Ellipses Through Love and Shame, II
They say that a shooting star is just a meteor burning up as it penetrates a planet’s atmosphere — a kind of will that disintegrates despite itself, like a pair of lovers that don’t know how. This is their story.
Out past the quietly waning moon shot a star so bright and magnificent that its tail licked with white and blue flames, dancing across the sky. Only once in all my moments have I known a moment quite like that one. As that shooting star reminded me of someone, it made me think.
What is it about the psyche that creates pain from joy? What is this chemistry that chelates our spirits into love, and then destroys it? Why do we burn so hot with such passion and emotional violence upon our dearest? Is it that we are the stars of stars of stars that carry intergenerational wounds into wounding each other?
What I know is that from my nebula I found myself to be a star of curiosity and love, of wonder and creativity, and also of pathological giving, worthlessness, and outbursts of seething plasma. I am good, I am from good, yet I have an unhealed core — a core that creates pain from joy.
I loved her with all of my gravity. She, who was just like me. A lover overpowered by unhealed grief for her child-star that still bleeds without understanding. The grief and trauma that was passed down to us cut our elastic gravity like the Death Star killed Alderaan and the violence flung us far into the outer reaches, far from knowing each other.
Never have I known such sadness. Never have I more certainly known that the last goodbye to a lover would hurt more than any damage done to one another. And that it will stay with me for millennia.
Oh, how I wished to find her again, in that mosh-pit out past Betelgeuse where she once stood in the black eye of a galaxy — that seemed the only moment I had ever known — and tell her that there is only love if we choose it and that I choose her. There is no divinity to bind us, no fate, no higher power, it is not written in the stars who we shall love. It is within us, so maybe, if we are the stars, it is written within the stars after all. But to love beyond an epoch, beyond heartache and reactivity, into eons must be our choice. A choice to move together beyond our shame.
I once heard a story, intercepted on Earthen radio waves, about a little moon that taught about the power of reflection. The moon could have used vanity to say look at my beauty, look at how I shine. But instead, the moon chose humility and integrity, saying this is the truth of my beauty, this is the ugliness that I am not afraid to share with you. I am but shadow and dust, and this light is not mine. The question is this — who are we in love if we are hiding from shame? The moon teaches that when shame is owned then shame disappears, no longer hidden but gone.
When we hide our shame behind the ego, we hide our truth and we cannot, truly, be in love. Shame is the discomfort of being witnessed, the ego’s effort to hide. Owning and disappearing shame make way for self-love, and self-love creates the foundation for giving love to whoever we choose. When we choose to overcome our shame, we are enduring pain for enduring joy. These are the ellipses of love and shame. And with this little moon’s lessons, I am sorry.
The trauma that broke our gravity did not break the love. That love still burns in my core yet rests for another epoch. It’s that love that traces the shooting stars, watching the blue flames lick off, hoping that that’s you — dancing across this cosmic life.
