Daymares

I’m still scared though. You ask me to go to a ball and there is a swell of giddy ness and a rush of memory that makes me sick to my stomach. I wonder if you remember the last time you asked. I wonder if you remember why I said no then.
You’ve made me see things the way you remember. I see where I hurt you, where I ran when I should have stayed. I’m afraid that I haven’t been able to tell you how I remember things. The number of times that I was confirmed in believing that I was second best. The amount of un-learning that I have left to do.
I wonder where the line is between telling you that I’m hurting and leaving the past behind. This is not a good week, family medical emergencies, moving, my opening a new season and trying to make decisions for the next year that will effect the next ten. Maybe next week. Probably next week.

Bottom line. I love you. That chapter of my life- our lives is over. I said that I needed to wait but my heart was breaking further and so now here we are, together at last. I worry though that I rushed it. I didn’t have time to put this to rest, if it can indeed be put to rest.

I know you love me. I trust you, here and now. I just need to remember that neither of us are the people we once were. I’ll probably spend the rest of my life learning to trust again. It’ll be worth it though. You’re worth it, and so am I.

Miranda ❤️’s Ferdinand

Go ahead, ask me to jump. Just tell me how high and I’ll leap for the stars.
Let’s run away and create our own world in the woods, they’ll never find us and so we can judge happiness for ourselves. How did I get so lucky? Years of settling and to think that I was thisclose to a lifetime of living in black and white. There is so much color in my world all of a sudden, I can’t even remember the names of some of these shades.

Three men have told me their intention of asking for my hand in marriage.
One gave me his grandmothers ring to try.
One spent far too much instead of just raiding the family vault.
One had no plan and didn’t see why it mattered.

I want more than a backyard bbq with Hawaiian shirts. I want more than a marriage of convince. I want more than a lifetime of regret and fear. I want love, respect. Family.
I have fallen more in love with each passing day, and it’s a new kind of grown up love. When I fell all those years ago I was still Miranda. I was ready to “call him a thing Devine,” for indeed I had not ever seen anything “so noble” before. You were “the first I ever sighed for,” but more has passed since then than a romp around an enchanted island.

Now, I love the way you cares for your family. The time and devotion that goes beyond duty. I love the way you insist that those around you take care of themselves. I loved meeting your family and seeing you at home, your nerves are the opposite of mine. I gabbled into nonsense and you were so quiet I was forever worried of putting my foot so far into my mouth that I gagged. I love the intention that you live with, that you care enough to ask for advice before jumping forward. Sometimes I forget to look before I leap. I love that you’re willing to think and plan for your future, our future.

I love that you call your house “ours.”
I love that you give me soft things, your hands and blankets and your love.
I love that you’re including me in your family gatherings.
I love that when I tried to tell you that our anniversary was the 10th you replied that it wasn’t, it was the day we met or the day we had sex (I only know one of those two dates for the record.)

I’ve got a feeling that this is going to be fast babe. We might shock the world. I might shock myself. But like any great love story, when you know you know.

I’m glad I’m not Miranda. I didn’t fall in love with the third man I ever saw. Well, maybe I did- but I tried out different kinds of love before allowing myself to admit that there is none greater than this. I have no more questions, no more longing for adventures or flirtations with the island’s natives. When I tell you I’m yours, it’s with a completeness I’ve never felt before.
I guess because the hang up I’ve always had is you.

Butterflies babe. I still get them when I talk to you, when you hold me. The funny thing is that we know each other so well but also not at all. You know my biggest heartbreak, my secret insecurities- and you’re just discovering my football team. I know how you feel about your dad trying to finish your camaro while you were deployed (even if you don’t remember telling me) but I didn’t know how you like your bacon cooked. Crispy, like me.

So yes. I’m ready to plan a future. I’m excited to be the best version of myself. Take the job in Scranton, or don’t take it- I’ll be by your side either way. You’re the kind of person it’s easy to fall for, and easier to love.  I hope that someday we’re telling our grandchildren a highly modified version of this story. Who knows, maybe I’ll print this blog out and stash it in my stuff to be discovered by a highly embarrassed son or daughter someday when I’m gone (you’re welcome.)

You’re it babe.
Forever.

Enchanted evening

Tomorrow is like Christmas and New Years and Halloween and my birthday all rolled into one. I keep reminding myself to not live for these weekends, to find the reality between and not wish my life away. But, I can’t help it. 

It’s nice to know that I wasn’t crazy all those years ago. It’s nice to hear that the good I saw in people was legitimate and the bad feeling I had in my gut about others was more than a hunch. I guess we got hurt by the same people, and we just did different things. I guess I ran when I should have stayed. I guess I should have just asked five years ago. I should have stop letting other people control the voice in my head that tells me right from wrong, false from true. I guess tomorrow is a new start. And with that comes letting go. I’ll probably hold on to some of these things for a while longer, but I’m excited to move forward together. 

I love you. Everything about you. I’m ready to make this work. We might be 11 years older, but you’ve still got your boyish charm and I’ve still got my naive ability to love first and question later. We’ve got this. 

Time hop

There’s too much wine and not enough food in my stomach, but I don’t care. My heart is jumping between my stomach and my throat and when he kissed me I couldn’t remember how to breath. Every touch is fire, and when he suggests a shower I realize it’s the same question he’s been asking for eleven years but for the first time it has a different answer. We take our wine glasses with us to the bathroom and run the water as hot as we can stand. Somehow there is music, and then my dress slips down around my ankles and once again I can’t breath. Naked we slow dance to country music and giggle into each other’s shoulders and let the steam engulf us until we are floating in clouds of intoxicated bliss.
Under the water we laugh and kiss but mostly play. Spitting water he turns and looks at me over his shoulder, and in that moment I think that I will see his grin for the rest of my life. It’s never the moments that you think you’re going to remember that get etched in your mind, somehow the history of the world, the history of us skips beats.
One moment I am laughing as he spins me, flying through the air with his hand on the small of my back to live fiddle music. Then we are in his room and I’m sliding my Walmart bra off, too shy to turn around, and lying down to feel his oiled hands sliding over my back. A semester later in the student lounge, late late and night and he’s straddling me before looking down and telling me that he’s never seen so much want in anyone’s eyes before.  Then the house on John st, his powerful arms throwing me almost off the bed and pinning me down until I can’t move, my struggles delightfully contained. And then, this shower. There are other flashes, the lake and the zombie movies- but they’re always just flashes. Looking back, there are so many delightful moments lost to time- before I had tried to catch them all, lock them in a trunk at the back of my mind to be taken out and examined at length when my thoughts inevitably turned into the could have, should have.
And now? With the possibility of a lifetime of moments to come, I know I won’t capture them all. And maybe I don’t need to. I hope, four decades from now I can look back and see more jumps in time. More flashes of blue eyes and soft hands on my skin.
This is more than I ever dreamed of. Or rather, it’s exactly what I dreamed of.