Scottish Angel

an excerpt from my book project, "What I Did For Love"

This piece was written near Christmas time 2024, the last few days of my ancestral pilgrimage to Scotland. It is unfinished and barely unedited. I share it now as an act of courage and accountability to my Page of Swords year (share your voice even if you don’t feel ready). I access bravery in sharing a work in progress as a recovering perfectionist. I also choose to share it now in honor of my six month anniversary with my Scottish Angel and her recent birthday. She has read this piece. Thank you for reading. If you have energy to comment how it impacts you or send it to someone who it might, I’d be so grateful. Thank you for being here to witness me, my journey and my writing.

<3 Lucky McIntyre

“You’re special” rolls off her tongue and into my neck as she runs her soft fingers through my strawberry blonde hair. We’re on her couch after sharing the famed lesbian sex vortex for an unknown amount of time in her one bedroom apartment with two cats.

Reeling from the portal we traveled through, I continue to take it in. Her. Her body. Her energy. Her taste. Her feel. Her care. Her words. Her.

“You’re like a Scottish angel.” My eyes fall deeper inside her. Blue Bright Ice.

“I’m going to tell all my friends you said this now” she pokes in a way that does anything but hurt. I laugh and coil up in embarrassment. My self proclaimed shyness something she sees right through, and in doing so, sees Me. My light. My shine. My specialness. She gives me space to Be. She doesn’t prod for answers explaining the palpable grief hanging on the air around me and now her. The feeling that emanated out from every cell after cumming for the first time with another woman since my former partner. The one who had me wondering if I’d ever enjoy sex again. Had me ruminating, “Is it all downhill from here?” The one who had me scared I would cry in front of a new person after climaxing, which I did, but so did she before me, unapologetically and beautifully. Her experience of pleasure and release embodied and real. Authentic. She is authentic. She can feel, like me. She inspires me to be me again. To feel again, despite my fear of losing control, getting hurt or being made a fool.

Image from the Light Seers Tarot - the Fool card

[insert story flashback to the fool card and explain the reading that J, an American seeker I connected with in Edinburgh gave me. Set the scene of two queer blondes in a pub giving each other a card reading. Share how she reminds me of my ex best friend - a huge love lost and someone who I shared card readings with first in cafes across SF. Share her take on soul mates and twin flames. Share the full reading she gave. Share her encouragement that healthy hot love is possible and on its way. Share how she thinks the the two of cups card from the “outside influence” celtic cross placement is my Scottish Angel]

“Tell me how the second date goes.”

“I will” and off we go onto our parting paths. My mind flashing to the gesture my former partner gave me over video chat when I asked, “So what do you see for our future then?” Her fingers starting at the same point then drawing two separate lines becoming further and further apart. Supposed “parallel” paths, but really a foreshadowed separation. Not every relationship is forever. Not even “soulmates”. In fact, none last forever like everything else. The child in me needs endless compassion in the face of this terrifying truth. Happily Ever Afters are moments, seasons, years if you’re lucky, but never forever.

I don’t know if it's my autism, my Pisces heart or some other intellectually explainable reason for my longing to hold tight onto all connections ever made, but it’s an automatic impulse this young one has always held. To practice detached attachment is not easy. But I think it’s what I’m being called to master. The ability to hold both. Be both deeply in love and fully immersed in the fantasy you will be together forever, and mindfully aware this is absolutely going to end one day.

“You either break up or die” this new love in my life says. My tism wanting to rebuttal with the nuances in between. Nuance is healing. Nuance is human. No one and nothing is just one thing. And also, she’s kinda right.

