“Write or Die”
I can’t say exactly how long it’s been, but for some time now, I’ve been having this recurring dream: I’m riding my bicycle in a familiar neighborhood with a winding road. I know the houses, I can name the people in those houses, and the canopied corners guarded by fat barks feel like home to me.
Last night, my dream was the same except some houses that used to be blue were now red, and others that used to be white were now green. Change was happening, and I didn’t know who these new people were; it seemed I had been away from this place for too long. When I rounded the bend to start my descent, I suddenly found myself in a car.
Cruising down a strange, mist-filled gulley, a curtain of snow flitted in the distance and the road glistened and shone. I pulled to the shoulder, just next to the dying grass and gravel, and realized that ice coated the asphalt. The anemic road was straight, without railings, and plunged into a ravine.
This morning I went to work. I ate lunch with my boyfriend. Next to our walnut table two women discussws something just beneath my comprehension kept us from touching. Instead, I told him that I sometimes wondered about withholding sex from him with the intention of keeping him interested.
“But punishing you would mean punishing myself,” I said. “I won’t do it.”
After my chamomile came, he reiterated the same: “Sometimes I feel like I should be a jerk to keep you on your toes. I haven’t because so far, this is working.”
Our musings probably originate from both our previous relationships where drama was everywhere. Lurking behind the Bambi eyes given and received, there were reasons why neither of us should have stayed six months in either situation. But we did. And then they were over.
I hypothesized that people who have resumes containing strings of six- or twelve-month relationships manufacture drama because they don’t know any better. These relationship rookies think there’s a need to keep things interesting because what will they do without the adrenaline high they get from their significant other? How will they know they’re in love without the constant crutch of feeling something outside of themselves? And why would they stay when they are no longer the center of that other person’s universe?
But the truth is this: one day we will stop talking. We’ll take each other for granted because we’re too comfortable or busy or bored. If things keep on the way they’re going, it’s inevitable. And that’s when the work begins. Three months in, the promises he makes about never taking me for granted are lovely sentiments, but I know this kind of wooing takes lots of energy and more time than either of us eventually might have.
And one day we’ll lose a parent, a friend, or a job. We may even (heaven forbid) lose a child. And when that happens—when the world shifts so completely that everything is out of focus and we have to find ourselves again, we’ll also have to relocate each other. Through the blur of tragedy, we will have to adjust to not recognizing our own reflections and fight to see a place for the other person.
When that day comes, even the sturdiness of all the things we have in common and all the love we feel for each other may not be enough to keep us together. When that day comes, I want to be able to love him and let him go.
But aside from those certainties, there’s this thing I’m doing that will land me right where I was just before I decided to divorce: I’m working really hard at something that has nothing to do with writing in order to ‘have enough.’ But what is enough, really? And if I don’t carve out writing in all my days, no amount of money or love from a good man will account for what I’m losing.
And I think my dream has to do with that change—how I’m constantly putting my writing away and how it keeps falling lower on my list of priorities.
Staring at the icy road, I have to make a decision: write or die.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
June 19, 2011
“Don’t Feed the Monster”
“My sister loves me,” I repeat to myself despite the fact she has punched me in the stomach. Again. The first time was at her daughter’s birthday party, and it wasn’t a metaphor. At the bowling alley black-lit with glowing neon cut outs, the disco ball spun and glinted a Saturday night vibe one late Sunday afternoon. People I mostly didn’t know milled around in borrowed shoes, mingling and drinking fruit punch from plastic cups. There, next to the door, sat a fold out table piled high with presents and the soon-to-be offensive sheet cake with cursive lettering, “Happy First Birthday!” in confettied bright blue.
“Will you hold her?” my sister asked.
Handing her daughter off to me and dashing away to swipe up some possibly malignant punch across the room, my sister left no instructions. And being a childless aunt, I did my best to bounce the birthday girl up and down as she began to cry, realizing she was abandoned with an unqualified substitute.
Desperate for a cure as her whining increased, I tried something stupid: I dipped a small finger into the white frosting and brought it to my niece’s lips. It was her cake, after all, and why have a cake for your birthday if you’re not going to at least taste it. Granted, her tooth count left much to be desired, and I’m not sure she was cognizant of the difference between regular food and this special cake thing, but it made perfect sense to me.
