Pretty woman

There's nothing like shopping, is there?  And what's better than shopping for a once in a lifetime water-drop that will live on my finger forever and ever amen. Watching salespeople watch us was the best part of the day.  Our young faces must have made us think that we were an easy read, directed again and again to discounts, deals, un-solicited comments about financing.  Finally a price tag of 10k and a "No, we're paying cash." 

Hah. 

I don't need expensive things, and I don't want anyone to prove a love through sparkling gestures. I learned long ago that when something is given out of obligation you might as well start packing boxes. But in that moment I finally understood Julia's smirk carrying all those bags down Rodeo Drive. Better than the thing is the feeling of complete happiness in this moment where I am; I'm looking forward to the future but not living for it.  

This rabbit hole that I've stumbled down to wonderland is more fantastical and unbelievable that I ever could have imagined.  I'm happy here forever.

Cheers to all the people who underestimated us; who thought we weren't worth the final sale. 

Tough as diamonds

 I used to stay up late late late and watch videos of people one one knee offering up shining pieces of True Love. I would bawl my eyes out as they told each other how they had waited their whole lives for The One, and there was no doubt in their minds or hearts anymore. My soundtrack became Bruno Mars and my soul longed for that same feeling, even as I explained away the fact that I would never be wholly committed because everyone in the world would be settling- my One wasn’t a possibility. 

That’s what I told myself.

Every video inspired a raw desire and a jealousy that cut me to the soul. With the right diamond (emerald, then,) the right Tiffany blue box, the right clothes and hair I could will myself into that world. Even as I knew, from the moment he kissed me, that my heart belonged to the person I didn’t believe could ever love me. Even as I explained away with false assurances the fact that I wasn’t settling. Even as I TOLD the people that I cared about that I was waiting on his word, and ended clutching a tear stained pillow- twice. 

I could have, would have, should have told him then, but if I had would this diamond sparkling moment be any better? I have grown so much into myself that I can take all the goofy and the serious. He teases that I missed out on six years. I tease that he missed out on eleven- but that doesn’t matter anymore. I can look into those beautiful eyes that reflect my island’s coastline and feel adored and safe. I had to go through hell with all it’s demons and now I’m here on my own two feet, safe and sound with no doubts and nothing to hold me back. 

You are my 

Exact

Source of happiness.

From this day until death do us part and beyond, infinity plus one. 

The very best

 Help. I’m desperately in love with my best friend. I hate it when people say that, but it’s true. It’s been a long year of love and loss, panic and pandemic and if nothing else I’ve gained conviction. 

I used to play pretend- imagining futures for myself with different princes. I would look at shiny things and sigh at idealized storybook chiffon. I don’t know how to describe this reality I’ve found myself in. Used to be I would use words like “stark” and “cold” and capitalize things like The Real World for extra emphasis. I never saw the beauty in the ordinary. Tonight I said “I won’t be mad if you’re not able to make it, it’s out of your control” and it meant it. It wasn’t a simper or a noble self sacrifice, but the true fact that if the world prevents this moment we still have a lifetime. 

Not a lifetime of fairy tales, but of reality. Finances and kids and all the things no one ever wanted to talk about before. It was all happily ever, but no after. I don’t want to live in happily ever. I want to live here. I want the career decisions and the grad school, the meal prep and the small budget barbecue. I want our families and I don’t care about much else (except apparently I care a lot about a simple clear stone. Who knew?) 

You’ve told me about your moments of failure, and I’ve told you mine. You’ve been my champion even when you’re cursing my monstrous Microsoft habits. We spend a weekend adventuring and then sinking into sleep with your fingers tangled in my hair. But I am me. When I leave, I don’t plummet into depression. I have friends (who dearly love you, even after all I had ever told them) and a career and plenty of people who apparently look up to me. 

Today the man who failed me once told me I had conviction. He praised me for not backing down when asked difficult questions. It’s a compliment in an academic setting, sure, but it’s also a greater truth that I’ve begun to acknowledge in myself. I have grown and changed more in this last year than I could have believed. I am a whole person, and it is not because someone gave me something I didn’t already have. 

I’m so fucking in love with you, but I’m in love with me too. That’s what makes all this so fantastic. There’s never been a moment where I have doubted your wish for me to be my own human. Looking back, I want to laugh and cry and run screaming into the ocean. Rom coms can keep their fairy tales. This is better. 

