When Love Feels Right, Why Worry Why?

I always gather all the components well in advance of Valentines Day.

Last Spring, for the three-day Memorial Day weekend, I surprised Cleo with a trip to Chicago. I rented a room with a hot tub at the Park Hyatt. We did all her favorite things-- the museums, a play at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, dinner and drinks at Sweetwater Tavern & Grille.

I made love to her every day we were there.

Twice on Saturday.

On Sunday before we left, I surreptitiously stole the bottom sheet we'd slept on, where we'd left both our sweat and sex juices. I only needed a small swath of it, but the sheet had to be stolen, not bought.

The room was bougie expensive so I never worried about any Sheet Police tracking me down for petty theft. Heh.

Cleo's birthday is July 22nd. She's a Cancer on the cusp of Leo, which fits her personality exactly. She's the perfect homemaker, a nurturer, emotional (Cancer)... with a little flash (Leo) on top of that, making her oh so sexy.

I gave her roses for her birthday. She expected it. Every year, I give her a big bundle of roses, and one or two other gifts. Last year it was Forever Tango perfume.

After she put the flowers in a vase, I had to wait until a night when there was a __lightning storm before I plucked petals for my secret purposes.

All the little rules I had to follow made absolutely no sense whatsoever. And yet, for me, that somehow lent credence to the old woman's claims!

I don't know why.

Since I had to preserve the rose petals for nearly six months, until they were needed in February, I placed them between two pieces of glass after air drying them. That locked in their color.

Last autumn-- I was always required to do this part in late September-- I drove almost sixty miles to a apiary in Nowhere Kentucky, where I purchased a single jar of honey from beekeeper I've known for the better part of two decades.

From October of last year until now in February, I kept the jar hidden behind a bunch of paint cans in the basement, wrapped in red velvet, as required.

On New Years Eve, Cleo and I got drunk on champagne. After she and I had wild sex, she fell asleep, and that was when I carefully cut off a small lock of her hair. Every Saturday since then, I've had to put it in my left sock so I can walk on it.

The last part of the equation isn't an ingredient, it's the cost of doing business.

$22,222.14 isn't a strain for someone of my resources. I have to give it to the old woman in cash, in a red duffel bag, but that's no problem.

It's a pittance to pay.

I think most people would agree that love is a bargain at any price.

As I drove home from the bank with the money, I was besieged with memories of my mother.

She passed away when I was six. Dad remarried when I was seven.

Mother was Wiccan.

She was environmentally conscious, driving dad nuts about recycling before that was even a thing. She had both a vegetable garden and flower garden she tended to, in our big back yard. A plaque on the kitchen wall said, 🌎 RESPECT THE PLANET.

She commemorated all eight of the seasonal festivals to honor the Wheel of Life.

I vividly remembered her dancing around on Beltane, celebrating the return of Spring wearing only her birthday suit.

Dad told so many people after her passing that she was crazy. His friends had a running joke that mom had bewitched him.

I guessed it was from her that I likely inherited my innate trust of mystical sources for both spiritual and physical healing.

I'm also certain it was from her that I obtained my deep-seated insecurities, my conviction that I am simply incapable of receiving or giving love.

My only talent is making money-- a highly overrated ability indeed.

I knew I was a coward and a fool, but I felt the only way I could be certain of Cleo's love was with the old woman's help.

⚡_______________⚡

Curtis and Cleo had been dating for barely three months when they got into a loud argument one day while chilling together at a park.

Curtis caught his new girlfriend looking at a handsome jogger's butt. That spawned jealous annoyance, then outright anger when she laughed at him, thinking he was only joking at first.

Deep down, Curtis knew he was totally out of his league with Cleo. She was smarter than him, funnier than him, so much more sophisticated than he was.

And she was Gorgeous.

When Curtis looked in a mirror, he saw Average with a capital A.

So they fought.

She became upset that he seemed to think he had some claim on her.

He doubted her affection. He had never understood why agreed to date him in the first place.

Meanwhile, he was certain he was falling in love with her.

When he started yelling that it was disrespectful for her to ogle other men, she just walked away from him without a word.

That really upset him. The matter was unresolved. He needed to fight it out. He had so much more to say.

He called her.

She didn't answer.

As he paced in front of the bench where they'd argued, he kept calling over and over.

Then his anger dissolved and he panicked. He had made a terrible mistake by revealing his true identity, the shadow side of himself that he was ashamed to acknowledge.

He thought he'd blown any chance he had with her.

That was when the old woman approached him from behind, startling him.

The atmosphere itself seemed to change, or maybe he was just suddenly aware of the dark clouds roiling over the sun.

The old woman looked vaguely familiar to Curtis, which disarmed him. He rifled through his memory trying to figure out who she reminded him of.

She explained she was an Alchemist.

He still was enough of a skeptic back then to initially discount her.

Then she told him who he was: that he was a mama's boy who lost his mama; how his father was neglectful, never relating to Curtis; how Curtis felt inferior to his father in every way, especially his handsomeness.

She uncovered all his deeply buried fears.

He was shocked, pissed, and depressed in a quick wave of emotional responses. { Years later, he would wonder if she figured out most of those 'secrets' by studying his social media posts.}

Of course, he wanted to know how she could know anything about him.

