Vachon Imagined

The love parades left her dizzy with excitement, then dizzy with boredom.

I’m gay, love me.

I’m a woman, love me.

I matter, love me.

It is a love that leaves one spinning through the streets of confusion, like being given too much wine, too many compliments. Eventually she can no longer hear herself beneath the noise as she runs toward the next version of “love,” the one that thrills her for a moment before leaving her flat again.

This love, or life, or creation does both. It lifts and drops. It fills and empties. And in the constant movement, one can become exhausted, angry, entitled, arrogant, confused, and bitter.

It is the motion of a leaf caught in the wind.

The difference is that the leaf goes with it.

Humans don’t.

Humans resist.

They cling to what feels good and fight what feels bad. They don’t know how to receive life when their ego and sense of self have grown too large—whether they built it themselves or inherited it from others and spent years nurturing it. In the end, it makes little difference. Everything eventually falls away. Everything eventually leaves.

To receive love is not to become caught in it.

It is to remain peaceful and grounded in what you are.

Then anything can come.

Praise.

Hatred.

Recognition.

Rejection.

Compliments.

Negativity.

All of it belongs to the same field of experience.

And if something registers deeply within you, if it hooks you or wounds you or inflates you, then it is revealing a part of yourself that still seeks separation.

For why would anyone who truly loves themselves reject any part of themselves?

And why would anyone who truly loves themselves reject any part of you?

Love is not found in the parade.

It is found in the one who can watch the parade pass by and remain whole.