my youth, well until about 10 years ago, I would have ignored this. I looked to another to fill me up, or at the very least, that I was not whole unless partnered. OR worse, that this is what I deserve. At the root of it all was being loved poorly as a child, so I owned that I was undeserving of being loved well.

Most days, I can remember: I don’t need to earn my soul right – my dignity, beauty, or lovability. Pain is not a birthright; love is. When I am tapping into my enlightened self, I remember that the Divine loves me so much that I will be endured and that divine love, Agape love, bears all things.

When I am rooted in my very mortal bunion feet, and I set a standard for myself that is higher than any human would, or I wish for a partner who would reflect love back to me, my light bulb gets dimmer and dimmer, and I get depressed.

But Sometimes We Get What We Need

And that’s not a good place to be. So, I then have to go beyond where I wish to go, beyond where I feel I can go on my own. Out there in the deep, beyond my own self-giving, where grace and divine love float around is where I will find peace.

Sometimes I can get there through prayer and meditation. Sometimes, I do for others and give of myself selflessly, sometimes I give to myself, and sometimes I am just so damn mortal I have to get out of the house – literally and figuratively – until I remember and know it in my bones that my heart has enough space enough to realize my own soul, the soul of others and love both even when I’ve been ghosted or have ghosted myself.

Maya Angelou wrote that to really love someone is to know the song their heart sings and to hum it back to them on the days they forget how it goes. But first, I need to be able to hum it myself because before I forgot my song, I was loved.

Questions to Consider:

How do you reflect love back to yourself? What lifts you up or reminds you that you are lovable? If you are unpartnered, do you still crave a partner and why? If you are partnered, has that fulfilled your loving cup?