Like your pulse

I have to be careful about the music I listen to sometimes.

I have to pick exactly the right songs.

When I miss you, some melodies are just too harsh.

Too crashing, to jangling, too rambling and loud.

When I miss you I need something soft, 

As the palm of your hand

The flesh of your lip

The beat of your pulse

I need something slow

Like the way you sometimes looked at me

The pause between "I love you"

The days between seeing you

I need something that tinkles, like a bell, and the thinnest strings of a guitar

Something that whispers and sounds like tiny strings of lights

And feels like the way your words ricocheted off every bone in my body, 

When you whispered them in my ear.

Small Moments

I don't ask you to come here, to stay, to not go

Because I am desperate and pathetic and cannot be alone.

I don't ask you to hold me, stay with me, come to the grocery store with me

Because I am scared, or a child, or too needy.

I just would like you to be here for the small moments in life.

I would like to browse the shelves of bookstores with you

Shop for cucumbers

Get the car washed

I would like to share the silence of a Sunday afternoon where we both do different things in the same room, and occasionally look up to smile at each other.

I would like to watch movies in bed with you when you're sick.

Roll my eyes with you while we sneak sips of whiskey out of the bottle when our teenagers are going crazy, and laugh because we don't feel old enough to have crazy teenagers.

I want a 

Sleep in

Watch you get ready for work

Hug you when you come home

Share the last bowl of ice cream with you

Kind of life.

Kind of story.

Kind of love.

I would like to be sure of you.

To know, when we're in different room, different parts of the house, different moods, 

That you're there, 

Somewhere

And that I'm home.

I was right.

People used to ask me why I didn't leave.

Why when we fought so much, and carried on like children sometimes

When you said ugly things and I did ugly things

And we looked at each other and it was like pressing on a bruise to see if it still hurt.

I don't answer.

I tell a joke.

I make something up.

I lie.

I don't tell them, because they don't really want to know.

They just want more gory details. More secrets.

But I save the best secrets only for myself.

So I don't tell them that there is magic in you.

That your rib cage seems to hold it like the gilded cage of ravens, and your eyes seems colored with it.

I don't tell them that I stayed 

Because there was something in you

That I was afraid I'd never find in anyone else.

And I knew then

Like I know now

I was right.

How to love her

Kiss her neck

Hold her hand

Let hugging her turn into holding her

Be patient when she's at her worst

Tell her when she's at her best

Be unconditional

Unwavering

Show passion

Take pictures of her

Whisper in her ear

Answer when she calls

Listen to her feelings

Be around for the small things

Make sure she knows you want her around

Forgive

Understand

Make her laugh

Don't magnify her weaknesses. She knows what they are. She's far more aware of them than you are. You see them, you deal with them, she owns them. She carries them. She lives them.

Love those parts too. 

Querencia

Querencia: Spanish for the place where you are your most honest and natural self; your home; the place you instinctively return to; where your heart belongs.

Coffee with you in the morning.

Holding your hand in the car.

My head on your chest.

My side of your bed.

The scent you leave on my clothes.

The sound of your laughter.

Your hand on the side of my face  back of my neck  small of my back.

You when you're with me, me when I'm with you, us when we're Us.

The Good Parts

I've never been particularly great at being happy.

I'm the girl with abandonment issues. I'm the girl who is always waiting for it to all fall apart.

One thing I've tried hard to get better at though, is recognizing when something good just happened, and letting myself play it over and over in my head, as many times as I want.

See, when you come from shit, when you experience trauma on a regular basis, you learn to play that shit over and over in your head. 

It's easier to believe than the good things.

It's easier to recognize. 

It's unfortunately, a hell of a lot more reliable in your experience.

So I never knew how to notice a good moment when it was happening, but lately I've been trying to lock that shit down.

When you order soup at Wildflower and they put it in a bread bowl without charging you the extra $1.99, so you don't have to dig a little soup moat into the roll they give you.

