BLOG 284: The Branch in the Bubble

"I don't want to live in the bubble...I can't, I would be cheating myself" Diane Lane 

The success rate  for resisting the love bug is up there with that of trying to get a tan by candlelight. It simply does not happen. 

You'd like to think that you know the branch of the tree of life called Love. You know it is weak and that it has failed you. So as a sensible person you resist that limb. 

But as I said, resistance is futile. Sooner or later you figure out that every chance you take is a different limb. Yeah...it may look the same but you don't know exactly what it is made of; you do not know how strong it is until you try it. 

And before you know it those four chambers that pump blood through the body are engaged again. 

You reintroduce yourself to anticipation, excitement , sexual desire, and singing to yourself while you do the most mundane chores. Before you know it some deep dark pocket of hope that has been hidden away for years is warming and defrosting the cold shoulder that had frostbitten all comers for years. 

Your defences lower and suddenly you become aware of a crushing loneliness within you. You realise that independence is in fact singleness and singleness makes you feel small, exposed and defenseless. You feel like that new kid who is suddenly asked to join the cool kids - you take a risk at the welcoming hand and join the circle of the living, the feeling... the loved. 

For a while it's all about finding what you have in common - you both like your news from the radio and not the tv or paper, you both think a year 11 school child with a good calculator could solve the global financial crisis in half an hour and neither of you can quite remember when it was that British TV Comedy lost the battle with America but agree it did. 

That's when you enter the bubble... the honeymoon period... when the limb you went out on can carry not just both of your weights but the whole world. You wonder why you were so shy of getting out here before. You look forward to seeing each other daily, it’s  all about the shared laughter, conversations, touch.  

Such emotion is intense and intense is frightening. Its scary to be so incredibly happy, a dry fear infiltrates the bubble; you start to fear that such happiness will not last forever.  However the bubble is strong - you shelve the fear and become determined to enjoy it for as long as you can. 

You don't wish to be negative - so you don't become so. But a certain pragmatism invades. You start to view what you have as a gift. 

An oasis in your journey through life's desert. 

You reflect back on your single days. Your experience up to now is no one stays. Yes, being out on a limb is exciting but why now against all the evidence should you now have a match, a mate as soul companion? Your life to now may not be the life you would have chosen, but this is the only life you have got. You give yourself close scrutiny - you realise there is nothing there that would induce anyone to stick around. 

And so you resolve to simply just cherish every hug, every joke even every battle.  When this limb enviably bows and breaks... you will at least have your memories. 

You refuse to meddle with life in the bubble, you don't question it or measure it or plan beyond the moments you are in. It becomes enough, more than you expected to be out on this limb at all. You treat it for what it has become - a  gift. 

There are those who survive, thrive even, long after their bubbles have burst.

And yet whether there be life beyond the bubble or not, memories will always run back to that special time of discovery and hope that life in the bubble will always represent to you.

However it is only the when the bubble is gone that you will discover exactly what the limb you went out on is made of. 

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