Love is a Dark Place

Orpheus and Eurydice were married, and on their wedding day, she died. His grief wrested, from the gods. the secret of entrance into the Underworld, where he begged Persephone and Hades, the Queen and King of the Realm of Death, for the return of his beloved. He sang of love, and loss. He sang the unbearable beauty of the broken heart. And Persephone wept.

They told him he could have Eurydice back again. That she could follow him back into Life. The conditions were these: for the whole of that long, dark journey he would not hear or see her. He was asked to trust that she would be behind him. He must not, under any circumstances, look back. Not until they both reached the light of the upper world. If he looked back, they told him, she would be lost forever.

And the journey was long. Long enough to invoke doubt. And despair. But he never looked back. Not until he finally, finally stepped into the light. And then he turned, and saw her behind him. Still just within the shadow of the cave's entrance. He saw her, for a tiny, timeless second, before she said "goodbye".

This is a story of grief.

A long walk in the darkness, each step fueled only by the faith that, somewhere, somehow, the pain will cease. Or at least lighten. A journey begun in a time when the only way we can imagine finding the light, again, is to regain what we have lost. To have, again, our lost beloved, be it a person, a place, an innocence, a dream... to have again our lost beloved in the form to which we have become attached. Because any other form is unimaginable.

And so "don't look back" the gods say. Because they know (being gods - and therefore the incarnations of our own best wisdom) that looking back is all we will want to do. We walk forward believing, or maybe just desperately hoping, that we are returning in some way to what is gone. That we can return. Because without that belief, that hope... well, we can't even breathe. Much less put one foot in front of the other.

This is how we keep breathing.

If we make this journey looking back, we will never find the light again. Our eyes will be too full of darkness. Our fists closed tight around loss. We will be blind, and full of pain, unable to see a future, much less find our way to it. Unable to grab hold of joy, or even comfort. "Don't look back" the gods say. And because, being gods, they are under no obligation to tell us the truth (only to lead us to our own becoming), they promise us the unpromiseable. They promise us return, and reunion. An impossible continuity of form. Only that promise has the hope of making us strong enough to take the journey. They know that, one day, they will be revealed as liars but, when that day comes, our journey will be over. We will stand in the light of a new life, raw and angry but finally empty-handed. Vessels washed clean and made ready for filling again.

This is a story of grief, and the dark truth of redemption. Everything you love, you will lose. I promise you. I promise you. When we fall in love, we say goodbye. That's the bargain. And if you don't know it, or deny it, or just try not to look at it... that doesn't exempt you. This is the bargain. This is the price.

And so why do we do it? And do it over and over and over again? Because love is the forge. It is the crucible. The alchemical retort. The fire of love softens us, burns away whatever is not our pure, authentic heart. The water of our tears strengthens us. Shapes and refines us. This is how a tool is made. This is how we are made. This is the process that turns us into the tools, the gifts, the miracles that we are. This is how we do it.

Light and dark are not opposites. They are, in fact, each other's hearts. Light is the gift of the darkness. Darkness is the hard wisdom of the light.

And love is a dark place.

I am in love, for the first time in a long time (and maybe in some ways, for ever) in a way that is free of pain. Free of fear and anxiety. And yes, this is about a person. But it is also about myself, and my life. Hard-learned wisdom: that all three have to be true. The cost of entering into this dark place is no less than everything.

If you want to be given everything, give everything up.

So we step into the fire again. Each time we can love better. Love bigger. With clearer eyes and a clearer understanding of all there is to be thankful for. Each new love invokes, at times, the old. They all intersect someplace in the heart.

When we fall in love, we say goodbye. Someone asked me, recently, what it's like to fall in love and know this. I didn't think I had an answer, but it seems that I do. It's having all the sweetness of everything I've loved, and all the sharpness of everything I've lost, all at once. It is a sort of skinless expansion into ease and grace and gratitude. It is being unbearably, exquisitely open. It is being alive.

This is a story of grief, and the hard truth of redemption.

This is a story about why we keep breathing, and the impossible rewards of courage.

This is a story about the gifts of the darkness.

And this is a love letter from the Eighth House.