Have you ever been in love?

Love is a funny thing. You could meet the most desirable person who ticks every box, but love has a mind of its own.
Love has a funny way of being too far out of reach when the time is right and you want it, and then creeping up on you and tapping you on the shoulder when your back is turned.

To give a very quick briefing of my relationship history, including the tweeny years that really shouldn't count, from the start to now and in that order, I've had a boyfriend for a week, a boyfriend for a month, a boyfriend for 6 months, a boyfriend for 5 years and a boyfriend for 9 months.

So have you ever been in love..?

Ok... I'll go first.

Yes I have.

But not with the one that lasted the longest.

I spent 5 years with a man I was not in love with.

This is my confession!

But before you judge me hear my defense..... not that it's a very good one.

This was a good man. He was kind, he was calm, he was funny, he was clever. He never did anything to hurt me. This is my terrible defense.

I was young (and still am) and I didn't know that love wasn't something you could choose with the right person. I spent 5 years in a relationship with a man I was not in love with because I couldn't figure out what was not to love.

I tried to love him, I really did. I had no past traumas that would have made it hard for me to love. My heart had not yet been broken. I was strong and healthy but for the life of me I could not love this man the way he deserved.

I thought there was something wrong with me. Maybe I had no heart. Maybe it was made of stone. Maybe I was evil.

I ended it.

I broke his heart with my inability to love him. I came to accept that I was incapable of true love as I had dreamt it. But I had a hard time accepting what I had selfishly put him through.

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This is Reilly!

Reilly was my Dad's cat who came into my life not long before this relationship ended.

Reilly was a badass!

His job was to keep away mice and he was a savage hunter! As a kitten he left a rat almost as big as himself on the doorstep! I arrived at my parents place one day and saw a birds wing on their drive. I had a look around and saw the other wing on the other side of the drive. I walked back out onto the road and found two little bird legs. When I got to the front door, there it was...

...the birds head.

I woke up one morning and spotted him dragging a rabbit across the garden.

This cat was a beast!

But something about that made me admire him. It was a conflicted admiration though.

That spring after I had ended my 5 year long relationship, Reilly had begun a daily ritual of baby bird sacrifice. I couldn't watch. Each time he got out of the house he would go straight for the bush where there was a birds nest. I tried to stop him but it was impossible to keep an eye on him all the time. Every time I heard the screams of the mama bird I ran out to catch him but ... I was too late.

Mama bird and I agonised as Reilly tore the chicks fragile skin and played with its insides. I was sickened every time and it even made me want to kill the cat just to save the birds! But how would that make sense?!

Reilly doesn't see the evil we see when he plays with his food. "What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly." Or in this case the cat and the bird. What he does with that bird is the equivalent of what I do with the bird on my dinner plate.

I had to teach myself that this thing that seems evil is in Reilly's nature. I had to train myself to forgive him so that I wouldn't kill my Dad's cat!

I had to forgive him for the evil that's in his nature.

---

As I learned to do this I realised something. This forgiveness I taught myself to give Reilly was something I hadn't given to myself...

I had gotten so wrapped up in my guilt over the pain I put my old friend through. It was finally time for me to forgive myself for the love I was incapable of.

You see, none of us are perfect!

In fact, we're far from it!

Because whether we like to admit it or not, evil is in our nature.

Just think about all the evil in the world for a moment. Think of war and the ways we justify it. Think of those who turn their backs on refugees out of fear of what would come from helping them. Selfishness and therefore evil is in our nature.

Now I'm not saying we should just accept our evil ways. Acknowledging that evil is part of our nature is the only way we can confront it and keep it restrained. It is those who convince themselves that they are incapable of committing evil who are the most susceptible to it, because they are completely oblivious to it when it finds its way out through their ego.

Remember, even Hitler thought he was the good guy!

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Reilly was just a cat.

A tabby cat with stripes like the beast. He was like a miniature tiger. I've been obsessed with tigers all my life.

I even have both of these on DVD:

(Who doesn't love David Attenborough?!)

Perhaps I admire tigers for the same reason I took a liking to Reilly even when he seemed so cruel. Tigers are ferocious monsters. EVIL. But what is chaos for the gazelle is normal for the tiger, right?

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The design I came up with & took to my tattoo artist to present what I wanted:

I marked myself with the stripes of a tiger to remind myself of a lesson learned.

We are not perfect. Sometimes the terrible things that we do are just in our nature. We should watch ourselves and beware of the evil that we can put a stop to. But in some cases, I just have to forgive myself for what wasn't in my control. Not being able to love a man who gave me 5 years of his time seemed like evil to me. And it took me a while to learn to forgive myself for hurting him and for wasting his time.

There are two interpretations to the meaning behind my tattoo.

• One is "The Evil That's in Our Nature",
  which should be acknowledged to keep it contained and in some cases forgiven.
• The other is the "Power to be Alone"
  Some time after I got this tattoo I learned that I'm not incapable of love. With another man and against my will I did fall in love. But one admirable thing about the tiger is that it walks alone and needs no one. Not like lions who accompany each other in matriarchal prides. Tigers are completely free from dependence. I feel empowered knowing that when I walk away from somebody they see my tiger stripes which stand for my independence and strength to walk alone.
  

And I'm also strong enough now to forgive myself for selfishly walking away.