I first realized I needed to work on detached attachment, namely in my romantic relationships, at the onset of the pandemic, the dawn of my 30th birthday, when a likely twin flame and the last man I ever “fell for”, did what twin flames do and ran far far away never to be heard from again after our intense short lived romance in the rolling hills that burn in the fall and green in the winter. The same place my former girlfriend was from. The same place I slept in her bed on our second date sending her reiki all night long since she was stressed and I couldn’t sleep. The same land we spent our last night ever together in California (unbeknownst to me and maybe her) five months later before flying together to my home in New York for the first time, and the last time I would ever see her in person. This moment is marked in my memory banks as “the beginning of the end” that took another three excruciating months of “trying” to “make it work”. Versus the twin flame, the man with long beautiful deep black locks and soft spoken demeanor, who was in and out of my life in just a blink of two months. The last time we spoke was on my fairy light filled deck under the black night sky in the redwood tree grove I shared with my best friend and romantic partner at the time before realizing I’m only into women.

In hushed pained voices of a love that couldn’t be, rather wouldn’t be, because of me being polyamorous and him wanting monogamy. We spoke of our sadness for he wanted friendship and I just couldn’t. A conflict I’ve faced more than once in dating.

[insert piece from my journals at that time about detached attachment + how I’ve learned this most/healed this most with my bunny and my platonic nesting partner too. In many ways, ultimately, its a gratitude practice. A harsh reality check that melts into warm butter juice as salty as the tears streaming down your face as you hug your loved one knowing they are here, you love them and you could never see them again. Cherish the hug. Feel the love. Do not take your love for granted, ever. Love now, not tomorrow. Love now, it’s not forever]

“I’m really glad I met you” she says looking up at me with those striking blue eyes, hands gently gripping my thighs.

“Me too.”

“You’re reallyyyy……caring” I say after the silence holding back more tears. “That’s the word I’m looking for” and finally find.

“You’re really easy to care about.” The words I need to hear. Words which press the button on my heart that opens the pain floodgates of healing because I know this to be true. Or did before the other Her. The ones who started this story. My Lover and Mother. The women who had me believing I wasn’t easy to care about. Easy to love. The truth I lost and maybe never even had.

She - the Angel, can feel my spine contract from the cry as she spoons me from behind. Her naked tattooed body up against mine. Soft. Warm. Safe. She inquires about my tears - my pain, in some non-invasive elegantly-kind sort of way while I wring out another round of the sopping hurt I’d been pretending, hoping, was finally gone. The salty sea water stings this gash of mine, helping it heal. The Mor - The Ocean - Mother, here to heal it once more.

She - The Angel has adorned her luminous skin with black inked talismans of Venusian power - flowers and music and sacred geometric symbols. With each one she reveals in view and in meaning makes that gash a little less lighter. A little more healed. My ex once shared whenever she thought I was on a date she would imagine and be convinced I was hooking up with a beautiful woman covered in tattoos. She used this as the reason to ignore me out of the blue. Be cold to me. Be short and sarcastic with me. Be upset with me. I told her I wasn’t, I hadn’t been, and that wasn’t my type anyway. That I love tattoos but not totally covered. She said that’s what she meant. I guess she foresaw something I couldn’t since she had become my whole world.

“The last person I was with wasn’t very caring” but my Scottish Angel already knows this. She has her own wounds of non-belonging, of heartbreak and longing she carries. We all do. These wounded souls of ours hold aching hearts for connection. For a sign love is on its way again. That it is still possible, probably, maybe, happening right now. We are never really alone in our pain. Or our desire.

“It’s affirming. That’s the word I’m looking for” she explains to me. Earlier sharing how she had recently wished to focus more on queer connections as her wise Self knew this is how satisfaction would bring itself to show. The exact same wish I made nine months earlier. An intention I set in motion a day before matching with my ex. How silly of me to believe Universe had delivered the final destination instead one step along the journey.

This good hot healthy lesbian sex vortex resulting in all this crying. All this healing. All this budding of potential love. Was just a second date.

Except this time there was no uhauling. No vows or detailed past pains exchanged. The trauma dump remained closed and we floated giddily into each others unexpected sweetness. We took our time, as slow as you can when working with 3,000 miles of distance, four total dates and three weeks of texting prior. We did the opposite of falling in love, as I was adamant I never would again. So instead, we flew. High in the sky. Euphoric on the reality all is well and good and on its way. Like the feeling of Christmas Eve before mornings dawn.