A pink polo and white chino shorts blur came rushing at me, and I did what anyone would do: I pulled the baby closer to my body to protect her from this meteor-like object that was on a collision path toward us, would surely throw me off balance, and send my ass in a trajectory that made the slightly flawed sheet cake into a bull’s eye. My sister’s right fist stopped short of planting all the way into my belly before she snatched her child from out of my grip, causing the cries to become ever-more strident.
“She can’t have sugar,” my sister snapped, her face screwed up, contorted in anger.
“I didn’t know.”
That first time, she subsequently forgot it ever happened, then made me feel like a crazy person for even suggesting it. But I was there. I know what went down, and my sister has not been gentle with me in the interim. Which is why I was already wary when her daughter’s ninth birthday approached and my niece informed me that I was assigned to “watching the kids.”
“But what if I want to be one of the kids?”
“You can’t. Well, maybe you can. I’ll have to ask my mom.”
It was a sign, so when the evite came, I knew I wasn’t getting asked to a party—I was being enlisted to work for birthday cake. Did I say that whenever I get especially crazed about wanting babies of my own and wondering if I’m too old to start looking for husband number two to father those children, it’s usually because my sister has said things along the lines of, “you’d better get serious if you want it to happen,” and “you’re not getting any younger, you know.” Of course I know. So this is the drill: I freak the fuck out until one of my friends talks me down from the I’m-losing-it ledge of trying to figure out my entire life in one afternoon.
“Don’t listen to your sister,” my friends say, and I eventually return to the present and loving-what-isness.
Anyway, my niece who is a bit of a worrier of things big and small, expressed some concern about the fact that my husband number one disappeared.
“I miss him,” she supposedly said to my sister. “You aren’t going to divorce Daddy, are you?”
I get it—her best friend’s parents also recently divorced, and my niece is feeling anxiety about the stability of her own life, yada, yada, yada. I feel her, really I do, but my ex is not coming back from the other side of the world to ease her pain, especially since his constant remarks about her had to do with spoilt brattiness and her abundance of hugs for everyone but him. He thought she hated him.
The other week, I brought my new beau to a family gathering. After seeing us together and hearing he has two children, her concern surfaced again, and rather than correct her daughter, rather than disclose to her that her very own daddy was also previously married, rather than allow me to tell her the truth, my sister, in her infinite wisdom, instructed me to divert.
“If she asks about your boyfriend or your boyfriend’s children, ask her a question back..”
“Why?” I asked dumb and unsuspecting. “I’m the fun aunty. I’m the aunty who tells the truth.”
“No,” she said, firm. “You’ve become the evil aunty who took away two children’s daddy.”
Forget that I am completely paranoid about meeting these two children whose father has been divorced for two years because their mother cheated on him. Forget that I have absolutely no experience with motherhood, or that I suddenly have been rethinking this desire for children based on these insecurities. Forget that my logic follows this arc: if my niece, who I’ve known her entire life and have always been loving towards can label me ‘evil,’ that these two strange children will hate me grows ever more likely.
Instead, let’s focus on the fact that my sister has managed to punch me in the stomach yet again, and it hurts. I spent an entire eight hours of my life worrying about all this kid stuff, finally feeling as if I’d rather walk away than risk it. I had to call my mom, who talked me out of it.
“It’s not true. Don’t even think about it,” she told me.
And it was great advice—when I allow the monster of my insecurities space, it breeds and grows. Just like joy and happiness, whatever I put my energy into takes over, infusing my life because my perception is 100% of my truth. I have to trust that I’ll meet his kids when I’m supposed to, that my neurotic niece loves me, that my other nieces and nephews love me, that I am good with kids.
Forming boundaries is also part of the monster starvation diet, which means I will not be attending my niece’s birthday party, and it’s quite likely I won’t be missed. The twelve or thirteen other nine year-old girls will most definitely take most of my niece’s attention. I’m not trying to punish my sister or my niece. I’m not trying to do anything but protect myself from getting punched again, figuratively or literally.