Love fern

In the midst of the most terrifying time to be alive, I found my twin flame. Do you believe in soulmates? You told me once years and years ago that you did, that we were drawn back together again and again and that meant something. Some nights I forget reality and wake up in a cold sweat, thinking myself to still be living a hell almost forgotten. And then you nuzzle my neck, kiss my forehead and the bad dreams melt away.
Let’s always dance in the kitchen. Let’s always want to be in each other’s way while we’re cooking. It’s been a year, over a year, since you walked back into my life. A small part of me is still waiting for reality to change, the other shoe to drop. Shouldn’t we have had a fight by now? Isn’t this the part where you get sick of me, or I discover I hate your snoring really, or you decide my cat is a dealbreaker? In contrast to my learned truths, you tell me I’m beautiful every day. I squeeze your arm and drift off before I’m bothered by your snores. You and my cat are more in love with each other than should really be fair.
I’m so glad I never settled. Looking back, it was so close, the skin of my teeth really that I didn’t drift into life with someone just to be settled. I’ve seen it happen to those around me, people who were perfect for a moment but grow bored once reality sets in. I wonder how those women live every day, do they regret it? Wonder what they missed? Or like I once did, do they just settle into a dull grey existence and forget that color ever existed. It’s funny, most of the people who have ever tried to tear me down live that way now. Poor things.
Now we’re building a garden in the hotel. Building forts for the cat and listening to music while we cook. He bought me a fern but we quickly discover it will get eaten if we’re not careful to put it somewhere where inquiring paws can’t reach. I don’t question or wonder, I can trust that this love is real and can last.
The whole world is unraveling around us, and yet here I am the happiest I’ve been in a very long time. When this is all over and we can go out again we’ll face the world together. And for now, I’m happy to stay in and water these plants.

Loml

There is nothing quite like having the world burn around you and still being inexplicably happy. There no part of my soul that is not fulfilled. I’ve caught my dreams and now that I have them, I know that no matter what I can catch them again. The respect and love that I’ve been shown in the last few months is maddening only in that it’s illuminated the amount of mind fuckery that’s kept me from it all these years. To be clear, fuck that.
But. This is beautiful. This man makes me smile all the way to my soul. In the most terrifying and frustrating moments of life we can still have sneak attacks surprises and find the silliness that I’ve been so quick to burry over the years. I have the most complete explicit trust, and it goes both ways. He’s uprooting his life to be closer to me, and I’m so ready to return the favor.
Years ago, without even knowing who I was writing about (or without acknowledging it) I wrote a character in a show that’s taken my to all the places I dreamed of. I’ve gotten to perform on battlefields and national memorials where Broadway companies tour. It’s time for me to revisit that show, to edit it for the more mature performer I’ve become. There are some things that won’t change though- some things that I think I’ve only recently understood the truth of.
“If you go- I go.”
I don’t care if it’s a camp as part of Lees campaign through New Jersey or to a pandemic torn district of our nation. It’s more true now than ever before.
I’ll be the Betsey Nicholas to his Edmund Randolph, managing a household with the advice of crazy aunt Betty. I’m so unbelievably happy.
For the first time in my life, it’s my whole heart I can give without fear or trepidation.
I’m yours, forever.
Your my loml.
Always have been, always will be.

Circumstantial Heartbreak

I've had my heart broken maybe twice.  I'm not sure if one counts, because it was the actions and not the person who did it.  By the time it happened, I was thoroughly out of love and it was the shock of betrayal that did me in.  The first time, it hurt the most because it seemed so intentional.  It was nice to have someone to blame entirely, someone to cast in the role of the villain.  These two hurts I have carried with me for years, a talisman I've used to ward people away from my heart.  It's worked, three times over. Until now.
Now I've let go and begun to re-imagine what it could be like to give my heart away.  Without preserving a part of it in memorial, the whole thing of one piece- bruises and all.  And when I began to trust, to give up my surety, my memory of hurt, I fully understood that my heart thus given could break again.  I knew I was handing it away, and I thought I saw the danger in that.
And yet, this is a hazard I never saw.  No person is breaking my heart.  The events, the circumstances, the plain unfairness of the loss of something I never even had is.  The worst part, the salt in the wound is the fact that I'm not the only one hurting.  That maybe, my encouragements made it worse for both of us in the end.  And that there is nothing that either of us can do to make it any better.
So here I am.  Crying on my way home from a love scene written by the king of romance, the bard himself who has given me the most poetically beautiful words to say.  Weeping because all I want in the world is my very own Ferdinand and instead I'm going home to drink water, snuggle my cat, read Jane until I can drift into the safety of unconsciousness. Wondering why I can't bring this emotion when called for, and instead save it for the moment that it will do nothing more than make the road in front of the car into a watery blur.
Knowing that we both need time to process, knowing that talking about it makes it worse-but still wishing that I could curl up in the very arms that I am denied is the worst part of the affair.  Who, in my life, can ever understand this frustration?  I don't have that community of common knowledge, the tag rag and bobtail group of compatriots who will give a shoulder to lean on.
Instead I affirm to myself that this will pass.  That I will wake up, a little broken but still knowing that we two are continuing forward as we must to meet our common goal.  That someday I'll laugh about this, or worse-when the exact reverse happens I'll bemoan the time that they denied the thing that I will then be so dreading.  That tomorrow will hold new opportunities, and that there is a reason that this avenue is closed.
I have my love. He has my heart, it's a little more battered by I entrust it to him wholly.  I know now with certainty what I've often wondered in the past, and know more about the past itself than I ever hoped to understand.  I have every reason to believe that this is one small valley in a long journey full of mountains.
But this sucks.  Here and now, this fucking sucks.

