“One day. Nothing ever just happens in one day. It’s a subtle stream of continuous action. When things are revealed, they are revealed slowly, over a period of time. It’s not like one morning you open a box and out pops the revelation you have been seeking. The revelations, the answers to the mysteries are given little by little, every day, every moment,” (Nov. 7, 2006).

My inner voice says, “he will only be a distraction, he’ll never be the one to love you, and he’ll never feel like home.” I say, “I see. I understand.” He is not for me. It could not be clearer. Goodbye to this dream, be gone with you pretty boy.

But then some nights when I close my eyes, his face is the one I see how ever far away he may be. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before. There was a Will, a Summers, an Austin who struck me like lightening, and oh so many before that. Thunder may be heard but pink clouds are what I see.

Like beautiful pink clouds they took form before my eyes in the perfect lighting and just as quickly they drifted away, out of sight, into the sky. And this one will too. It must be. “That’s not the package true love comes in,” the voice says.

I wonder though if that isn’t exactly the package that “true love” comes in. Love would come in an intangible, ever-moving, glimmering magical moment that reminds you of why you might have signed up for this life in the first place. “True love” is a notion, a fantasy we seek, a moment of knowing, connection, and bliss. But it comes only for a second like a brilliant blue light, you gasp, you sigh and it is over. True love is sprinkled throughout our lives but finding it may not always mean a walk down the aisle.

Because “true love” is not the reward awaiting us young women at the end of the line, although that’s what we’re all hoping will be the case. Not to mention what a limited notion that I will only share “true love” with a beautiful man. All love is true and if it’s not true it’s not love. It may seem like love is tainted but it’s not love that’s tainted, it’s the dysfunctional characteristics that we each have and our inability to let love flow freely in all our relationships.

True love is just faces in the clouds and everything in between. Those lovely boys are now too, faces in the clouds, distant memories, distant moments, that were had, that were never had. And one day the one I seek now will be gone forever. True love is a crush. True love is what you want it to be, what you make it, because the truth about love is it’s all coming from you anyway.