But there’s something I need to say to my sister, who consistently takes any commentary that’s not cheerleading, morphs it into criticism, then redirects it into a full-scale defensive attack, much like that first real punch she doesn’t remember. I need to tell her that this is my life, that though I want her in it, I won’t hide my boyfriend from her daughter just so she can feel secure in a world full instability, full of divorce. It’s not fair. But like having my cake and eating it, too, perhaps that’s part of the insane reason why it can’t be which I still don’t get. All I know is when I was a kid, birthday cake made everything better. All I know is it makes no sense to have cake if you’re not going to eat it. Besides, monsters don't even like cake, do they?
“My sister loves me,” I repeat to myself despite the fact she has punched me in the stomach. Again. The first time was at her daughter’s birthday party, and it wasn’t a metaphor. At the bowling alley black-lit with glowing neon cut outs, the disco ball spun and glinted a Saturday night vibe one late Sunday afternoon. People I mostly didn’t know milled around in borrowed shoes, mingling and drinking fruit punch from plastic cups. There, next to the door, sat a fold out table piled high with presents and the soon-to-be offensive sheet cake with cursive lettering, “Happy First Birthday!” in confettied bright blue.
“Will you hold her?” my sister asked.
Handing her daughter off to me and dashing away to swipe up some possibly malignant punch across the room, my sister left no instructions. And being a childless aunt, I did my best to bounce the birthday girl up and down as she began to cry, realizing she was abandoned with an unqualified substitute.
Desperate for a cure as her whining increased, I tried something stupid: I dipped a small finger into the white frosting and brought it to my niece’s lips. It was her cake, after all, and why have a cake for your birthday if you’re not going to at least taste it. Granted, her tooth count left much to be desired, and I’m not sure she was cognizant of the difference between regular food and this special cake thing, but it made perfect sense to me.
A pink polo and white chino shorts blur came rushing at me, and I did what anyone would do: I pulled the baby closer to my body to protect her from this meteor-like object that was on a collision path toward us, would surely throw me off balance, and send my ass in a trajectory that made the slightly flawed sheet cake into a bull’s eye. My sister’s right fist stopped short of planting all the way into my belly before she snatched her child from out of my grip, causing the cries to become ever-more strident.
“She can’t have sugar,” my sister snapped, her face screwed up, contorted in anger.
“I didn’t know.”
That first time, she subsequently forgot it ever happened, then made me feel like a crazy person for even suggesting it. But I was there. I know what went down, and my sister has not been gentle with me in the interim. Which is why I was already wary when her daughter’s ninth birthday approached and my niece informed me that I was assigned to “watching the kids.”
“But what if I want to be one of the kids?”
“You can’t. Well, maybe you can. I’ll have to ask my mom.”
It was a sign, so when the evite came, I knew I wasn’t getting asked to a party—I was being enlisted to work for birthday cake. Did I say that whenever I get especially crazed about wanting babies of my own and wondering if I’m too old to start looking for husband number two to father those children, it’s usually because my sister has said things along the lines of, “you’d better get serious if you want it to happen,” and “you’re not getting any younger, you know.” Of course I know. So this is the drill: I freak the fuck out until one of my friends talks me down from the I’m-losing-it ledge of trying to figure out my entire life in one afternoon.
“Don’t listen to your sister,” my friends say, and I eventually return to the present and loving-what-isness.
Anyway, my niece who is a bit of a worrier of things big and small, expressed some concern about the fact that my husband number one disappeared.
“I miss him,” she supposedly said to my sister. “You aren’t going to divorce Daddy, are you?”
I get it—her best friend’s parents also recently divorced, and my niece is feeling anxiety about the stability of her own life, yada, yada, yada. I feel her, really I do, but my ex is not coming back from the other side of the world to ease her pain, especially since his constant remarks about her had to do with spoilt brattiness and her abundance of hugs for everyone but him. He thought she hated him.
The other week, I brought my new beau to a family gathering. After seeing us together and hearing he has two children, her concern surfaced again, and rather than correct her daughter, rather than disclose to her that her very own daddy was also previously married, rather than allow me to tell her the truth, my sister, in her infinite wisdom, instructed me to divert.
“If she asks about your boyfriend or your boyfriend’s children, ask her a question back..”