When you live in Arizona and it's a perfect 75 and breezy, during a month that's usually 98 and hell.

When your favorite rap song comes on the radio while someone who has yet to experience your dope rap skills is in the car with you, and you nail that shit and obviously impress the shit out of them.

When you ask the person you love what they're thinking, and they pull you in a little closer and say that they love you. That they love you a lot. That they'll love you forever and ever.

And then some.

That's the shit I've been trying to teach myself to savor.

To replay.

To memorize.

And it's so goddamn sweet, I wish I could bottle it.

I wish I could record it and play it in the car.

I wish I could box it up, and live inside it whenever I want to.

It's nice, to know all the words to a good moment, and let yourself rely on there being more of them.

The Little Things

When I was younger my friends and I were always making lists of qualities and attributes that our dream man would possess. 

We included things like "romantic, funny, honest, smart", sometimes even getting as detailed as "brown hair, green eyes, 6'3 - oh and drives a convertible.

Convertibles were the shit in the 90's.

As I've gotten older though, I've learned that those things almost never matter as much as you think they will.

It's the little things that make you fall in love.

By the time you make it to 25 - or more conservatively 30 - there are very few women in the world who can say that they've never met a man who was the perfect guy on paper: loyal, honest, handsome, stable, everything you're supposed to want, that they just never were able to fall in love with.

A man that is perfect in so many ways it's infuriating, but for whatever reason, they never become more than a relationship that almost happened, but didn't.

  Instead we fall in love with people who on paper probably look all wrong for us. People who don't look very much like that ideal man we'd built in our heads with bullet point requirements and the perfect inseam length. All because of a bunch of little, unexpected things.

The way that you haven't had to tell them how you like your coffee since the very first time they ever asked.

The way they reach for your hand when they're driving.

The nickname they gave you on your third date that feels more like your name now than your legal one.

The little things that they do for you that seem to anyone else as completely inconsequential, but ultimately show you how much they truly understand you at your core.

The love of my life was 17 years older than me, and took 3 years to tell me he loved me.
We had an almost insurmountable number of obstacles, but he was the first guy who ever held my hand in the car. He had a dead-pan sense of humor, and even when I was super pissed, he could make me laugh. When we slept he wrapped his entire body around mine like a ladle, and even though he thought he was a terrible dancer, he danced with me. In clubs, in the living room, at concerts.
I loved that.

And that's how love happens.
Unexpectedly, out of nowhere, and with someone you might never have imagined for yourself.

You don't always fall for the cookie cutter definition of perfect.

More often than not, you love the one who drives you fucking crazy, someone a little broken, someone unexpected. Maybe you bicker with them more often than you planned, or you don't love that they're a bartender with a law degree they don't use and no plans to ever change that, but you love how they tickle your back and kiss your neck, and that weird little patch of hair on their lower back, right above their ass.

Bottom line is: they have a way of catching your heart in their hands like a frantic bird, and calming it.

And in a world full of potentially "better" options, you feel like they're the only perfect option for you.

On Sex and Being Naked

When I was growing up, I always seemed to be surrounded by people who assigned this huge, heavy, weight and meaning to sex. 

Whether it was for religious reasons or personal upbringing, there was an idea going around that taking off your clothes, allowing someone to see your physical self completely, and putting your two naked bodies together was the highest form of intimacy two people could share, and it was not to be taken lightly.

For a while, I went along with this in a half assed sort of way. 

While I did go ahead and take the plunge into sexual experience at the tender age of 15, I remained convinced that it was this huge deal. I prided myself on only having slept with one person for the two years that that number remained the same, and I would tell anyone who would listen that sex was not something to be taken lightly.

Cheating, in my opinion at the time, was unforgiveable.

