I don't change. I simply become more myself.

--Joyce Carol Oates 

I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.

--Anais Nin

(via Serenity in Perspective) 

Pushing the reset button.

We're fast approaching the last 36 hours or so before I load up the car and truck and make the trek down to DC. I'm moving out of my mother's house. Like, for real this time, not like going away to college I'll-se-you-when-I'm-on-break-in-six-weeks leaving, but rather I-just-signed-a-13-month-lease here's-my-new-address moving out. 

And it's funny because when I was fake-moving-out to go to Princeton, I did a crazy overall life reset. I had come to terms with the fact that I didn't really want to keep being the person I was, and actively underwent a major overhaul trying to redress and redefine myself. My entire mindset was new place, new friends, new me. And even though I didn't stick with the self I'd created for Princeton for very long, rather opting to develop into the person Princeton made me, I definitely learned the value of taking a moment out for self-reflection immediately before a major life change, and the opportunity to personal development new places, faces, experiences, and challenges offer us. 

Four years ago, when I was getting ready to move, I was so excited for everything to change. I wanted to become everything I didn't think my hometown could make or let me be. The entirety of my immediate future was one big Wonderball of opportunity that I couldn't wait to take advantage of. 

And now I'm tempted to say that I'm moving, but I don't want anything to change. That's hyperbole, but I feel so much closer to the other end of the spectrum. It's like, I'm moving and everything is changing and there's not much I can do about it. But...come to think of it, that's not really the truth either. 

I am absolutely not looking for a personality overhaul like I was last time. I'm not looking to redefine myself. I happen to think I'm pretty damn fabulous. In all honesty, I adore the person these past four years have made me, and I'm not finna let her go. I want to maintain her, and I plan to do this by maintaining the types of activities and relationships that made her, both specifically and generally. I can't say that I'm going to stay in such regular communication with (all of) my friends from college that catch-up sessions won't be necessary, but I demand that such sessions be many and frequent. I'm going to keep blogging and keep following all the blogs I follow. I've joined a bunch of meetup groups and am searching for like-minded folks with whom to have discussions of the Large Library (read: late night college) variety. I'm going to read again. 

But there have to be things about the college lifestyle that I don't particularly want to hold onto in this new chapter of my life. Let us count the things:

1. I don't want to only actively maintain those friendships which are logistically convenient. In fact, I refuse to.
2. I don't want to be tired all the time. There is no reason to be consistently running on empty anymore. When I hit that first wave of tired at night, I should go to sleep. There's no reason to pretend I'm not tired. End of story.
3. I refuse to be off balance. No part of my life deserves to be dominating everything else. 
4. I want to read for pleasure. I want to do absolutely nothing sometimes without feeling bad about it. I want to watch TV. I want to take back my free time. 
5. I want to eat better. And drink more water. I did that well last summer, by simply not buying drinks so that I drank a lot of water. 
6. I want to exercise regularly. I've already decided that I'm going to walk to/from work, because it's less than a mile each way, but there's a gym in my office building and I want to start using it. Maybe after work two or three days a week?
7. I want the majority of my free time at least one day a week to not be spent in front of my computer. I want to go out into the world and DO things. And I want to not be scared to do them by myself. I got over that in Chi-town and I want to do it again. 
8. And I need to at least seriously think about drinking, partying, hooking up, and how my rules about these things need to adapt to life in the real world. Not sure exactly how they should change yet--I might need to experience real world partying before I can make plans/rules for how to navigate it. 

Seems like life is full of a million possible reset buttons, some bigger than other.  

Went to Applebees with RB (who I've mentioned recently) last night

And it was simultaneously great and really weird. It's like, she used to be one of my closest friends in the entire world. Like, spend all day together at school and after school (because we were in all the same clubs, usually as President and Vice President), then spend hours on the phone together when we got home best friends. Like we talked extensively about whether she should go on her first date with the guy she's now been dating for over six years best friends. Like knew all the sordid details of each other's complicated familial lives best friends. 

And then we went away to college less than half an hour from one another and became people who saw each other maybe once during the school year and a few times in the summer, and we almost never talked in between seeing each other. When we hang out, we instantly click again and the conversation flows naturally and I feel all warm and snuggly inside, but those hang-out sessions are few and far between.