Walking with ghosts

"Here's my hand."
"And mine, with my heart in't."
*****
There's nothing more beautiful or more deadly than lovesick teens.  Before the first heartbreak, with all the longing in the world-love has the possibility to be everything and there is no reason to hold back, remain circumspect.  Meredith remembered that feeling as her heels clicked off the empty walls of her old school.  Ten years, had it really been ten years?  The ghosts of her youth were walking beside her down the tiled hallway.  The lockers were new, but that's not surprising.  They had just changed them when she arrived in this school, and by her senior year they were already well used.  Pausing by the library she looked through the window and remembered scenes of terror, crawling into the ceiling with her best friends and waiting for hours for help to come.  It was all still here-Ken, Ash, Erik.  Belle and all the others, still living their lives in the most dramatic way possible. 
Upstairs, a she could hear a light rain beginning to fall on the roof.  Deliberately starting near the math classrooms she wandered from one to another, remembering hours of tortuously struggling with numbers that would never make sense to her, hearing the echos of "you won't have a calculator in your pocket for the rest of your life."  She smiled and touched her cellphone, wondering at how far we've come from playing snake and paying 25 cents a text. 
She had saved the science wing for last, wondering if she would feel anything- remember any more when standing there.  The theater had always been her home, her safe space, but somehow so many of her memories began here.  A refrain of an old song came drifting back to her, she wondered if students still went caroling around school twice a year celebrating an obscure holiday based around a really really big number.  She couldn't remember what her chem teacher looked like, or his name even.  It was all lost in the fog of time.  She could remember the notebook though, an old fivestar one with pockets.  They had passed it up and down the row whenever the ghost teacher wasn't looking.  In it were her dreams of romance, the names of boys that she was too afraid to actually talk to but could giggle about with her closest friends.  Back when her biggest dreams had been about her first kiss.  Back when she still thought that Grey's Anatomy and Gone With the Wind were proper guides to relationships.  She had always imagined being swept off her feet by the first man she ever fell for and then living happily ever after-if not that a bittersweet ending with a man staring wistfully after her plane as it departed; "here's looking at you kid."  Her world was Jane Austen and F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Here, in this room it was almost like being back there again. 
And it all started with the notebook. Her life in the book was so dramatic, shared with her closest friends.  Teenage pregnancies, car crashes, boyfriends cruelly murdered.  Back when real life needed spicing up. 
Would she change any of it?  If she had known what was to come?  If she knew she would cease to be the perfect student, would fall into the darkest moments of her life when no one was around to turn on the light.  That she would find herself in a place where the people who claimed love were grinding her beneath their shoes and laughing at her screams.  Would she go back and tell herself to live in the moment, to be happily tortured by the fact that she was too shy to tell a boy that she liked him? That getting cast in the chorus again wasn't the end of the world.
No.  If she could, she would keep quiet.  She would let the notebook lie, full of adventures that the authors dreamt up out of a need for adrenaline in this sleepy island community.  The song faded and with it so did Meredith.  Confined now to the few pages in a notebook that is probably lost to time.  Clicking out of the classroom, I hurry downstairs and down the corridor to reality. 
I love this world that I live in, but some days I miss her- and the moments when I didn't know anything beyond pinning for a kind of romance that I did not understand. 