She explained her astral form had come to him while he dreamed.

That was the lure.

He remembered reading a letter of his mother's where she spoke of her own astral form.

The Alchemist explained what she could do for him.

She told Curtis the price.

He agreed.

Cleo was Fated to love Curtis... one way or another.

⚡_______________⚡

There was night a few years later when Curtis and Cleo were out partying with their best friends, Randy and Francine. When the women were off in the kitchen together, Randy told Curtis that he was envious of Curt & Cleo's love.

He asked Curtis why Cleo loved him so much.

A drunken Curtis confessed that he slipped her a alchemical potion every year on Valentine's Day.

Then, a minute later, suddenly realizing what he'd just done, Curtis made Randy promise that he would never tell Cleo.

Randy thought it was all a hilarious joke, but he promised.

⚡_______________⚡

Another time, Curtis and Randy were drinking alone, when Curtis was feeling especially low. He felt like a phony, like a manipulator, like a truly bad person.

He confessed to Randy that he always wondered if deep down Cleo truly loved him.

Randy laughed uproariously, thinking such a concern was absurd. He assured Curtis that Cleo's love was genuine.

Curtis knew that wasn't true.

⚡_______________⚡

And Curtis almost told Randy yet another time, when they were wasted, blowing shit up on the Fourth of July.

Again-- his guilt was sparked by something his bestie said about Cleo's undying love for him.

For the hundredth time, Curtis thought he deserved to be caught. If he told Randy and Randy told their wives, at least the terrible secret would be released from its cage.

He wondered if he could even get Randy to believe him.

And if Randy ever did acknowledge the truth, would Randy hate Curtis as much as Curtis hated himself?

In the end, he couldn't do it. He remembered the previous time he'd told Randy about how he drugged his wife.

Randy had laughed.

So he ended up just punching away more of his doubts and fears.

Those feelings faded over the years, as the justifications piled up.

The days of fear and guilt and shame were few. Most days, Curtis was too wrapped up in the joys of Cleo to remember how they came about.

⚡_______________⚡

Once, during their annual meeting, Curtis made the mistake of calling the old woman a witch.

She was incensed.

Alchemy, she insisted, had a mystic element to it, but it was not magic. It was a precursor to chemistry. Paracelsus, Robert Boyle, Roger Bacon, even Issac Newton had all been alchemists.

The old woman claimed to possess sacred knowledge that had been handed down in her family for generations.

Never once did Curtis think to ask her why she had chosen him to offer her wares.

⚡_______________⚡

There was no return address on the letter she sent me.

The snail-mail would tell me where to meet her to give her the components for the potion.

This year on February 9th, we met at a Taco Bell on the east side of town.

She sat stoically at a table, nothing in front of her, already waiting for me when I arrived.

I gave her the components for the love potion.

She took them without any hint of an expression. She told me where I could pick up the elixir on the 13th, which just happened to fall on a Friday this year.

I asked the dumbest question without even thinking about it.

"Are you really an alchemist or having you been scamming me all these years?"

She smiled cryptically, shrugged.

She told me where I could pick-up the potion in four days, then she got up and walked out.

I sighed.

This was the part of the ritual where I always felt like I either just had a lobotomy or I needed one.

It wouldn't be until the 13th until I would inevitably change my mind. When I finally saw the pink philter that I would again fell like the Master of My Own (romantic) Destiny.

⚡_______________⚡

My regrets were old monsters rising from their graves.

It's like I'm bipolar when it comes to the potion. I loathe myself during the period where I wait for it. I tell myself over and over that I'm a moron whose insecurities are allowing me to be bilked.

For all I knew, the alleged emotion-inducing elixir could be nothing but carbonated strawberry soda.

On the 12th, I just happened to see a TV show where a character talked at length about fear.

Fear had governed my entire life with Cleo, so I was immediately captivated.

It all boiled down to...

Fear is an illusion. It's Ego-driven.

Fear shrinks the self.

Love expands the self.

Every ancient text said the same thing, within the constraints of their individual languages....

Love is the only thing that is real, and it's certainly the only thing that lasts.

Then the damn TV character-- a wise mentor, naturally-- presented me with a quote attributed to a 13th Century Sufi mystic. Rumi said

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

As I tried to absorb that, I got super drunk on Jack Daniels.

I hated myself with an all consuming passion.

Crying, shaking, drooling, I poured the potion down the sink, then crawled in bed next to Cleo and passed out.

⚡_______________⚡

The next morning, the first things I heard was, "You were sure up late last night."

I rubbed my face, a slight throb behind my eyes. "I was, um, watching videos on YouTube again."

"More stuff about alien abductions? Or were you watching old Flintstone cartoons this time?"

Cleo knew I didn't watch either. That was her.

As everything from the previous night came home to me, my chest grew tight, my lungs labored, and my headache expanded. I said, "Happy Valentine's Day."

Her smile was as radiant as the day I met her. "Happy Valentine's Day, baby. I love you."

I knew she did.

But I wondered if she would love me tomorrow.

And if she did, how would I feel about being a fool all these years for believing in freaking alchemy?

Either way, my old patterns were about to change.

↯

___________________ Bolt⚡