It's...strange when every time you hang out with a person that was once one of your closest friends, you're having a catch up session. Having catch-up sessions forces you to confront the idea that you've become "old friends" rather than "friends," that you do not, in fact, know what is up in one another's lives anymore. How do you get to that point with people? How does that happen? Now you're all grown up and different and facing all kinds of new issues than the kind you used to tackle together. You used to say "See ya tomorrow" nonchalantly, and now it's long hugs because you don't know where you'll see each other again.

Saying goodbye to your friends at the end of high school is one thing. You'll see each other again on breaks and in summers; you'll always be home for something. You live there. Saying goodbye to your college friends is another thing, especially at a place like Princeton. Our alumni tend to cluster in major cities (the two most major of which are within weekend-trip distance) and our Reunions are the biggest parties known to the hemisphere. I will see these people again. 

Saying goodbye to your friends from home when you're moving away from home is a completely different thing. It's saying I'm never going to be home for this long ever again. It's saying, "If you're ever in DC...". It's making far-fetched plans to travel to Spain together at some point. It's saying, "I miss this," knowing we just have to keep on missing it. It's not saying, but knowing, that we could very well never see each other again. But like the other big goodbyes, it hopes against its own finality.   

It continually amazes me how much substantitve change can occur in such a short time for teens and twenty-somethings.

So ChoosingPancakes asked me to see my OKCupid profile sometime last week. I'd told her a while ago that she could look at it, so I opened it up to send her the link and she sent me hers. I was comparing some of our answers to various questions (we're a pretty good match, heh) out of curiosity when I stumbled upon an answer to some question about sex that actually made me laugh out loud. An answer to another question which had become completely false contained the explanation "I don't to casual sex..." and I almost fell out on the floor, I was laughing so hard. I then searched my OkCupid profile for every question I had ever answered about sex so that I could throw all of it out and accurately represent myself. Today I finally got the personality-meter to say I'm ever-so-slightly sex-driven, and that made me smile.

...But it's not like those questions were from a particularly long time ago. I just made that account towards the end of last summer, as part of my breakup-recovery process. (Talked to a few guys, was reminded of my desirability by men who aren't my ex, didn't actually meet any of the guys I talked to, but felt like my mission had nonetheless been accomplished.) The oldest those questions could be is from 9 months ago.


...And yet, I'd guess that less than 30% of them were still accurate. It seems that nearly the entirety of my opinions about sex and sexual relationships has changed over the course of this academic year. Granted, the casual sex I've had this year ranged from somewhat awkward (but still pleasurable) to mind-blowing chronologically. But I actually don't think that's at the root of my changed opinions. Maybe it's less due to substantive change and more due to me no longer giving a fuck about who and how and why I fuck about self-repression for the sake of decorum or societal pressure or respectability or whatever. Maybe it's less that I stopped wanting to be a good girl and more that I realized I'd never really wanted to be overwhelmingly good in the first place, and that I didn't particularly like being perceived of in that manner. On an even more basic level, though, I think I always knew that I wanted my first time to be "special," but that after that, I was probably going to be open to a bit more adventure and sexual exploration.

I wonder how my experiences (hopefully) exploring this magical thing between hookups and relationships called "dating" might prompt changes in the responses again. I'm sure I have friends who would say this is just one more example of why you can never trust my opinions on anything because they'll change in a year. I will concede that my opinions about things change a lot, but that doesn't mean I'm fickle or that I wasn't being honest or trustworthy when we discussed my opinion the first time--it means that I am the amalgamation of my lived experiences and this funny things happen, when those grow and expand, so do I.  

A conversation with my little brother:

who is 16, after he learned my Twitter handle:
 

W: Your Twitter name is @SuchanAFROholic?!?

Me: Yeah...so it matches my blog.

W: You have a BLOG?! My sister is a ...blogger?

Me: Yup! It'll be my two year blogging anniversary next week! 

W: *looks at me quizzically* You've changed a lot since you started wearing your hair like that. (By "like that" he means in its 3c/4a kinky-curly natural texture, rather than fighting losing battles with flat irons and humidity on the daily.)

Me: This is me. I just finally started letting it show. 

I'm ignoring the top left circle in this diagram for a little while

and I'm not even gonna front; it's really nice. 

Reblogged from freedom fighter.