“Why?” I asked dumb and unsuspecting. “I’m the fun aunty. I’m the aunty who tells the truth.”
“No,” she said, firm. “You’ve become the evil aunty who took away two children’s daddy.”
Forget that I am completely paranoid about meeting these two children whose father has been divorced for two years because their mother cheated on him. Forget that I have absolutely no experience with motherhood, or that I suddenly have been rethinking this desire for children based on these insecurities. Forget that my logic follows this arc: if my niece, who I’ve known her entire life and have always been loving towards can label me ‘evil,’ that these two strange children will hate me grows ever more likely.
Instead, let’s focus on the fact that my sister has managed to punch me in the stomach yet again, and it hurts. I spent an entire eight hours of my life worrying about all this kid stuff, finally feeling as if I’d rather walk away than risk it. I had to call my mom, who talked me out of it.
“It’s not true. Don’t even think about it,” she told me.
And it was great advice—when I allow the monster of my insecurities space, it breeds and grows. Just like joy and happiness, whatever I put my energy into takes over, infusing my life because my perception is 100% of my truth. I have to trust that I’ll meet his kids when I’m supposed to, that my neurotic niece loves me, that my other nieces and nephews love me, that I am good with kids.
Forming boundaries is also part of the monster starvation diet, which means I will not be attending my niece’s birthday party, and it’s quite likely I won’t be missed. The twelve or thirteen other nine year-old girls will most definitely take most of my niece’s attention. I’m not trying to punish my sister or my niece. I’m not trying to do anything but protect myself from getting punched again, figuratively or literally.
But there’s something I need to say to my sister, who consistently takes any commentary that’s not cheerleading, morphs it into criticism, then redirects it into a full-scale defensive attack, much like that first real punch she doesn’t remember. I need to tell her that this is my life, that though I want her in it, I won’t hide my boyfriend from her daughter just so she can feel secure in a world full instability, full of divorce. It’s not fair. But like having my cake and eating it, too, perhaps that’s part of the insane reason why it can’t be which I still don’t get. All I know is when I was a kid, birthday cake made everything better. All I know is it makes no sense to have cake if you’re not going to eat it. Besides, monsters don't even like cake, do they?
Thursday, June 9, 2011
June 9, 2011
“That Time”
Once a month I get an excuse to be a crazy bitch—to cry and laugh hysterically, to lay in bed all day and eat chocolate. I’ve been told that many take offence at the suggestion that their behavior might have something to do with monthly hormonal shiftings. Perhaps it’s because they believe they should always have this excuse that comes with the right to be as imbalanced and rash as they wanna be, but I don’t think that’s fair. I have control over my emotions and actions for the most part, and I’m responsible for how my psychosis, neurosis, and general brokenness mutates into action.
But even though it’s been happening for many years now, I’m always caught off guard. Take today for example: by nine a.m., I wanted to go home. Never mind I was at my lover’s place, having woken to the sound of torrential rain and the warm of him nestling me into bliss. When the birds began chirping we dragged ourselves out of bed, ate oatmeal, and planned a walk.
“Do you want a latte?” he asked, recalling how I depend on a daily cup, then driving me to the Not-Starbucks café in the middle of town.
I got quiet. All of a sudden, as we rode past the monkey pod trees lining the street, I craved aloneness. How do I say ‘take me home,’ I thought, without it coming out an accusation?
We parked, and I shoved my hands in my pockets, trying to keep my overwhelming irritation in, and walked slowly to the place, trying not to spill any attitude onto him. Waiting for the guy to froth my milk, my lover’s hands massaged my shoulders, his warm melting my malaise.
“Are you okay?” he asked moments later.
“I’m grumpy.” I realized then I had to make a bigger effort to fight the funk.
Later among the ironwood trees, we watched the charcoal sky turn slate, the clouds foreboding more thunder and lightening. Straddling a grass green picnic bench, his hands held mine inside the pockets of my wind breaker. We faced the wind.
“I should be in front of you,” he whispered behind my ear, licking the ridge and sending goose bumps across my expanses.
I wanted to divulge how afraid I was of infidelity—how I’d spent so much effort avoiding it, how I felt something was off.