Sex was this big, grand, monumnetous and important thing! It was special! It was a gift you give somebody! It was the highest form of intimacy for fucks sake! For someone to offer that to another person outside of their two person union {in other words cheat}, they must not care for their partner at all! They must be callous and horrible and completely out of love with their person - not to mention now probably in love with this hussy they cheated with! - because I also believed that since cheating didn't happen in the presence of love, sex didn't happen without it.

I had somehow almost entirely forgotten - or chosen to overlook - the indesputable fact that sex happens all the time without love, respect, or even really liking each other. It was something any asshole with working genitalia had the basic ability to do. Something we were all, regardless of nearly anything else that was true about us, able to do.

Something that we all had a natural and instinctive drive and desire to do, since long before we began experiencing any romantic feelings for people.

Still, even though I knew this, I insisted it was the biggest thing two people could share.

To take off their clothes, part their legs {if they're female}, and wrap around each other, moving together usually in the dark, where no one can see them and they don't really even have to see each other.

What I've learned as I've gotten older though, is that that's the easy part.

The stripping and the panting and the blind feeling.

People do it all the time.

But opening up your soul to someone?

Letting them in, past the well lit paths and things that are easy to share, all the way into the darker and more fragile parts of ourselves; sharing our hopes and dreams and fears and secrets....letting them not just inside your body, but into your spirit - into your heart?

That's being naked.

And it's not something that everyone is capable of doing.

It's not even remotely as easy as having sex.

What do want in a partner?

What do you look for in a partner?

Do you have a set list of criteria that you check off in your head when you go on dates or meet new people?

Do you know for certain what you want, or at the very least what you don't want?

For instance would dating someone who chewed with their mouth open or still consulted their mother before making big life choices be impossible for you?

Does it matter if your names sound good together or if you're the same religion?

I think it's always easier to decide what you don't want, boiling down the vast list of options by removing what you can't stand, and what's left is a close account of what you could tolerate for the sake of love, happiness and someone to spend national holidays with.

I know I don't want someone who's extremely athletic. At least not if they're going to expect me to be extremely athletic. I'm cool with sharing in each other's interests, but if I have to climb a fucking mountain with you or something, this isn't going to work.

I know I don't want someone who is really loud or hyper. I hate feeling like I'm out with a four year old when it's supposed to be adult time.

I know I don't want someone who is overly sensitive, but on the same hand, I can't be with someone who can't handle emotion. Someone who shames me every time I cry or get upset, and makes me feel bad for having feelings because he doesn't agree with how I feel.

I know I want someone sweet, and thoughtful, who doesn't have to ask me what I want for Christmas, and pays attention to the quirky little things that make me happy.

I know I don't want someone who listens to techno. Or trance. Or Bjork.

These are things that matter to me, and its unfortunately only a fraction of the things I think about every single time I meet a guy.

It's entirely possible I'm too picky. It's incredibly likely that I'm high maintenance and will leave in the middle of a date because you've now had to ask me what 3 different words I used mean, and they weren't even big words or slang terms, and I'm starting to get the impression that you couldn't do my taxes for me or hold a conversation that didn't include fart jokes.

But still I'm idealistic and romantic, and I can't help but believe that someone out there is a door holding, tax doing, sweet, kind, intelligent, romantic soul with a laid back demeanor and strong hands, and someday we'll find each other, and then I'll always have someone to watch Parenthood with.

What about you?

What do you want?

Staying Friends With Your Ex

For most of my life I've been known as the girl who stayed friends with all her ex-boyfriends. How's that one guy you dated for six months your senior year of high school? He's great, just got married. We're Facebook friends.

I never completely understood why there was so much stigma attached to staying friends with your ex. In my mind, you just spent months, or even years, sharing saliva and a mutual love for 80's movies. How do you just walk away from that? How do you break up and just be like "Thanks for all the old t-shirts and new found commitment issues, you sack of shit. See you later."

I never had it in me.

Well, I guess I should say rarely had it in me.

There were a couple of ex-boyfriends that even my sentimental self knew you shouldn't stay friends with.

Like the guy you lost your virginity to.