Now don't worry. I'm not saying I've sworn off love forever and will never look again. I'm not saying I'm done with relationships or [once I enter the real world in a concerningly short period of time] dating either. I'm just saying that right now I've found a happy balance with the rest of my life by putting more time into focusing on the bottom circle, and ignoring the top left without neglecting the top right. I'm learning a lot about myself and redefining what I think is or isn't okay, which hey, is what this whole development in college thing is all about. I want to spend time making sure that the people who matter to me won't disappear from my life after graduation this time around. I'm also having fun exploring my sexuality and my nature as a sexual being. And school is generally going well and I feel way less stressed than I'd previously have expected this year would feel. So...I've changed a lot over the course of this semester. But don't be alarmed or concerned. Don't think I'm secretly depressed and just passively letting things happen to me. I'm actually doing hella good.

"None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are." -- Anne Rice

Reblogged from Indie Art Nerd

To everyone I have lost:

Reblogged from 18° 15' N, 77° 30' W

So my partner in the position I left all my other positions for quit.

And when this announcement was made at our officer's meeting today, one of our fellow officers asked, "But what about Mayan?" (Everyone calls us by this fusion of our names because we've been partners in this officer position since February of 2010, and are generally interpreted as a unit.) 

I almost started crying all over again.

Then our "daughter," the assistant to this position we've been training in the hopes that she would go on to take over the full position (which won't happen because she's studying abroad), suggested that they could start calling us "Mayana", which would fuse her name with mine by the same rule. 

I know I'm supposed to think this is cute. I know it was supposed to make me feel better. So I smiled then, but when the meeting was over I snuck away into the bathroom and sat down in one of the stalls and just let the tears come.

Is it selfish/silly of me to not want to share a name with her? That was OUR thing, mine and his. Even my ex and I didn't let ourselves be called by a combined name. And I mean, okay, it's not like he's dead to me or anything--I would really like to be able to seethe with anger and do cold-shoulders and brush-offs for a few days, but I don't know if I have it in me--but I think the name has to die. The same name I spray-painted on a wall recently so that he could be represented. The same name we designed a room around for the club's initiations this year. 

But we're not a unit anymore. I have out-felt and overvalued to my own detriment yet again. There was more involved in it than that, but still, it's there, staring me in the face. 

E says I shouldn't let the end of our professional relationship mess up our personal relationship. But I can't see a way to cuddle and be as lovey-dovey as a gay man and a straight-ish woman can be with all of this hanging over my head. I feel abandoned. You can't snuggle with people who abandon you, even if the contexts are different. It's just not right.

I don't know who or how to be with respect to all of this. I don't think I can be normal. I don't compartmentalize my life well. I don't know how to not let feeling wronged by B-my-partner fuck up my relationship with B-my-very-good-friend. I'm not sure I even want to let the latter not be affected by the former.

I don't know what to do.

Sometimes the government recognizes when they're being problematic

and actually changes things. Sometimes it takes a ridiculously long time, and you've all but given up hope, but the persistent activists among us keep raising a quiet form of hell until something actually gets done. That's what I was always taught to believe, anyway. I love when I can actually see evidence of this happening IRL:

FBI to Revise Hopelessly Narrow Definition of Rape

I Don't Understand: Friends who only miss you when you're gone

I have been close friends with one of my close friends from home since the 7th grade. He was actually my best friend from 8th grade until about my sophomore year of high school, which isn't the longest time, but was a critical juncture of my young adult life, if you will. Despite being one of the latest "childhood" friendships I formed, he has always been incredibly important to my life--even when we're fighting, even when we can't remember why we still try so hard to bridge the ever-widening gap between our lives--that's my boy, you know? 

And all summer while I was in New Brunswick, he kept telling me how much he missed me and literally begging me to come home. I got some of the saddest Facebook wall posts of my life, and blasts from the past with songs we loved in the 8th grade, and every time I told him when I was coming back, he said it was too far away. I felt so bad that at times I legitimately wondered if I should take a day or two off of work and hitch a ride home with T when she went down to visit her family for two days each week. But I didn't, and so when I texted him to complain about packing and say how many hours it would be til I was home, I got a giant "Yayyyyyyyyyy!" 

We went out with two of his friends that night, and I had the most delicious blueberry martini and fried cheesecake (which wasn't as good as he had claimed, but was still enjoyable). He came back to my house and hung out for a while, talking to my mom and my sister and feeling like he was part of my family again. Then he went home and...that was it. It's been two weeks since I've seen him, and I'm going back to school in less than a week. And I'm just a little confused as to what's going on.

Actually, that's a lie. I think I know what's going on. I don't think he actually misses ME very much. I think he misses the friendship we had between 8th grade and sophomore year, when we were two peas in a pod. I think he misses when things were simple and our lives weren't on such widely diverging paths. He's moving, and kept finding things from our early years together while he was packing, and I understand how he felt a little, because I kind of miss that friendship and simplicity too...but I would never want to go back to being the person I was then. 