“Hey, look at that,” I said instead, noticing a puffed out cardinal whose wings wouldn’t work against the wind. Harassed, the small feathers around the beak were a dried-blood-kind-of-brown. A larger, bright red one came along, hopping past our feet; its eyes sizing us up.
He told me when he was a boy, he’d tried to save many baby birds, but they’d all died in his care. It would be when he was a man, after many years of marriage, that his wife would cheat on him and they would divorce. Obviously, that death would be worse.
Following our walk, we went back to check on the baby bird, and found it still struggling to stay upright against the whipping. My lover went to the trash can and picked out a makeshift shovel cut from a gallon container. He placed the serendipitous tool next to the small bird, and nudged it in, gingerly holding the handle at his hip.
When we got back to his place, he found a bigger-than-shoe-box, lined the inside with paper towels, and covered it with terry cloth. It was for his kids, he said. But I think it may have been for him, too.
When it was time to pick them up, we woke from our nap, and made love again, his mouth at the back of my ear. And whereas I can usually concentrate on my physical sensations, all I could think of were the rolls of my stomach and the fat of my thighs. He’s going to cheat on me, was playing on repeat.
Of course, this track is nothing new. I know all the verses by heart, and they have absolutely nothing to do with him. But my body image is usually quite healthy when I’m sane. And my fear of infidelity dates back to the early nineties, to the last time I surrendered to love. I didn’t break from it then, but the fissures are still definitely there, the old fingers filling up again, bleeding out into this love. Usually I have a better hold on my insecurities, and can easily call upon the amount of men who ogle me as I walk down the street, remember that cheating is more pathetic for the cheater than the jilted.
And even though I’ve been shoving chocolate in my mouth for two days, even though his calendar said it was due today, I still didn’t expect my insecurity to so surely shove my peace out of the way.
On the way from his place to mine, I closed my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “for not feeding you lunch.”
I’d said I was hungry, which was true, but this was not what I meditated on as he drove. Instead I wanted to be so far away from him. I wondered about never seeing him again, and I imagined what it would be like to break his heart. Mine, too.
Because when I let myself know what’s true, I’m terrified, elated, and sure: I want to run away and save myself from this sense that the bottom will drop out below me. But I’m drawn to this kind man, who has given me no reason to doubt. And I know that he is the love of my life.
My license to craze came after he dropped me off. Suddenly my world made perfect sense—I was menstrual, emotional, irrational. I allowed the crazy bitch to take over because there was no way I couldn’t. And even though she’s still here, hanging out, smoking her nasty insecurity cigarettes in my near, her hacking helps me know it’s not really me, and that once she leaves, I’ll get my peace back.
Once a month I get an excuse to be a crazy bitch—to cry and laugh hysterically, to lay in bed all day and eat chocolate. I’ve been told that many take offence at the suggestion that their behavior might have something to do with monthly hormonal shiftings. Perhaps it’s because they believe they should always have this excuse that comes with the right to be as imbalanced and rash as they wanna be, but I don’t think that’s fair. I have control over my emotions and actions for the most part, and I’m responsible for how my psychosis, neurosis, and general brokenness mutates into action.
But even though it’s been happening for many years now, I’m always caught off guard. Take today for example: by nine a.m., I wanted to go home. Never mind I was at my lover’s place, having woken to the sound of torrential rain and the warm of him nestling me into bliss. When the birds began chirping we dragged ourselves out of bed, ate oatmeal, and planned a walk.
“Do you want a latte?” he asked, recalling how I depend on a daily cup, then driving me to the Not-Starbucks café in the middle of town.
I got quiet. All of a sudden, as we rode past the monkey pod trees lining the street, I craved aloneness. How do I say ‘take me home,’ I thought, without it coming out an accusation?
We parked, and I shoved my hands in my pockets, trying to keep my overwhelming irritation in, and walked slowly to the place, trying not to spill any attitude onto him. Waiting for the guy to froth my milk, my lover’s hands massaged my shoulders, his warm melting my malaise.
“Are you okay?” he asked moments later.
“I’m grumpy.” I realized then I had to make a bigger effort to fight the funk.
