Maybe I’m crazy
But
As you’ve told me so many times
You like my crazy.
I miss you babe. I can’t wait to see you, meet your parents(again,) tell you all about the tiny baby shark that sat next to me for her happy birthday song tonight.  I know you’re out in the tundra enjoying your family time, but I’m selfish and I can’t wait for you to be home.
I love you
I always have
And
I always will.

Tidewater Autumn

Ferry rides and pumpkin patches and sandy beeches full of adventures and lust, I love the fall so very much. I feel beautiful and full of life and though I may have to have a long conversation with Ken (oops, sorry work dad) I don’t actually care right at this moment. I keep thinking it won’t get any better, but then we sink a little more into the every day routine and I ask myself why I waited so damn long for this.
I was so afraid for so long that I would allow myself the same foolish dreams that would crush  my soul when they were dashed, that I didn’t see what was in front of my face. The boy asked me to meet him at the airport when he got home from Afghanistan. As a wise heroine once said, “Catherine Morland, you are a fool!”
But no more obsessing about that. I have the best plans in motion, but I shan’t ruin the surprise- just in case you do sometimes click on the link that I’ve sent you half a dozen times. That grin, those sparkling eyes and the fingers that wander where they absolutely shouldn’t in any public place (you know I love it) our penchant to listen to NPR for hours and have real world conversations, your willingness to help me and all of my friends with any number of household things. Well. I guess you did make K— try to eat a worm in the second grade, so the least you can do is clean up the disembodied snake in her basement. But still. All the love, the everyday love in the grocery store, the silly kisses and the sweet ones. I’m willing to leave behind this place and this job, but you’re willing to try on breeches and a waistcoat.

Let’s go on adventures forever together. And let’s make it a fall wedding.

PS
My cat misses you. She’s been moping ever since you left, which is entirely unfair and I plan to pay you back in spades when we get our dog.

To Have Dreamt of You

When I was 17 I though Jane Austen was the end all and be all of my life. I wanted to live in her romantic witty world, I wanted to meet my own Henry Tilney, I peppered my Facebook wall with my favorite quotes from Northanger. When I first read the script I was so sad that one of my favorite hopeless romantic lines wasn’t included:

“Whether she thought of him so much while she drank her warm wine and water and prepared herself for bed as to dream of him when there, cannot be ascertained; but I hope it was no more than in a light slumber, or a morning doze at most, for if it be true, as a celebrated writer has maintained, that no young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman’s love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentlemen before the gentleman is first known to have dreamed of her.”

When I first heard “To Have Dreamt of You” I still wasn’t sure, how could I wander about the stage making doe eyes at Henry without having any reply to him? How awkward to have a love song entirely sung to you. I was so wrong. It’s my favorite, and the timing of this music entering my life was so perfect. I don’t know if this will ever be staged again, and so For posterity’s sake.


To Have Dreamt of You

Henry:
It must be very wrong to have dreamt of me
To have dreamt of me before I dreamt of you
To give your thoughts over to a fantasy
Be in love with me before you’re mine to woo

For every heroine is meek
Every heroine is mild
Set apart from all the others like a prize
And no hero ever writ
Won the day without a trial
Seeing love alight within his lady’s eyes

It must be very wrong to have dreamt again
As if there’s nothing left in life to do but dream
How your romance would end if you held the pen
How you’d write your story if you reigned supreme

And yet it’s altogether strange
And it’s altogether new
And I feel as though I’m in a far-off land
For in reflecting on my life
I seem to find I’ve dreamt of you
In a thousand little ways since life began

So if it’s wrong to dream at all we’re wrong together
And if it’s right, well then, we’re out ahead by far
And if by dreaming through our life, we make it better
Then there will never be two lovers blesséd as we are.

Ensemble:
May we be always a little fanciful
For without a dream, the world would never change.
And if we haven’t the right to dream at all
Then that sort of love is best left on the page

Henry:
But you are altogether real
And I am altogether yours
Bound in honor and affection through and through
And the wisest thing I’ve done
In this foolish world of ours
Was in daring to have dreamt of you.

Fallen

For the first time in a really long time, I’m back to widow white gown shopping and reading proposal stories online and daydreaming about my future and
It
Feels
So
Good.

The best part? He told me he loved me before I even had a chance to worry about the possibility that he didn’t, that he hasn’t. Sometimes what looks beautiful is really quite horrid. This is not one of those times.

2 days, 15 hours 41 minutes.
But who’s counting?