It's so hard to maintain friendships when personality differences that were bridgeable in adolescence become lifestyles that seem lightyears apart in adulthood. It's hard knowing that someone misses the idea of you and him, but is evidently dissatisfied by the reality of being together.

"Sometimes all it takes is looking back to where you came from to be inspired about who you could be. You’re not a finished product, you have more work to do. And sure that’s hard but it’s hard to keep a soul from getting to its next stage." -- Leslie Pitterson, Clutch Magazine

Relationships are not a battle of the egos

And everyone who comes into our lives changes us in some way. If we are no different at the end of a friendship or relationship or even professional relationship than we were when we started, we're doing it wrong. 

That being said,

"'The words 'love' and 'change' used in the same sentence carries a negative connotation for most people.  'What do I look like changing for somebody else?!'  is the question some people ask.  If I had to give an answer, I would say 'You look like love.'" --Euphoric Ears

Facebook blasts from the past

So I'm sure all of you know that Facebook recently updated its messaging system to like, streamline and organize all of your messages and chats, right? At first I was like, "Oh, that's neat. I suppose it could be convenient." My tune has changed a little bit now, though, as a message from a friend I haven't talked to in a while showed up attached to a string of messages from over a year ago. Messages that were full of longing thinly veiled as friendly banter and ended with hearts that probably failed to be nonchalant. Basically, messages from a me I kind of forgot existed, from a relationship almost-turn that never made it around the bend. It was weird seeing them, and knowing that if I could see them hovering up above our current conversation, so could he. So much changes in the space of a year. 

You don't have to be who you were.

From an article entitled "Reconceptualizing Personality: Producing Individuality by Defining the Personal Self," by John C. Turner and lots of other people:

"Personal identity is not a fixed product of past socialization, learning or maturation but a contemporary product of social, societal and psychological forces. It depends inter alia on current group identities, social contexts and the goals, motives, expectations, beliefs and knowledge which are shaped by social influence and social ideologies. An individual's past experience, individual and social, may certainly affect how he or she reacts to and cognizes the contemporary social world, but present social realities, norms, values and ideologies, and reference group memberships are decisive for producing personal identity. Personal change is made possible by social change which impinges on the factors influencing the creation of personal identities."

 Be who you want to be. Who it feels best to be right now. Who you were doesn't matter nearly as much as who you can be right here and now. 

My life is a series of progression and relapse.

B told me on Friday night that he thinks I'm taking this all very well. I didn't have the heart to tell him I'm just trying to hide how much it hurts, even from myself. 

Dear Universe,

It's like, okay, all cocky/snobbish/self-centeredness aside, I know that I'm a pretty awesome person. I like me. I think I have cool ideas and I have a big heart and I'm kinda cute and most of the time I'm an interesting person to be around. I take pretty good care of myself. I have a pretty good self-concept. I can do all the self-affirmations in the book and I believe them. I do. 

But is it too much to ask for a little external validation? Like, damn, no matter how hard you believe, if no one else can see something, maybe you're just wrong? I don't feel like I'm crazy. But sometimes I feel like I just give and give and give and don't get much in return. I spend my life trying to share myself and my time and my energy and my love/affection/admiration with other people and I'm never quite sure they're sharing back with me equally. I don't know how to hear what basically boils down to I wanted to give you more but I just couldn't without having serious qualms about whether I will ever be enough for anyone but me. I don't wanna hide myself away and give of myself sparingly, but unless I see some proof that reciprocity is possible, I'm going to have to. I see no other way to avoid destroying myself through the process of simply trying to live. [Although I suppose in a really morbid way, that's all life is--a process of self-destruction.] 

Universe, maybe this is an impossible thing to ask for, but I'm going to ask anyway because I'm running out of other ideas. I just want a little bit of confirmation that I am, in fact, lovable. That it is possible, even if it won't happen for a long time. That anyone besides my Daddy--whose kindness and support this week have been unbelievable and unprecedentedly appreciated--can see me as a priority. I just want to know I'm not holding out for an impossible dream. You made me believe in love, Universe, and then you snatched the foundation I'd built right out from under my feet, and I thank you for not letting me continue to build my life around should-be-truths, but I feel like I'm at Square Negative Two right about now. Knowing that someone can go through the motions of loving and cherishing me and succeed in making me feel like a treasure without having his heart actually in it...I don't want to turn into a pessimist but I don't know how I'll ever shake this shroud of doubt. I want to make it clear that I don't feel like I was trivialized, but I do feel...trivializable, almost. 

