When I found out that Suzie had finally died, I was feeling pretty bad. I had to hold my tears back because I was not alone and for some unknown reason, ok, maybe it's not that unknown, I couldn't cry in front of my family.

I have to be the strong one, always. And usually I am. Once in a blue moon I break down and I show anger, but other emotions I save for alone time. By the time I got that alone time I was beyond tears, I had gone numb. Just a dull and constant ache in my heart.

Knowing someone is dying doesn't make it any easier when they finally do die. Maybe you don't have that shock factor going on there, but it still stings deeply to the core.

I thought I felt Suzie visiting a couple of days after she passed. I didn't bother to see if she was really there, I was too tired to try. I am pretty sure she has gone on now. I am not worried about Suzie, I know she is off evaluating this lifetime. I know that she is experiencing exactly what it is that she needs to experience right now. I shall miss her in ways only I can explain. I shall simply miss the fact that in this lifetime, I will not get to experience her again. Which is what makes me sad for the moment. A relationship I had that is over for now.

Relationships are the main way we learn life lessons. When I think back on this life, I know I spent the majority of my life keeping others at arms length, never letting anyone inside, never sharing from my core.

And then one day (and a lot of meditation, deep spiritual searching and a cathartic revelation or two later), I chose to open up and let people inside. I chose to share the very core of my being with others.

I did pretty good at first. I had learned to accept and love myself unconditionally. I really loved me in ways I never knew was possible to love ones self. So I began sharing deeply with others, from my very core, allowing others to come inside and share the unconditional love I had inside.

Sincerely, it was pretty cool at first. It felt good to love others so deeply, to be able to give love from the core of my being without personal judgement or conditions set about how or why I would give out that love.

And then it started to hurt. Mainly because I letit hurt. Mainly because I wasn't able to maintain the centeredness necessary to always come from that place of universal oneness. It began to hurt because I wanted to always have that kind of connection with others and I found that others are not always able to be that connected to another person for whatever their own personal reasons are/were.

Loving that deeply became like a drug of sorts. I was enthralled with the joy it brought me. I wanted that joy to always be there. Constant. Well, maybe not constant, but often enough. I loved the feeling of being able to reach out to another and touch their being and allow them to touch mine. It rocked for me to say the least.

I tried a total unconditional opening of my heart and being twice. Both times I allowed whatever is wounded in me that still needs healing to cloud my thinking. I didn't stop loving unconditionally, I just began to pull back and close off. Further and further back until I had removed whatever parts of me I had learn to love sharing with them so deeply, from them completely.

I had thought I was able to love unconditionally no matter what.  No matter how deep the woundings in others were, no matter how much their woundings effected me personally. I thought I could just love past all that and help heal their woundings. I found that after a period of time, my emotions could no longer with stand the depth of the other's woundings and how they effected me personally. I began to falter and withdraw in order to minimize the pain I was experiencing. I never stopped loving these people unconditionally, I could just no longer deal with the depth of my own response to all that was happening within myself as a result of all that was happening in their own selves as they sought to grow and learn. The pain was excruciating. I knew no other way to deal with where this depth of sharing that deeply with another had taken me inside. I was not able to go any further and I had not learned how to maintain that state of unconditional love of my own self in order to continue on.

I was losing who I thought I was. And so I removed myself to protect me until such a time as I was able to heal whatever was in my self that could no longer stay centered and healthy.

I still have not healed completely. I am still broken inside. I have been working on the healing. Working hard in fact. I want back what I had and then some. I want that centeredness and that complete accepting of my own being unconditionally. I want to feel that unconditional love I once felt so deeply for my own being back again. Because it was that love of self that allowed me to love others so deeply and unconditionally.

These baby steps I took with others taught me lessons. I am not sure what all was learned and I do know that the lessons are not over. I still have far to go before I truly comprehend all I need to know in order to always come from that place of unconditional love and acceptance. For everyone I encounter.

I don't see myself being able to allow anyone inside again any time soon. I know I am not there yet, I know there is something more that has to happen within me to allow me the ability to always be there and centered in that place of universal oneness/unconditional love.

So much still to learn. So far still to go. So far and so deep, so much more. I am here to learn. My heart open to receive all my lessons. So much more.....