I’m enjoying this grey and rainy Saturday by listening to classical music and meditating. I am fighting every stress symptom by making breathing exercises and pushing away any negative thoughts. They don’t have a place in my mind. Nor do they live in my heart anymore. My poor little heart. It hasn’t had an easy life, but it is still beating, it’s still filled with all the red fire it was born to produce with every breath. So, it isn’t that damaged. I’ve never let any hate inside it. It’s never been completely drained.

My love affair with Johnny has been so good for my heart. He’s taught me so much about humility, self-compassion and love. I thought I knew everything there was to know about love. The passion. The all-consuming energy. The pain. The fear. The neglect and the rejection. But it turned out that I didn’t know much about love at all. Johnny has showed me how to build a home between two hearts, not only to keep each other company, but to create a whole new heart inside our home. Something which is breathing all by itself, something that has a heart, a mind and spirit but is invisible to the eye. Our love is not about passion or simple companionship, but a creation formed by mutual respect, caring and the way we see each other and appriciate what we see. Both each other’s many beauties and beasts. And we are completely naked in front of each other and ourselves. Vulnerability is the only place where all this is possible to experience. And I’m learning how to trust. How to let go of the fear to get hurt. To be fooled. Betrayed. And destroyed. I’m slowly learning how to move through this feeling of deep love without wanting to protect myself from it. That’s the naked part.

Johnny has showed me how important it is for me to see myself without looking for those eyes in other people. It’s been difficult for me to see myself without judging what I see. Without wondering if I’m enough. If I am lovable. Worthy of happiness. Before I let Johnny into  my heart I was in many ways a masochist. Looking for punishments. Humiliation. Darkness. Because I thought I belonged there. That I deserved it. He was there, in the beginning, holding my hand through other destructive love affairs with self-proclaimed victims that I wanted to rescue or mirrored myself through. I felt helpless and drained by those toxic connections. Johnny picked me up, every time I fell. He was always there for me – not because he wanted to be a hero, but because he actually cared about me.

I am softer now, to myself and to other people. Johnny’s gentle heart has inspired mine to be less rough and raw and to embrace empathy and tolerance. I was pretty brutal with my heart before. I wasted its blood, the beats and I let anyone stay in its rooms even though they didn’t deserve to be there at all.  I am starting to protect my heart without shutting out love and the warmth from people who truly deserves to be inside it. I am very grateful for having this wonderful man in my life and in my heart. We both give and take from the knowledge which our hearts have collected throughout our lives.  We share everything because it all feels important somehow. Even the smallest details. The nonsense. The everyday stuff that will be forgotten by tomorrow. But at least we got to share them with each other. It cures the loneliness of the heart. It creates a home where life is welcoming the insignificant moments as well as the significant ones Where everything has a meaning and is not wasted or taken for granted.