I mean, what could you possible ever have to say to each other again? "Hey I heard the song 'I just died in your arms tonight' on the radio and then had a bologna sandwich. Takes me back to that sweet two and a half minutes we shared on your parents couch 10 years ago! Hope you're well :)"

No. Just no.

Also, its probably uncommon to remain friends with the person who impregnated you and then left the state, like you were a liquor store he knocked over and the cops had his picture.

Still, the relationships that didn't end of paternal abandonment or you texting all your besties to let them know you'd finally surrendered the old V card, it seemed to me had a good chance of turning into friendships.

I'm learning though, as I get older, that its not as easy as it used to be.

Maybe because feelings in relationships are more intense, or because breakups are typically more ugly, or maybe because as adults we've become more jaded and withdrawn and don't want to continue feeling vulnerable over lunch with someone who's seen you naked, but then decided they'd prefer to see other people naked instead of you, but are still down with having a burger together and talking about the movie they saw last weekend.

Probably with the girl they're now seeing naked all the time.

Awesome.

It really is unfortunate that staying friends with your old lovers is so hard, because some of those old lovers started out as your best friend, and over the course of your relationship, however rocky and regardless of how often you may have lost sight of it, they still were your best friend, you just loved them in an extra way that made you hope to be with them forever. 

When that second, bonus love dies out and you have to move on, wouldn't it be lovely to revert back to the friendship you once shared, and be able to go on as if nothing else had ever happened?

Maybe not as if your relationship never happened at all, but maybe more as if your relationship happened but with someone else instead. Someone else hurt you, lied to you, stopped loving you, not this person. Not your best friend who, when not saddled with the responsibility of being your boyfriend, is actually an awesome friend and person.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could, just for a moment, go back to a time when being just friends seemed possible, and everything wasn't "lovers or bust"?

Who knows. Maybe sometimes staying friends is possible.

Maybe it depends on the person, the relationship you had together and how well you're able to adjust to not being in that relationship anymore.

What about you? Do you stay friends with your ex's? Have you? How did you do it, how did it work, and are you still really friends with any of them now?

Leave your experience in the comments.

Things I Have to Remember Not to Forget

The way Jackson's face looks when he first wakes up in the morning, and he is in such a happy, sweet mood.

+

How good it feels to come home at the end of a full work day, and put my pajamas on.

+

Being held. Especially when you need to be held really badly.

+

The very first sip of the very first cup of coffee on Monday morning.

+

Chocolate, in all it's forms.

+

Hugs from Lainie.

+

The sound of my kids sleeping. The hush of their breathing that sounds just like waves kissing the shore in the middle of the night.

+

Turning the heat on for the first time in the Fall.

+

Slow dancing with a man that loved me. The heavy warmth of his hand on the small of my back, the smell of his shirt, swaying in the music, even if it was only the music in our hearts.

+

Falling in love. Because even if it ends in heartbreak, the falling feels so good. The addiction, the passion, the reckless abandon and utter adoration. The sweet secure feeling that hangs warm and heavy from the bottom of your heart, so that even when you're alone, you feel safe. You're being taken care of, thought about, loved.

+

Goodbye, and how much it hurts. Maybe if I could remember how goodbye feels, I wouldn't take now for granted so easily.

+

Sleep.

+

Kisses.

+

Hot showers.

+

Now. I'm alive, I'm here, I have two little kids who are still little, a job that's still interesting, and a heart that's still beating.

One day, I won't. All this breathing and eating and laughing and hurting and loving will be over, and I will want a little bit of now to remember, savor, and hold onto when the dark comes down.



I Want a Love

I want a love that doesn't need to be questioned, or analyzed, or discussed.

A love that simply is, and always will be.

One that needs no justification or convincing.

I want a love that is reciprocated easily.

One that looks for every reason to be near each other.

I want a love that is given, without doubt or question or fear of what anyone will think of you for it.

