Message In A Bottle

I found message in a bottle. Floating on the etheral electronic ocean, it washed up on my laptop with a story that was new yet familar.

It told of dissatisfaction, with work, with life, with one's spouse. The part about the avoidance of intimacy stirred up memories of long ago, another life really, with another partner. We were two fine minds, certainly. Two minds that ruled the bodies we inhabited. Which was why we were miserable. Stimulated by everything in the world but each other. Were we afraid of our bodies' hunger? Or was it that we could not allow the small death to overwhelm us, to lose our self-control, even for an instant? Was the abyss of nothingness so terrifying that we could not face it? Loveless days turned into weeks, and weeks into months.

Was it that our intimacy was never free of shame, of bad feelings mixed with the good? If so, then when would it ever be so? Not tomorrow, or with another partner. The way one has sex says a lot about a person's sensibility, realms of imagination and perception. Some people see greater worlds than others. But the basis for being a couple is commitment to striving for unification of mind and body, of one with the other. It is this act of striving, not the the act itself that brings meaning. It is a biological birthright and a psychological imperative. What is the alternative?

We finally did split up. We did work it out, each in our own way. Being half of a couple is a peculiar thing. But it is something. And it can work, if you just give up a little of your self and embrace a little of the not-self.

I put my message in a bottle, and hit "send".