Later among the ironwood trees, we watched the charcoal sky turn slate, the clouds foreboding more thunder and lightening. Straddling a grass green picnic bench, his hands held mine inside the pockets of my wind breaker. We faced the wind.
“I should be in front of you,” he whispered behind my ear, licking the ridge and sending goose bumps across my expanses.
I wanted to divulge how afraid I was of infidelity—how I’d spent so much effort avoiding it, how I felt something was off.
“Hey, look at that,” I said instead, noticing a puffed out cardinal whose wings wouldn’t work against the wind. Harassed, the small feathers around the beak were a dried-blood-kind-of-brown. A larger, bright red one came along, hopping past our feet; its eyes sizing us up.
He told me when he was a boy, he’d tried to save many baby birds, but they’d all died in his care. It would be when he was a man, after many years of marriage, that his wife would cheat on him and they would divorce. Obviously, that death would be worse.
Following our walk, we went back to check on the baby bird, and found it still struggling to stay upright against the whipping. My lover went to the trash can and picked out a makeshift shovel cut from a gallon container. He placed the serendipitous tool next to the small bird, and nudged it in, gingerly holding the handle at his hip.
When we got back to his place, he found a bigger-than-shoe-box, lined the inside with paper towels, and covered it with terry cloth. It was for his kids, he said. But I think it may have been for him, too.
When it was time to pick them up, we woke from our nap, and made love again, his mouth at the back of my ear. And whereas I can usually concentrate on my physical sensations, all I could think of were the rolls of my stomach and the fat of my thighs. He’s going to cheat on me, was playing on repeat.
Of course, this track is nothing new. I know all the verses by heart, and they have absolutely nothing to do with him. But my body image is usually quite healthy when I’m sane. And my fear of infidelity dates back to the early nineties, to the last time I surrendered to love. I didn’t break from it then, but the fissures are still definitely there, the old fingers filling up again, bleeding out into this love. Usually I have a better hold on my insecurities, and can easily call upon the amount of men who ogle me as I walk down the street, remember that cheating is more pathetic for the cheater than the jilted.
And even though I’ve been shoving chocolate in my mouth for two days, even though his calendar said it was due today, I still didn’t expect my insecurity to so surely shove my peace out of the way.
On the way from his place to mine, I closed my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “for not feeding you lunch.”
I’d said I was hungry, which was true, but this was not what I meditated on as he drove. Instead I wanted to be so far away from him. I wondered about never seeing him again, and I imagined what it would be like to break his heart. Mine, too.
Because when I let myself know what’s true, I’m terrified, elated, and sure: I want to run away and save myself from this sense that the bottom will drop out below me. But I’m drawn to this kind man, who has given me no reason to doubt. And I know that he is the love of my life.
My license to craze came after he dropped me off. Suddenly my world made perfect sense—I was menstrual, emotional, irrational. I allowed the crazy bitch to take over because there was no way I couldn’t. And even though she’s still here, hanging out, smoking her nasty insecurity cigarettes in my near, her hacking helps me know it’s not really me, and that once she leaves, I’ll get my peace back.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
June 5, 2011
“I is. He is. We is.”
I try my best to love this moment. If I concentrate hard enough on each second, I love and let go, love and let go, love and let go. Meanwhile, the self that gets in the way of a greater knowing makes the “I” disappear, and being connected to everything flourishes. But I have a job and students, I have writing to do and people to interact with, which means I fail at living at that higher frequency all the time.
My mom says I throw ‘love’ around like it’s candy when I should more accurately say that I care about another person. But whereas I differentiate between ‘loving someone’ and being ‘in love,’ she encourages me to be careful with my words.
“You are a writer, after all.”
But I maintain I have loved a lot of people, though I can’t say the same for ‘in-loveness’ in my life. Instead I married my best friend, whom I loved, but who I was never in love with. How does that happen? The short answer is I needed someone safe, someone trustworthy, someone who would never cheat on me, but there were a number of reasons why I did not need to marry him.
One of them was notthe way he is still my friend even after I broke it off, or the way we talked on the phone the other day and I felt free to tell him I met someone else—someone serious, someone who took me to Hawai`i.