Bathtub confessions

I think I’m gonna marry you.
I mean, I’ve thought forever for a long time- but it was a wish, then a curse. I feel for the charm but I remember holding you through the tears- even if you don’t. Years of hurt- needlessly because you and I were speaking different languages with the same tongue. I didn’t want to hurt you- would have, could have waited. But if I had. Would it have been enough? I was still so broken, you would have become my anchor and my whole happiness in a way that would have spelled the begging of the end. And so now here we are.
I want it all forever.  The goofy jokes and the sweet way you wrap your arms around me, your patience even when I can’t concentrate and I’m trying to remember the most complicated steps to the dance rather than starting at the beginning. I trust that when me hair catches on fire, you’ll slap it it out without thinking of your own hands.
I trust you to tell me when things are not ok.
I trust you to be the first person who hasn’t screamed and shouted to get their way.
It’s been almost a year, and when you walked back into my life I think I knew what it meant, I knew for years.
2.5 years ago I was in an ok place. I was with someone who purportedly adored me, probably the sweetest of any of them, despite the reasons it all ended. And even in the middle of all that you were in my dreams. Night after night, I couldn’t get you out of my head.
I told my friend, driving out to take care of her pony- turned to her in the seat next to me and said “I’m not sure if I believe in soulmates, but if he’s not mine in this life in a past one he was.”
Dear god babe, it’s been you forever and ever.
It’s been so easy to fall into every day life, to adventure and travel and stay home and cuddle. My life hasn’t stopped, my world continues to turn but I like it better when I know I get to talk to you at the end of my day.
So yes, I suppose on paper it’s only been a few months- but in reality it’s been more than a decade. Remember when you asked me to wait wayyyy back when? I thought it was a ploy, but it was genuine. If I had waited 2 months, I could have saved 11 years. And yet, I wouldn’t be me- I would be a derivation of you.
So maybe It’s time to say it with more certainty what I’ve known this whole time.
You’re the only one who could ever have all of my heart. Everyone else has always been second best.
I’m gonna marry you.

Garden of Eden

The coffee shop is so crowded with kids on lunch break between classes. Funny calling them kids, when I moved here they were contemporaries. Now, crossing the streets by the college is an exercise in eye rolling frustration and dodging hipsters absorbed in their ethically dubious iPhones. Walking here was unexpectedly nerve wracking. I thought I was ready- prepared. I compartmentalized work and my relationship from this meeting. I arranged with my best friend to call halfway through lunch. i wore a dress that was simple but not overly flattering. I told him- actually I asked.
“Do you mind if I meet an old friend from college? I should tell you that we’ve been more than friends, and in the past he meant a lot to me.”
“Do what you want.”

Do what I want. I wanted to prove that I could move on. To reconnect and realize that the spark was just nostalgia, and that now I’m a mature woman. And maybe, a tiny part of me wanted to see him. Ask how he was- if he had a girlfriend, or fiancé, or wife.

I wasn’t ready when I saw him. All of my planning and I walked out onto the street, fake pregnant belly in place- a basket on my arm and the perspiration of false labor in my arm pits. He glanced up and pointed at the phone-
“I was following you.”
My manager shoots me a look, clearly confirming that she will call security right here and now if I am unsafe. How to explain- can I explain?
“I need to change, I’ll meet you in a minute?” As we walk away I’m already assuring her that this was planned, just an old friend from college. Just a friend.

Who exactly am I trying to convince?

When I first saw him I thought that maybe I could leave it all behind. He’s not the way I remember- or maybe I’ve grown into myself. In the dressing room I wrap my hair in a kerchief and brush the powder off my neck. History problems. He doesn’t know that- it must be strange for him and yet it’s so normal to my existence.

Back out on the street and my confidence plummets. How is it that I can present a program to 50 people, I can cry or fake a contraction or answer questions about legal intricacies and yet all of a sudden my insides are writhing like I’m 18 all over again. Butterflies- is that what these are? It’s been so long I can’t tell.

He tells me he’s a Captain now. I can’t help it- I laugh and am filled with instant regret. I try to explain about calling him by one of Jane Austen’s invented names a million years ago, that that fictional person was also a captain. I’m making everything so much worse. My body tries to close the gap between us but I stay stubbornly two feet away on the sidewalk. I think if someone had a knife you could slice the tension in the space between us.

We order our coffees and lunches and find a seat. Why did I only get soup? I am never nervous about eating in front of the man I’m dating- I don’t much care what he thinks of me. For some reason though, in this moment I want to be attractive. Am I trying to show him what he missed? Prove that I’m more a woman than I was before? I’m leaning in across the table and my fingers are making slow rings around the neck of my Nantucket Nectar. I realize that I want the bottle to be his lips. I don’t stop.