I want a love that grows wild in the sunlight.

I want a love that is allowed to extend into all areas of your life, and one that can, in time, bring our two lives together, eventually blurring the line between what is yours and what is mine.

I want a love that makes you proud to call me yours, that makes you want to show me off, tell everyone you know, and make sure I'm there for the big moments in your life.

I want a love that means we're best friends, a love that means we're soulmates, a love that means the past is the past and it's today, tomorrow and forever that matters.

I want a love that I can pour all of myself into.

I want a love that wants me to get close.

I want a love that forgives, a love that endures and a love that is ours.

Always, and forever. 

A Brief History of Love

I fell in love hard when I was 18. It was my first time giving my heart away, to a boy with that loose hipped saunter and eyes that always seemed to be glaring at you even though his lips betrayed them with a smile. He smoked and he drank, old enough to buy alcohol, with a voice as dark as midnight. I remember when I met him thinking he’d be like all the others: someone I could charm and fascinate and hypnotize, until entertaining him got to be old, and then I’d vanish in a cloud of smoke and unanswered texts. How wrong I was still takes me by surprise when I look back on the vulnerability he brought out of me. Tenderness as thin as the skin of your cuticles, rubbed raw and left bleeding, constantly waiting for my phone to ring. That was the relationship that taught me you’re supposed to the one that cares a little less in order to have any power.

Then there was the boy I never wanted. But he pursued me and never left me waiting, and he was exactly the band aid I needed at the time. Sometimes when I think about his exasperated sighs and his forlorn expressions I feel the guilt wash through my stomach and I wish that I could say I’m sorry. I wish I could tell him he didn’t deserve what he got from me. But I don’t think it would matter anymore. The cannons have all been fired and betrayals have all been had. Hopefully he’s found someone who waits for him to come home, instead of the other way around.

When I was 17 there was the small time pot dealer with the car as low as my self esteem at the time. He used to stop at the gas station to buy me fruit snacks on his way back to my apartment at 2 a.m. after leaving to go do a run across town. I had just moved out on my own, feeling grown up and free and pretending to be dangerous. He was nice enough, but terribly stupid and fatally immature. I’m not sure now if I was any better at the time, or if I just wanted to be, and never saw myself getting there as long as I was on his arm. I saw a future of dollar store gifts and supped up hatchback cars stretched out before me like a lonely and empty highway that only leads one place, and it’s no place any girl with any sense wants to go. He was the one who made being dangerous seem less romantic. So I waited for him to get back one night and very inarticulately asked him not to come over anymore. It broke my heart a little, the way he just looked at the ground and nodded. Like he was always waiting for people to tell him to stop coming around. For a second I wanted to hug him, but instead I said goodbye and locked the door behind him, wondering for a moment if he’d come back to steal my stuff.

There was the friend, of course, who was tragically in love with me. The boy that I thought was my best friend (and in a lot of ways was) but who was sick in his heart over the impossibility of us ever being together. He was the one who watched as my heart was broken over and over. He was the one who picked me up off the bathroom floor when I was crushed and the phone wasn’t ringing. He was the one there at nighttime, when being alone is the hardest and the house was the quietest. Girls would fall for him and he would be unfazed. People would try to sway him and he would not be moved. In the end I couldn’t tell if it was me that broke his heart with my blindness, or him that broke his own with his determination, or a combination of both. Either way the blood and the wound and the hurt were there between us, which left very little room for friendship anymore.

And last but not least there was the man without a definition. The CPA with soft hands and kind eyes who left me no choice but to love him after the very first time called his t-shirt that he let me wear to bed mine. The one whose life was so inconceivably different than mine, but who’s soul seemed to understand me when I didn’t understand myself. There are a lot of ways to describe him, but none that paint a full picture or tell the whole story. Some stories can’t be told because they’re not the events that happened along a timeline, but instead the feelings that went along with them, the moments of silence where nothing happened at all except all the things that don’t have names or definitions, where something passes between two people that is only felt and understood, but never spoken. I guess in short he’s the one I will always secretly wish on every eye lash and every birthday candle for.