This someone tells me the definition of love changes over time, with each new relationship. It makes me wonder how many times he’s been in love—how he’s stayed hopeful despite the brokenness he’s had to endure. It’s likely we’re all broken somehow, and I know he’s had his share.
But this time feels different to both of us. We agree—being together is like being home; a home so pure and comfortable that neither of us has ever experienced this feeling outside of ourselves. Our first lunch date lasted so long, the restaurant was setting up for dinner by the time we finally left. Every time since has been fluid with easy conversations, rants and questions, comfortable silences, too.
Plus he knows how to use ‘proffer’ and ‘foibles,’ knows how to spell they’re, there, and their. He understands the difference between a prologue and an epilogue, and writes me long, articulate emails about how he feels about the world. And me.
When he touches me, I feel a flash like an ice shower which fades into a sensation akin to a stick of room-temperature butter being glazed all along the path of his hands. And when we sleep he locks me into his arms, but it’s never stifling—like a violin case made to fit the instrument, it’s as if he was built to hold me.
The other day we were at the ocean and I sliced my foot on a rock. Shirtless, his maple muscles were covered with dry salt crystals and literally glistened in the sunlight. He bent over me, took my bleeding foot in both hands, and examined the wound as if it were a fragile thing—a wounded wing or the broken-paw of a kitten. The waves washed the rocks, clunking them together behind him while he looked up at me apologetically.
Pulling my skin flap in the opposite direction of the cut, like ripping off a band aid so that the sting abbreviated, he grimaced at the thing that hurt me.
“Do you want me to carry you back?” he asked.
All of this scares the bejesus out of me because I’m not accustomed to being loved so well; I’m used to doing most of the loving, so all this receiving freaks me out a little. Okay, it freaks me out a lot.
Another day we went hiking. There in the mountains, we used ropes to scale up vertical cliffs to reach verdant and panoramic plateaus. At the top, a cloud engulfed us. He used his entire body to shield me from the blanketing rain. Afterward, we clung again to the ropes to clamber down, and never having un-scaled a mountain, I found the backwards descent most unnerving.
“I have to trust the rope,” I told him. “It’s not easy.” It made me think about my reasons for staying on the edge of my feelings about him, even though he had done nothing suspect.
“Nothing is free,” I said, “I’m just waiting for the bill.”
“What would that look like to you?”
“I don’t know.”
But maybe I do—maybe I’m afraid I’ll need him, that I’ll love him and he’ll disappear. Maybe I’m waiting for the real him to show up and want something I can’t or don’t want to give, to expect me to become someone I’m not, to be dissatisfied with the way I [fill-in-the-blank]. It’s happened before, and I have the scars to prove it—my cynicism about receiving is transparent, obvious, plain.
It was easier to give because I always knew how much everything cost, and though I can’t say my love was ever truly free, I tried to give only what I could without resenting. I tried not to expect anything back. But I don’t actually have that past. Nor do I have the future.
All I have is this moment, all I have is this right now. And right now, I am in love. Concentrating on that rather than all the ‘used to bes’ and ‘ifs,’ I attempt to love what is. When I do that, the energy of this in-loveness spreads out past my ego, past the atmosphere of us, and into a connectedness with everything which can’t be bad for the universe. So my walking meditation becomes loving this moment, allowing for the free exchange of giving and receiving, and letting it go of all the things that scare me.
For the most part, I stay calm and focused, present and aware. I’m grateful for the ease I feel whenever I’m in his near, but there are times I can’t gauge how far I’ll have to fall should the worst happen. I freak out about breaking irreparably, just like he does. And I have to remind myself to have faith that god is always with me, is me, is him, is we, and that aligning with that makes everything perfect; that’s the rope we have to trust.
I try my best to love this moment. If I concentrate hard enough on each second, I love and let go, love and let go, love and let go. Meanwhile, the self that gets in the way of a greater knowing makes the “I” disappear, and being connected to everything flourishes. But I have a job and students, I have writing to do and people to interact with, which means I fail at living at that higher frequency all the time.
My mom says I throw ‘love’ around like it’s candy when I should more accurately say that I care about another person. But whereas I differentiate between ‘loving someone’ and being ‘in love,’ she encourages me to be careful with my words.
“You are a writer, after all.”
