Unwittingly, though unerringly, she lives by her script—the coping tapes, the survival codes, the ones we write in childhood to get through each day to the next. Unchallenged, thus unrevised, her script crafts her future as predictably as we mark the movement of the stars.

In her early pubescent days—the heavy-burdened days of her young and tentative womanhood—she sought the mother love she’s never had from boys whose nature-driven bodies sought something else.

These collisions of mismatched wills and wiles, of offers and compromise—acceptance of disguised, deceptive, and fleeting fulfillment—refined and sculpted her nature and fate.

She gave the boys what they wanted. Oddly, to her, at times she enjoyed giving them what they wanted–and what they gave to her. But when they were done she was empty again. She did not feel loved.

Now, in her tightly-bound woman world, romance as she knows it abides ever so briefly to protect her from the certainty of common life, the reality of change and loss of which she is most afraid. It is tricky to manage though. It is increasingly demanding to keep reality at bay. The pain of unmet expectations in another ill-conceived, starry-eyed adventure—one more self-scripted romantic failure, is a moment of utter, bitter confirmation that she is surely unworthy of worthy love.

Yet, loyal to script, each painful encounter is new. She is caught unaware, fully surprised at this great, awful, unwanted, unearned suffering of a kind and measure so very familiar to her should she dare to give it even a passing sideways glance for an honest moment or two.

For her denial of authorship, the cost is high. Unremitting tears well up from deep reservoirs of longing where love so desperately wants to be.

Oh, dear woman, your release awaits you on the other side of your sorrow, should you choose to love yourself … at last.