Sometimes I look back on all the men that have come in and out of my life, starting with my father, who was the very first man I met. I think about the men who have traversed the path from my bed to the door and never looked back. I think about the one who took my heart, the ones who left me cleaning up their messes, and the ones who I left cleaning up my own. I think about the boy I’m raising, who will someday be a man himself.

I wonder if I’ll ever get all of this right.

Someday. Maybe. Not yet.



Can We Still Sleep Together?

Can we still sleep together?

I don't necessarily mean have sex, I mean sleep.
It doesn't have to be a big deal. It can just be because I'm super warm, and you know exactly how to hold me. 

On the occasional Saturday night when neither of us have plans, when both of us are tired of pretending we don't miss each other, when there doesn't seem to be any reason not to, can we sleep together still?

Can we get Chinese food and meet at your house in our pajamas, and watch an old movie on Netflix in bed?

Can we fall asleep together at the exact same time, our bodies moving back into the familiar positions that we've trained each other to assume: me on my right side, you as the big spoon, your arm scooping me up and pulling me in, our fingers tangled together like the roots of Willow trees?
Slipping away, heavy and warm, the rhythm of our hearts tapping out the most familiar lullaby there is.
Like sailors who miss the smell of the sea even if they know they can no longer return to it, I will bury my face in your chest and feel sated.
It's probably my favorite thing to do with you; lying still in your arms and waiting for my mind to close it's doors.
When I'm in your bed I never have to wait very long for it to come.

In the morning we can go back to being broken up.

We can go back to being just friends who don't do things like sleep in the same bed, or ever admit they feel lost sometimes without the steady gaze of the other person.

We'll retreat away and privately put ourselves back together.
I won't tell anybody if you won't.

But just every once in a while, can we still sleep together?

20 Ways to Ruin Your Own Life Post Break Up

1. Forget to go grocery shopping. Then just put it off altogether. Do this for weeks until the take out boxes have piled up and you can no longer see your waist line.

2. Tell your friends repeatedly that you'd love to hang out. Blow them off repeatedly to see your boyfriend. Call them crying when he breaks up with you and expect them to be there for you.

3. Accidentally send a text you meant to send to your ex, to your dad.

4. Go to the grocery store in your pajamas without showering for a couple days, in the same shirt you've been wearing since Friday. Discover that several people you work with shop at the same store.

5. Go to a bar by yourself and spend the entire time on your phone so no one can talk to you. Wonder afterward why nobody talked to you.

6. Load your instant queue on Netflix with movies you know you shouldn't be watching. The Notebook. Sleepless in Seattle. We Don't Live Here Anymore. Call your ex 6 times whilst crying-after each movie. Wonder why he isn't holding up his end of the "let's be friends" deal.

7. Briefly consider the idea of arranged marriages and mail order husbands.

8. Yell at the guy at BevMo because he made a mean comment about his fiance and even though you don't know him you're pretty sure he's damn lucky to have her, and why do men always take good women for granted?! Don't resist when the police come.

9. Tell your girlfriend at work who just started seeing a new guy that relationships are pointless and life is empty and meaningless so why the hell bother? This makes for great lunch time conversation over the giant plate of nachos you're eating by yourself.

10. Blog obsessively about your breakup.

11. Facebook every emotion you have. Poeple want you to overshare. You're interesting and fascinating.

12. Come up with any plan ever at all that you think will win back your ex. Tell people about it like you really believe you're not insane.

13. Cry in front of your boss.

14. Cry in front of strangers.

15. Cry from the moment you wake up until you go to sleep and don't even try to hide it.

16. Actually look into mail order husbands and arranged marriages. Back out when you remember that you'll actually have to sleep with your purchased husband.