It's really and truly my goal to try to be friendly or even friends, because I still think he's an awesome person and someone I'd like to have in my life, but...a) it's going to be hard to leave it at just that, and b) I have lots of friends already, goddammit! Yes it is infinitely better than people not wanting me in their lives at all, but I'm scared I'll never be enough to cross that line from an interesting friend you care about and want to keep around to a person you want to share your life with, even for a while. The last thing I'm looking for is forever at this stage, but I want...the temptation of wanting forever? And that temptation to be real on both sides. I want something REAL. I'm an intense person and maybe my candle is burning at more than just both ends and I am willing to light myself afire in even more places if someone will just burn with me. Maybe this is just a showcase of my immaturity or all the reasons why now isn't the time for this to happen for me, but I just want to know what it's like to be important to someone. I want someone to feel like they can give of themselves freely back to me. I want organic reciprocity. If I have value only to myself, am I not worthless on the open market? 

I know I'm not. But I want proof. Because if insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then I'm...worried, because nothing's changing. Do I have to change? I'm happy with me though. I don't think the way I'm doing things is fundamentally wrong. 


What say you?

Maya 

The two artists I have the most music by are India.Arie and Eminem

As such, the two feelings I'm torn between are:

"And if he ever left me, I wouldn't even be sad, 'cause there's a blessing in every lesson and I'm glad that I knew him at all." --India.Arie, "The Truth"

and 

"when someone seems too good to be true, they usually are. But see, when you're in it it's too hard to see..." --Eminem, "Spend Some Time"

Not sure I'll ever make a decision between the two feelings. Not sure it's even possible. I am not sure how I'm not supremely angry or if I'll stay that way. I'm not sure what to believe about the past four months, except that for the sake of my sanity it can't be nothing. Not sure how long it will take to shake this sick-to-my-stomach feeling or to rebuild the ability to trust. Not sure you ever really know a person. Not sure how to make myself stop caring about him. Even less sure than I ever was before (not including the past three months) about what love ostensibly is. Not sure I'll ever really understand what happened here. 

I am sure I'll waste lots of time and energy trying to. I am sure that I feel humiliated, like I have been made a fool of. I am sure I'll throw myself into my independent work like nobody's business in a thinly veiled attempt to hide the fact that my life doesn't make sense to me anymore. I am sure that I was happy (albeit a different kind of happy) before this and I can be happy again after it. I am sure that there's a lot to be learned from this situation.  I am sure that I will never again undervalue the importance of complete and brutal honesty, especially when the truth hurts. I'm also pretty sure that I am (un?)fortunately too good a person to repeatedly flame him on this blog, because like I don't deserve this, I can't make myself believe he's a terrible enough person to deserve that, so I will try to avoid it (after this).

A DirectTV blimp just passed overhead saying "Change your life." My first reaction? I don't want to. But sometimes you don't have a choice. 

I will leave you with an excerpt from my favorite play, Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls who've Considered Suicide/ when the Rainbow is enuf:

"My love is too beautiful to have thrown back on my face. [...]

My love is too sanctified to have thrown back on my face.

My love is too magic to have thrown back on my face.

My love is too Saturday night to have thrown back on my face.

My love is too complicated to have thrown back on my face.

 My love is too music to have thrown back on my face.

And you remember that the next time some man tries to walk away with all of your stuff. 

I know that's right. Or says I'm sorry a million times.

...

 It's ok. I asked myself how I could let that happen and I realized that I was missing something. Something so important. Something promised.

I suppose what I'm left with now is me time. More than time to analyze what happened here, I suppose I should go find what I'm missing to make sure it never happens again. Not that I'm blaming myself--mistakes were made on both sides--but something needs to change.

How did I get here?