Fairy Tale Beginning

There is something sweet about late night kisses that go on and on into oblivion, your fingers making circles on my back until I’m purring in your arms. I remember these nights, I thought I had lost them blocked them forever but it’s not true. I remember them but now I see clearly what I couldn’t see then. It wasn’t a game, was it? The night you ended things and then asked me to hold you. When you told me even before then to wait and see. When you said you were obligated to do it in person, but that you were going to do it.  It was real but I was already too far gone to understand.

And if we had? If I had jumped then, when I was so full of unrest and darkness.  Could I ever have fought my way out the other side? Would I be the woman I am now? No, probably not. But I know now that you were always honest with me. That you cared for me, even as I fell in love with you I think just maybe you were falling in love with me too.

Butterflies, you said I gave you butterflies. Well babe I suppose it goes both ways, because I knew the moment I got your message that I was a goner. That’s why my phone buzzed in the cafe, exactly 25 minutes into our coffee catchup, my best friend ready to fake whatever emergency I needed. That’s why my fingers were tracing the bottleneck of my mango peach juice, imagining the cold glass to be your warm lips.  That’s why, when I finally made my way back to the office, I left you at the back porch and sprinted inside-grateful to find the dressing room unoccupied so that I could slump with my back against the door and sink ever so slowly to the floor in a puddle of long dormant longing.

The pitch of the roof in my room is just the same as yours was all those years ago. Do you remember leaving your window open all winter? That night when we watched bad zombie movies and I snuggled so deeply into you trying to capture your inner warmth. Or the time you brought out oils and smoothed my skin with your tender hands, expecting nothing in return and working the nervous energy out of my skin.

You taught me these kisses, and then when I turned up on your doorstep all these years later you kissed me again before I had time to think or be nervous or god forbid run. Right there in the car, making me squirm until I had to remind myself that I hadn’t taken the car out of drive and I needed to keep my foot firmly on the break.

I’m ready to fall back into flannel nights and the same running jokes we’ve had through years and all of our diverse relationships. I’m ready to believe now what you tried to tell me all those years ago. I don’t know what made me different from the others, or what made you stand out to me (that’s a lie, it was your sparkling eyes and your quick grin and your kind ear) but I know that somehow we are the only ones who matter. The mind-blowing sex doesn’t hurt, either.

Love. My love.

I used to imagine what I would do on the day that I heard you were married. Now you’ve  told me that not even me saying “I do” with someone else would have stopped you from trying. I’m glad. I’ve begged you for years, in my dreams and on these digital pages, to tell me that you wanted something more. I should have just asked you, as you said we could have been together for the last 10 years.

But again, I wouldn’t have been all of me. And I want to be all of me. For myself first, but also for you. So I’m glad. I learned so much, and when I meet your parents again- this time as your partner, I’ll know where I stand. Where we stand.

I can’t wait for our adventures. Everyone else is settled in the story they’ve written for themselves, and ours is just beginning.

Once upon a time...

Fame

I could never be a celebrity, this weekend has been living proof. Defending myself, and Chris (too much like a brother to be comfortable with this many women drooling over him) from the throng is something I hope I never have to do again. But. We did it. And the foremost Jane scholars in the world loved it. And the only things they didn't love are the things that we fought against for the last three years.

And so now, on to the future. Three more turns about the room with Catherine, three more nights falling for Mr. Tilney until I get to see my Wickham.

Goodnight Tilney,
Goodnight Woodston,
Goodnight murdered mother in law,
Goodnight cads,
Goodnight hyacinths,
Goodnight horrid mysteries
Goodnight Miss Morland.
I’m glad you came off the shelf.

Hyacinths

It’s funny how a little sleep can change perspective. And a tech run. And people knowing their god damn lines (myself included.)

I get to be the best and worst parts of Catherine. I can run from a room, “you must despise me forever” without a smidge or irony. I can feel a sort of triumphant delight. I can tell John Thorpe to go jump in the Thames and poor Isabella that she must be stupid to think me such a fool. I can fall in love after one dance without even learning his name.

And tomorrow, I get to live it all out in front of a sold out house  (with a 200 person waiting list!) They hyacinths, the picnic, the ball and the horrid mysteries. I’m so grateful for this. I’m glad to have my £3,000 pounds, though it took me longer than a *true* heroine to get there. And hey, my sister in law is a viscountess, so there’s that.

Cheers to opening, and remember that when in doubt, I can have my cake and marry Tilney too.