17. Put your headphones on at work and get really into a Celine Dion song. Start singing it out loud without realizing it. Loudly. On repeat.

18. Stop wearing make up, doing your hair trying at all.

19. Look at your ex's facebook.

20. Decide that you're pretty sure he's going to come back, and start turning down dates, asking your friends not to set you up, and even continuing to talk about him like you're still together. After all, good comes to those who wait, right?

Wrong.



Notes from the Newly Single: Dating Again

So, apologies for not providing a detailed update to all of you, but in the short version, I'm going to say I'm back to being single. 

Holy wow. 

For the first time in three in a half years, I actually have to start thinking about what I want in a boyfriend or partner or whatever the term is now. I have to start thinking about what I'm looking for from square one again. It's weird. I was in love with Bill for so long, and he fit the mold almost exactly of everything I knew I wanted, and he also showed me a great deal of things I never thought were important to me, but I realized while being with him that they are. Things he did, or characteristics about him that I don't want to go on living without now that I know how awesome they are. I also learned a few things I always thought were important to me, really aren't as much at the end of the day. 

All that considered, you'd think I'd have the blue prints for my soulmate all mapped out in my mind, but I don't. I have to start from the ground up, start with the littlest things. What should they look like? I was instantly attracted to Bill, and haven't really had to look at any other man and decide if I was truly attracted to him enough to date him in a long time. What do I want them to do for fun? Is it a deal breaker if they hike a lot and I hate hiking? Is it a big deal if they don't like to go to the movies, or the only movies they watch have Vin Diesel in them? {read: stupid movies} How important is there religion to me? Would I date someone that was like really into his dog? You know those guys who are like "It's me and my dog, man, package deal!" and they almost act like their dog is their life partner and you're the mistress? Actually, I already know the answer to that. 

When you've been with someone you had all those little things in common with for so long, someone that got your sense of humor, understood your moods, liked the same shit you liked and took the time to pay attention to all the little details of things that made you happy, it's super unnerving to imagine going out and trying other people on for size. 

The ways in which they can disappoint you seem endless.

It feels like job hunting.

This one is a perfect role, but I hate the hours.

This one is right by my house but doesn't pay enough.

This one is great but doesn't provide benefits.

This one looked good until I met my future boss, or my potential co-workers.

This one doesn't even provide coffee in the breakroom.

I hate the idea of getting through the first 3 or 4 or 5 dates, only to realize that they shoot bunnies in their free time or don't hold the door open for me or blow their nose at the dinner table, and have to start all over at square one.

It sounds so exhausting.

But a little exciting at the same time.

First dates, first time holding hands, first kisses. All the little things you do have in common that you start off with. Like painting by numbers, and starting with the greens. The little place holders we put in to keep us feeling like we're right for each other, until the bigger moments can come along and hopefully slide into their place.

I guess it's when they don't that you have to start all over again, but still getting to know people is always kind of fun.

Delighting at the fact that you both love Charlotte's Web over dinner where you accidentally order the same thing, and you laugh and go "Oh we have so much in common"

It might be a fiery train wreck at the end, but at least the appetizers were good. 

My Weekend: Bliss

This was a really good weekend.

I don't have a bunch of pictures of exciting things we did, but I have some really good memories.

I had Friday off, and I actually used it productively.

Saturday was filled with baseball and ballet and homemade pizza. A scary movie, a shared bag of peanut m&m's and some very well made drinks. A game of truth or dare, and lots and lots of laughs.

Sunday was breakfast at Filiberto's {a hung over girls best friend}, a stroll around Home Depot {my favorite store} and an evening of movie watching with my dad.

I'm loved, I'm cared about, and I am more surrounded than ever by people I love and care about right back.

Honestly, what more could a girl ask for?

Letters to You

I woke up in the middle of the night because I was cold, and I woke you up too because I was really cold.

Shivering beside you in bed and the sheet on top of us was offering no protection from the near Icelandic temperatures we'd suddenly traveled to in our sleep.

