I’ve, we’ve, barely begun, but it’s enough to pen these words.
She (you) showed up the way things aren’t supposed to, well, according to our imaginations and expectations literally a little late but right on time, unexpectedly, and in the middle of a stint of melancholy and slight depression, but not enough to think I wasn’t okay enough to try this or that this wasn’t for me.
I suppose I’ll try again, and again one more time.
I swiped thinking I'd found a friend. That's what she wanted after all. Right?
So I started a conversation, which I rarely do.
But now?
I only wish I’d met her sooner.
She showed up after the longest, darkest winter of my life. After tears, anxiety, and feeling like I could end everything because I’d already done everything in the life I cared to do but one thing.
The one thing that keeps eluding me as if to say, this… this is not for you: Find someone amazing.
Oh, but it is. Where are you, love?
She showed up in the springtime like the eastern redbud that is juxtaposed against the bare trees and fallen leaves. Juxtaposed against the green, uneven grasses of March that are mixed with the dead that will soon be alive.
And she makes me come alive.
She is sweetness, kindness, and a squirreling mind. She tells me she is nothing to look at but that she is nice. She loves her children more than ANYthing on this planet, her best friend, her family, and cleaning... and her mind is a beautiful labyrinth of intelligence that I’m head over heels for. She is calm like the sunset yet her mind rages with 52736 thoughts and open tabs simultaneously where somewhere in there, sometimes we get lost, but not the kind where either one of us are missing. The lost where you’re on an adventure and will find new trails, paths, friends, foxes, birds, and maybe something you love so much you want to return to it again and again and again.
She is calm and says she cleans old people's teeth for a living but I’m 1000% sure she works for the government and they have her hired to solve world peace and exude joy.
Her touch is fire and makes me melt into puddles as if no one has ever touched me like that before. She says I instigate everything and I don’t, but maybe a little bit... She puts her nose to mine and looks in my eyes and I smile and sometimes fall asleep talking about the deepest subjects. Who does that? And she does this thing with her tongue when we kiss that’s both kindling and an ignition to this bonfire intimacy we have. I tell her it takes two to tango and she doesn’t stop me from taking off her clothes.
You want me to stop?
No. And why do you still have yours on?
Because you left them on?
She never says no. Neither do I.
And I am here for it.
Her smile lights up the darkest corners of my being, as if light forgot it had the ability to shine on them. Corners I shut off and closed to the bitter and untrusting world of 9 years of swiping left and right on people who were never meant for me”--and thank God.
She makes me believe love really is real and not some sick farce that people say they know what is but really don’t and can’t accept what they deserve yeah, she makes me believe that there are still good ones out there even if she took years to find.
She makes me believe I really am more than enough. One of my best friends screamed at me through her laryngitis the week before we met about how there is nothing wrong with me and how when the right one comes along it will be so easy and nothing else in my past will matter. Nothing will matter. And I believe that right now: that she is THE one and that nothing matters but this moment and gift we have of finding each other.
She and this IS easy, and it scares the shit out of both of us. But some therapists told us that’s what happens when you find something that isn’t chaos.
It still doesn’t stop my mind from thinking this will all blow up in my face and end like all the relationships before, but good god how I want this one to last not because I want something to last forever, but simply because this is so so so good.
Amazingly good.
Perfectly imperfect yet wonderful.
Who knew stability and serenity
would scream to be chaotic
instead of also accepting who they were meant to be?
She isn’t perfect, but she is close… and perfectly wonderful. Brown eyes and smiley, grateful and kind. “Watching her do it is like watching paint dry. There’s nothing to see. Everything is just more colorful after.” Yet watching her is also like watching a storm come in on the horizon and realizing it wasn’t a storm, it was a calm summer rain that you can hear tapping on the roof and smell through the screen door. A summer rain that is warm and inviting, and makes you want to fall asleep to her and wake up enveloped in her arms where we fit together like a complex lock and key.
She wants to pace herself and so do I. I don’t want to rush something so amazing, yet I also do. And why? I don’t know. We have nothing but time. So I just want to be in the moment and think nothing but also everything about the future. So maybe this is like watching paint dry. No. It’s like a plant in her plant room. You plant the seeds, you water it with trust and vulnerability and honesty and kindness and fun and everything good. And you tend to it with all the instructions but also go a little rogue from the rule book. Because sometimes the rule is that there are no rules. She’s worth every second of the end result of this cultivation. Worth it all and more.
And just like her turtle plant is her favorite, she is mine.
She isn’t my world, but she’s in it and makes every day so much richer than before I met her.
She isn’t my everything, but everything she does and says and is, is everything.
She isn’t in love with me and I am not with her, but we are also already so so so much in love the kind where you know love is there and she IS love and you’re well on your way to the most incredible love you’ll ever know. The kind you can feel in your sinews and marrow as if it’s not written in the stars but in your DNA. The kind where you can’t say it yet, and don’t want to rush those words because you’re not there yet, but you want to sooner than later so you can be on the other side– the side where you never have to, get to, stop saying it.
Yeah, the kind of love that when you finally arrive you’ll look in the rear view mirror and realize you’re asking wait?
Did we never leave or did we already arrive? Because the car is still parked in the driveway and you were already home.
You were there the entire time.
And though we have barely begun with her?
I’m already home.