“And then something very strange happened. The grinch’s heart grew three times it’s size” the narrator on the screen of the epic Jim Carey remake goes. The movie my Scottish Angel and I put on before we became total dirty hoes for the fourth date across my five nights in the city that’s formally five times older than the United States of America.

Before reaching the unavoidable point in the night where goodbyes are exchanged, a silence formed between us. This next goodbye wouldn’t be like the three previous ones shared. The three previous times that got the thrill, joy and privilege to say “I would like to see you again.” “When?”

This goodbyes the real one we dread. The one where I leave and she stays and we see how this goes. The one where we learned we have feelings for one another despite our minds listing out how unrealistic the situation is. For things to “work out.” This healing heart lovey feeling between my Angel and Me helped us be brave and let love. Her petite and powerful body now dressed in cute baby blue matching pj sweats sitting atop her heels looking up at me from the floor. I ask her to close her eyes as I have two goodbye gifts to give. She is mortified as she has not prepared one in return.

“You’ve given me a lot.” And leave it at that with a serious you-will-receive-my-truth eye gaze she does seem to take in.

The first gift is a honey jar. The one with just a few spoonfuls left. Purchased in the grocery store my first day of residency. My fourth in Scotland. This honey originally a gift to my ancestors and land. And now her, an embodiment of both and so so much more. She smiles and giggles as she knows it’s strange and so very me even though we’ve only just met. But my ancestral spiritual Self is a key part of me she sees.

The second gift is one half of the photobooth picture reel we took together the previous night while out on the town dancing disco together in a gay club in Edinburgh. My favorite thing to do. My favorite love to share.

Her head drops immediately along with her eyelids the moment after opening her eyes and seeing this picture we took. Posed for, even. A tangible object of something real - a connection, the evidence there. Only one truth left to steer. It was happening again. This thing they call love. Two hearts opening to one another as they pull the other in. The Angel lets out a silent-sigh-cry soon becoming visible on her cheeks and through her voice. Our photos - Us, have moved her to tears.

She seems to really like me.

I can’t believe this is happening.

I can’t believe I’m feeling this again.

I am glad I shared this photo with her. It belongs to her too.

My heart space wells up again. Stronger from the gashes no longer gushing whenever I bend or laugh or dance or remember everything that happened and how my ex still hasn’t texted back. Never apologized. Just said she’s not attracted to me anymore. The End. No accountability.

Until one suitcher gets pulled apart - ripped open from the uncontrollable force of grief for this angelic love that can’t happen right now. Not in the way you wish as you walk away from her front door, her heavenly home you just closed at five in the morning right after tucking her in to sleep.

You will see her again. I say to myself out loud. My new mantra for the walk back to my hotel. My Self knows leaning into hope, and even yes, trust, helps to get through these separations that tug and tug on the heart, testing it’s strength, and now Ours. Down the hall I go, steadying myself for the onslaught of yearn and ache to come when I think of this Scottish Angel who serves the soul of Edinburgh with her big whole heart - the one healing mine. Her energy, her life, inspired me back to mine.

And even if I don't see her ever again, I’ll still think to myself, God, I’m so grateful she appeared in my life at this exact moment. This Angel of mine.

I have a sense she’s grateful for me too.

It’s remarkable how two beings can meet each other in the exact time their hearts need most. Whether it's to heal the gashes left by a past lover or expand one's capacity to feel. Each time, the connective tissue is the same - hope returns. Love is here. We are right where we need to be. All is right for once.

I walk with my spine high and shoulders wide down the slightly wet Leith Walk just as the deep night turns to navy blue before sunlight hits. I feel brave. I feel love. I feel cared for. I feel lucky. I feel happy. I feel content. I feel complete. I feel like mySelf. I feel.

This is where and how it begins again. Being able to feel.

Love is never gone.

Just changed.

Transformed.

Love,

Lucky