Without being asked you got up, from a dead sleep, and turned the air off, found me a blanket, and then wrapped your very warm body around me, too.

Heat spread all over me, and you let me put my ice cold feet under your legs because they felt like a campfire compared to mine.

And even though I fell back to sleep quickly, before I did I remember mentally noting:

I loved you so very much in that moment.

It's always been the littlest gestures from you, that have warmed my little heart so.

Our Love Story: The Final Chapter

This is the part I honestly thought I would never have to write.

This is the part that I believed, truly, would never come.

But it has.

Bill and I broke up.

Again, and I think now for the last time.

He came to my house, always a gentlemen, not making me come to him and not doing it over the phone, and he asked me, as kindly as possible, to let him go.

We held each other for a long time.

We said goodbye in as many different ways as we could think of.

And we made promises to stay best friends.

Because in the end, he's always been my best friend.

He's been the person who understood me. Who laughed at my jokes, and knew when my jokes were really masking something deeper, something I couldn't say, and in those times, he held me. He's the person who was always there. For drinks, for support, for help and for countless other things. And while it lasted, he gave me a deep and beautiful love, that I will not forget.

Not in this life, or the next.

He taught me that true love is possible, even if it doesn't last forever.

It can move you, it can heal you, and it can awaken in you a capacity for forgiveness and acceptance and hope that you didn't think you had.

For that, I am forever grateful.

After a lot of tears, and even some laughs, and so many hugs, I walked him to his car.

I tried to be brave and not cry when I said goodbye, and I stood on the corner and waived as he drove away.

I made myself stay upright until he turned the corner and disappeared, and then I hit my knees and cried on the sidewalk. No, I wept.

I wept for all the things I thought we would have someday together.

I wept for all the places we won't see together, and all the things we never got to do.

All the things I never got to say.

All the goodnights and good mornings and hello kisses we never got to share.

I wept because he's always been mine, in one form or another, and now I have to let him go, and accept that at some point he will become someone else's. And when that happens I'll know that that person is living the life I wasn't able to have. The life I never made it to because I couldn't stop tearing this apart. No matter how badly I wanted it.

After I stopped crying I sat in my driveway and smoked my last cigarette, staring at the street he'd just drove away on, and tried not to hope that he'd come speeding back, saying he'd made an awful mistake and he couldn't let me go.

I made myself get up and go inside.

I let myself say goodbye to him one last time in a text, and then I forced myself to sleep.

Maybe it doesn't seem like this chapter should be part of our love story, but it is because I still consider our story a love story. We had it great, and perfect for a while, but it wasn't built to last. Relationships that change your life, and change you as person, don't come a long every day.

What no one ever tells you is they also don't always last forever.

But they were still real.

It was still love, and it's still a love story even if it ends without a happily ever after. 

And I am so glad that I got to live that kind of love for the time that I did.

And maybe now we have a new future ahead of us, and we'll finally find the right place for us in each other's lives.

Whatever role we're meant to play for each other, I have hope that we'll find it.

And I am grateful for every single second I had as his girl.

Every moment that I possessed his heart, and he possessed all of me. 

But now it's time to say goodbye to that chapter of our lives together.

Where we go from here, I don't know.

Hopefully toward an amazing friendship.

Beyond that, there is only what I wish for, and whatever it is we're meant for.

Absent

I don't want to go into details right here, right now, but I do promise not to be that annoying vague girl who posts vague shit about vague drama and asks for sympathy and help but never tells you what the fuck is going on.

I promise when I'm ready I will tell you what I can.

But for right now, I'm struggling.

I am hurting.

I have nothing to say to anyone that anybody needs to hear.

In short, I'm goin through some shit right now, and nobody wants me to blog about it.

Trust me.

But I'll be back soon, and I'll make it all up to you.

Until then, I apologize, but I need to take a bit of an absence.

See you on the other side, right?

I hope so.