My phone buzzes as we eat our food.
“Are you ok? Do you need an out?”
“All good- thanks for checking!” I’m not all good. I’m writhing internally and my face is probably visibly flushing. We’re talking about everything- about nothing. I can’t tell you what were saying even as the words come out of my mouth. I’m drowning in blue eyes. You’d think I would have learned by now to bring a life jacket. My phone tells me it’s time to clock in and go back to work. I silence it, clock in, and keep sitting there. My afternoon is free and I don’t want this to end.

Finally I can’t avoid the fact that I am under the pretense of working today. We slide out and start the walk back to town, my feet wanting to drag a little with each step. As we get back to the Main Street I notice that I have closed the distance between us, and that I’m smiling all the way to my eyes. I haven’t smiled like that in years, it’s a concerted effort to stop but the streets have eyes here. Walking back to the office and I turn, not sure how to say goodbye. If this is the last time forever, there are so many things I want to say. I say
“The blacksmith is around the corner- let me know if you need help finding anything else in the city!”
I walk away, glancing back over my shoulder and seeing him disappear around the red kitchen building.

My dressing room is mercifully empty. I close the door and lean against it, sliding slowly down to rest on the floor. Am I breathing? I’m gasping. I haven’t felt like this in years. Not in a decade. I’m talking but it’s not a nonsensical babble, “oh my god- oh my god!” I fan myself with my hands, well aware that I have maybe ten minutes to pull myself together before someone comes back to the room. I try to push it back into its compartment, the neat box I’ve constructed in my mind. The lid won’t fit.

In the course of an hour, my entire world had gone off center. Someone pulled the covers off and woke me up like my father used to do when I was late for school. Now I’m looking at my life from outside, watching myself settle with being content. Watching me give up on the only dream I ever had- falling hopelessly in love.

But it’s not real. It can’t be. It was just lunch.

I stand and look at myself in the mirror. I’m still the same on the outside. If I ignore the fire in my chest, it will eventually extinguish. I lick my lips and taste the last of the lemon aid.

It’s too late. I took the apple and bit into it, and now for my sins I must live with the knowledge of my own naked emotions. It’s always been him. It’ll always be him.

Heart over mind

The brain is a funny complicated thing.
I spent years denying what was happening to me in the moment.
Years believing a narrative that I knew cognitively was impossible.
And then, when I could believe that it happened- I didn’t believe it was me. I spent so long calling myself a liar that though I could believe others and their experiences, I still thought it wasn’t real. That if someone holds you down and fucks you against your will, tells you they like it when you’re crying from the pain, it’s rape.
The other bits are complicated.
I remember being pushed down on the snow and the ice, but I still don’t know what happened. Only that I was told that if I didn’t get up quickly I would be the cause, at fault, the reason someone else got in trouble.
My brain made pathways, forged connections.
I learned that silence meant infidelity. I learned that asking someone where they were meant lies. I learned that the insecure voice in my head was always right.


So.
Did you know it takes hundreds of good connections to get rid of one bad one? And there are a lot of bad connections to re-write. But each time it does get a little easier. And the best part is that I’m doing this hard work on my own, because it’s mine to do. I’m not constantly asking for the validation, the love- I’m taking it when freely given (and reveling in how often it is gifted.) I’ve only had to say something once- and that was the dream. That awful horrible nightmare that I already lived once with someone else, But even in that there is Hope.
When it was real I thought I would crumble- but I didn’t. I didn’t because it was the wrong person in the wrong place and time. In my dream it was worse, so so much worse. Because this is the right person, the right time.
But that’s when I realized that unlike before, it’s just a dream.  I did the thing that I always wanted to do- I woke up. I called the love of my life. And it was ok, because it has never been our reality- and it won’t be. He could break me worse than I’ve ever broken but for the first time since the first time I can trust that he won’t.

The brain is a beautiful thing- it’s slowly helping me to heal the oldest and deepest wounds of my heart. So important, because I’ll never go back to who I was before but I won’t carry myself forward in pieces anymore. Now I know that I’m in the right time and place with the right person. He’s introducing me to his family as his girlfriend- sure it seems a little thing but if they’re shocked and ready to ask when the wedding is, maybe it’s not so little after all. And maybe, it’s not just me picking up pieces. Maybe there’s a reason he hasn’t used those words with them for anyone else before. I know he wants to believe that this could have happened five years ago, we could be married with kids- and it’s true but because of this time, I’m more me than ever.

For the first time since I was 18 years old,
I’m doing the impossible
and falling in love with my whole heart.

Take that, brain.