But I maintain I have loved a lot of people, though I can’t say the same for ‘in-loveness’ in my life. Instead I married my best friend, whom I loved, but who I was never in love with. How does that happen? The short answer is I needed someone safe, someone trustworthy, someone who would never cheat on me, but there were a number of reasons why I did not need to marry him.
One of them was notthe way he is still my friend even after I broke it off, or the way we talked on the phone the other day and I felt free to tell him I met someone else—someone serious, someone who took me to Hawai`i.
This someone tells me the definition of love changes over time, with each new relationship. It makes me wonder how many times he’s been in love—how he’s stayed hopeful despite the brokenness he’s had to endure. It’s likely we’re all broken somehow, and I know he’s had his share.
But this time feels different to both of us. We agree—being together is like being home; a home so pure and comfortable that neither of us has ever experienced this feeling outside of ourselves. Our first lunch date lasted so long, the restaurant was setting up for dinner by the time we finally left. Every time since has been fluid with easy conversations, rants and questions, comfortable silences, too.
Plus he knows how to use ‘proffer’ and ‘foibles,’ knows how to spell they’re, there, and their. He understands the difference between a prologue and an epilogue, and writes me long, articulate emails about how he feels about the world. And me.
When he touches me, I feel a flash like an ice shower which fades into a sensation akin to a stick of room-temperature butter being glazed all along the path of his hands. And when we sleep he locks me into his arms, but it’s never stifling—like a violin case made to fit the instrument, it’s as if he was built to hold me.
The other day we were at the ocean and I sliced my foot on a rock. Shirtless, his maple muscles were covered with dry salt crystals and literally glistened in the sunlight. He bent over me, took my bleeding foot in both hands, and examined the wound as if it were a fragile thing—a wounded wing or the broken-paw of a kitten. The waves washed the rocks, clunking them together behind him while he looked up at me apologetically.
Pulling my skin flap in the opposite direction of the cut, like ripping off a band aid so that the sting abbreviated, he grimaced at the thing that hurt me.
“Do you want me to carry you back?” he asked.
All of this scares the bejesus out of me because I’m not accustomed to being loved so well; I’m used to doing most of the loving, so all this receiving freaks me out a little. Okay, it freaks me out a lot.
Another day we went hiking. There in the mountains, we used ropes to scale up vertical cliffs to reach verdant and panoramic plateaus. At the top, a cloud engulfed us. He used his entire body to shield me from the blanketing rain. Afterward, we clung again to the ropes to clamber down, and never having un-scaled a mountain, I found the backwards descent most unnerving.
“I have to trust the rope,” I told him. “It’s not easy.” It made me think about my reasons for staying on the edge of my feelings about him, even though he had done nothing suspect.
“Nothing is free,” I said, “I’m just waiting for the bill.”
“What would that look like to you?”
“I don’t know.”
But maybe I do—maybe I’m afraid I’ll need him, that I’ll love him and he’ll disappear. Maybe I’m waiting for the real him to show up and want something I can’t or don’t want to give, to expect me to become someone I’m not, to be dissatisfied with the way I [fill-in-the-blank]. It’s happened before, and I have the scars to prove it—my cynicism about receiving is transparent, obvious, plain.
It was easier to give because I always knew how much everything cost, and though I can’t say my love was ever truly free, I tried to give only what I could without resenting. I tried not to expect anything back. But I don’t actually have that past. Nor do I have the future.
All I have is this moment, all I have is this right now. And right now, I am in love. Concentrating on that rather than all the ‘used to bes’ and ‘ifs,’ I attempt to love what is. When I do that, the energy of this in-loveness spreads out past my ego, past the atmosphere of us, and into a connectedness with everything which can’t be bad for the universe. So my walking meditation becomes loving this moment, allowing for the free exchange of giving and receiving, and letting it go of all the things that scare me.
For the most part, I stay calm and focused, present and aware. I’m grateful for the ease I feel whenever I’m in his near, but there are times I can’t gauge how far I’ll have to fall should the worst happen. I freak out about breaking irreparably, just like he does. And I have to remind myself to have faith that god is always with me, is me, is him, is we, and that aligning with that makes everything perfect; that’s the rope we have to trust.
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