End of Innocence

Chapter XI, Evolution

Ashley and I were and always best friends, companions in life, lovers, and fellow students. We shared everything and more than most when compared to the more traditional configurations of what passed as normalcy. The one staid understanding that we had that surpassed customary acceptance of what was the considered the proper uncensored version of coupling is that in the truest sense; there was no agreement on what the proper standard was. From just one hour's perspective observing people gathered around the LA Metro Rail, the rich diversity of what worked for each lover's pairing ran the entire gamut of the rainbow.

Besides men and women of approximately the same age and race, there were older men, older women, younger men, younger women, people of differing races, same sex, and same sex with divergent races, in fact, any possible combination that was available in the world's immense diversity was represented in just one hour at a busy entrance of the subway. No doubt, we were not the only siblings that shared a mutual attraction, however, our magnetism was based on the full length of our lives, youthful exploration of each other's sexual and emotional makeup, salvation and commitment to the other that manifested itself as the mental willingness to let go of one's independence and bridge the gulf between the known and unknown, and ultimately with the physical act in itself, was the cement and salvation to sanity and truth.

Besides the redemption that we both needed and found within the other, the utter loneliness that can absolutely drive people into horrendous actions towards others or themselves was itself extinguished. For thousands of years, writers and philosophers, teachers and preachers have all tried to put in words what can only be communicated in emotion, that is, emotion was the only true form of understanding. We, Ashley my sister and my love, understood the other through our demonstrative connections. When thought, emotion, and act were all in congruency, when the realization that no power on this earth could succeed at keeping us separated, no moral authority with all its trapping and prognostications would matter one iota, the answer to the fundamental equation of our lives, that of a journey through this life and hopefully beyond as a merged entity became obvious: We had no choice, it was who we are.

If a person was to believe that a force of intelligent nature was behind all of this interaction and if that force was just and loving, it would stand to reason that what we shared, what others that were truly in love share, was the Designer's ambition and reflection that love must be allowed to exist, taken within, and then immediately shared with another. It would also seem to conclude the most intimate way to understand and praise that divine gift was the special solitude of two people together. It matters less how and with whom that event took place only that it does. So, love was truly blind and devoid of any hierarchal set of rules, that was the human race's problems, or more specifically, the stodgy collection of opinions and official conducts created and forced upon the collective masses' behaviors to usurp individual power and the right to choose. Erstwhile, the population rolled over while this rape of liberty continued. It was not always the case. For centuries and somewhat in the United States until 1902, though this country was founded on as a set of corrupted ideas from the very first day and just exchanged one set of prejudicial rules for another, the wisest writers never laid claim that they knew what formula that a pairing took place, only the universal truth that love that brought each player together was the only thing that mattered.

The opportunities of our youth, the friends we shared, the sheer amount of time spent together, the intimate conversations and tender acts of closeness, and ultimately through the tragedies that were communally experienced molded, kneaded, and stretched every aspect of our beings that the only comprehensible result was that Ashley and I would be forever in love and that love was founded on a layer of trust and granite faith that few would have experienced. The sense of relief that overwhelmed us that resulted from the understanding that our hearts had already achieved and knew our minds finally acknowledged in lockstep was liberating. The matured love that slowly found its way through the layers of our understanding provided a standard of structure that became the framework of just living in the day to day world.

My dear sister and I needed to get down to work, to grieve our losses, to close the active chapter of our parents' existence and index them next to all the sweet memories of growing up while distancing ourselves from absolute pain of the present. We had to function, to address the requirements of the living, to understand and respond to legal codes, to deal with final estate issues, all the sometimes tedious examples of modern society with their high expectations of themselves or the work they created and move on. We had to decide what we were going to do with the home that we shared so many years in and now, it was barely tolerable from the events of the recent past. It was a conversation that each component of the whole needed to bring into the open and decided jointly and equably so that the best possible outcome from the worst possible set of circumstances could be achieved.

In all honesty, I had no idea of where we would go with this only that I trusted that the entity that emerged from the two of us, the gestalt of what both Ashley and I brought to the table, the combined synergy would ultimately lead us to the best answer. There was no absolute rush propelling us down any specific action, no attorneys pounded on the door, no phone calls from unscrupulous bill collectors harassing and haranguing us to make good on past debts, just the sense of urgency to conclude one set or another of decisions that life gave us no good choice but to make them and go forward.

In short, the two us despite our tender ages, would have to make choices that would lead us to our own evolution from this point on. It was not a task that we overtly welcomed but simply life demanding the attention of its adherents to move forward in the scheme of what laid before us. Fairness is not something that can be understood at the level that we existed; it is just so much simpler to accept the effect rather than to contemplate the deeper concept of cause. We recognized that unlike most of our peers, the decisions that we must now make revolved around the two of us as one and for whatever good that resided in that or what as of yet undefined difficulties that might be resulted from our decision to live life bonded in mind and soul, we had accepted without reservation that life would unfold now as a mutual destiny instead of disparaging singular paths.

Perhaps fate does allow for a decision or two made at the human level. What was reflected in our psyches is that we allowed love to germinate between the two of us, that it was accepted and assimilated, and from this point had taken on its own purpose. Mystical to be sure, but nothing to fear as it gave infinitely more than it demanded. We had finally begun to heal, something that Ashley and I are quite convinced could not have happened in absence of each other. As a patient needs a physician, a love needs another for without it, the giving and sharing of that hallowed flow of energy just cannot exist.