The ocean I crossed

Recovery is like crossing an ocean. It's hard work, and intimidating, and if you are not prepared you might drown. The two decades since CJ cut me out of her life have been like crossing an ocean. I got tired, I quit, I nearly drowned a few times. I kept starting over and getting a little bit further each time. Last night I think I reached shore...
A couple of months ago I wrote CJ a love letter. I told her that I felt that if anything happened to me and I had not told her how I felt it would be my dying thoughts, that she didn't know , and it would be a sad thing. I told her how beautiful she is to me, that I find her as alluring as day one, if not more so. I told her that I was still head over heels in love with her but that I was not obsessed any longer, that all I could think of was that it would be nice if I could write letters to her to use one day to help me understand my love and to write a book about my life.... the way famous poets and writers always have these love letters to someone they can't have hidden away in a shoebox (Elanor Roosevelt, for instance)...
Anyhow she wrote back saying the letter was 'lovely' and not freaking her out at all. So I wrote her back and said I hoped that one day I could kiss her again, a bit more of a kiss than the last one twenty one years ago... which was a kiss on the lips that lasted a good minute. I told her I imagined myself coming to see her once in a while and having a kiss and just hanging out a little bit and then we would go on about our business.
I did not hear back from her... I figured I had gone too far, I had stepped over the boundary and so I let it go. I worried it like a dog worries a bone but there was nothing I could do.
Yesterday when I woke up there was a comment from CJ on my Facebook wall. Nothing much, just a comment about something she had remembered from the past about her dog, Phoebe, who we had figured was my 'soul dog'. The fact that she commented on my FB wall was enough to send me into the stratosphere: she was not mad at me after all, and she was still fond of me.
Last night, after a day of thinking about her, I was driving home and saw the most amazing clouds, dark in the middle and on the edges looking like molten rivulets of silver. There was a dragon breathing fire and the fire curled up around the moon. And the moment I got home I wrote CJ an e-mail telling her that it had reminded me of her in its stark natural beauty, and the way that despite driving a car I could not take my eyes off of it.
And she wrote right back . She wrote back saying that she was just checking in, that I was in her thoughts, and that she wished I could be there for her birthday next weekend. And she signed it xxoo.
I am still in shock. I have fought so many huge battles to get here. Once she cut me out of her life. Once there was a time when I was devastated and knew for a fact I'd never see her again. Bit by bit, step by step I have slain demons and climbed mountains and crossed oceans. She represents all that is good and light and worth working for. She represents love and desire and patience and to imagine that I might kiss her again is enough to drive me forward, onward, onward on a high high horse that carries me easily over the tangled rotting corpses of my past. On to my bright new future, one that includes her, my one and only love of my life, this one life I get, she is the one love I get and to know she is not lost to me is the greatest miracle ever worked.
In the words of the poet," my heart is broken ... open."