Interesting Developments

So I may not have mentioned that my father has a new girlfriend. (Boy/girlfriend is a weird word to use for senior citizens, lol. I feel like there should be a more grown-up word. Except, I'm fine referring to my mom's boyfriends as such. Maybe I'm just being ageist. Anyway.) This is...weird for me. I know, I know, I should be used to the whole parents dating thing now, as I can basically recount the various stages of my life according to who my mother was with at the time, but something about this just feels...off. I suppose that I have simply come to think of my father as a person who is alone. My mother and I both describe him as hard to live with (though I think he would say that other people are the problem,  not him); she calls him (and anyone related to him, myself included) a kook. He has never been particularly social--he doesn't have many friends, loves sports but doesn't go over to like, bars or live games with "the guys". My dad, Mr. Solo Dolo. 
Whereas my mom has never been man-less for any substantial period of my lifetime, as far as I can tell, my father has dated at most four people (both my mother and his current booskie included) over the last 21 years. My mom left my dad when I was just a few months old. When I was a kid, maybe 6 or so, we used to go over to my dad's friend K's house, where should would let me bring all my stuffed animals over and my teaset for tea parties. She had nieces whose stuffed animals she'd let me borrow, and I thought she was awesome because she gave me real (iced) tea for my tea parties, whereas my mom made me play with water. [Lame.] It has recently come to my attention that they were most likely dating...didn't cross my six-year-old mind. When I was twelve and he was living in Detroit, he was seeing some woman who was a figure skater. I never met this woman, but I absolutely hated her for a while, because he was supposed to come back to NJ to visit me for my 13th birthday [it would have been the first time he'd come home since having moved when I was 9] and she went and broke her fucking ankle like three days before my birthday and he stayed in Detroit to take care of her instead of coming to see me. I was furious. (And now I'm wondering regretfully whether my fury influenced their breaking up at all, hmmm.) And now, all these years later, he's started dating again. He was even on an online dating site (but met his current girlfriend in real life). 
I suppose it didn't strike me until recently that my father was probably very lonely. I figured he was used to it, being the only child of only children and having lived alone for all but maybe 8 years of his adult life...but just because something has become a habit doesn't mean it's the way you should keep doing things. I'm glad he decided he need something in his life other than sports (which don't give anything back for your time, dedication, and anxiety...especially when your fantasy team does really well in your league for the vast majority of the season and then tanks in the end losing you lots of potential money/bragging rights) and two grown daughters who live thousands of miles away from each other and him. I'm further glad that beyond just deciding/accepting this, he actually went out of his way to act on it. I really hope she's good to him or I will go to Florida myself to smack the shit out of her. #that'sapromise 
It's just weird to be on the opposite end of the hey-I'm-kind-of-busy-with-this-person-who-is-actually-physically-present-in-my-life-right-now-and-I-don't-wanna-rush-you-but-I-actually-do-kind-of-want-to-rush-you phone call. Since I became a teenager (a period of my life that ended a year and a half ago, wow), that's always been how I feel talking to him. It has always been a chore, something that is interrupting whatever I'd rather be doing. It's...both offensive and amusing to recognize those same patterns of trying-to-end-this-conversation-asap-in-as-friendly-a-manner-as-possible-ness coming from him. I guess it's cute. I'm glad he has someone. ...And somewhat also glad that this someone is taking up all the empty space in his life he used to try to fill with talking to me, haha.   

Intimacy

I was young and naive once. Don’t laugh too hard,

we all were. And when I was, I equated intimacy with, well, sex.

Or the clandestine touching and kissing that may or may not

have been leading up to it. The rushed whispering of “Can I”s

and “Let me”s. The relinquishing of clothing.

The offering of oneself piece by piece. 
 

You have taught me that intimacy does not come in pieces.

That it is neither the desire for or the act of nudity, not its touch or taste.

It does not, in fact, even necessitate these things.

It is, perhaps, the feeling of nakedness, of wanting shamelessly

to lay myself bare before you. It is wanting to shout the boldest of “Let me”s,

“Let me give you all of me.” 
 

It is seeing that gift appreciated fully. It is learning the true meaning of the word

acceptance. It can play, like tickle wars in between bouts of kissing,

but that play has purpose--intoxicating, stimulating, your smile is the highest high

It is your tongue in the gap between my two front teeth, your words saying you

love even this hidden part of me. It is not caring whether I’ve shaved.

It is bed head and morning breath after the best sleep I’ve ever had every night with you.

It is wanting to spend every night with you. It is embarrassing stories from

elementary school and the tenderest of teasings. It is both talking freely and

having comfortably quiet time. It is knowing the weight of your head in my lap.

It is honesty. It is never needing to put on a brave face.

It is pure unadulterated fascination at the wonder that is you.

It is “I need us” over “I need you”. It is “Share my life.”
   

I used to believe that love was an impossible dream.

I once thought happiness was an emotion rather than a state of being.

I didn’t know growth could stem from joy.

I was blind to the difference between frenzy and fervor.  

In the past, I mistook physicality for intimacy.