Do You Crave a Love that Tears Through Your Life Like a Category 5?

 Something moved in me. I don't know what it is. I really like it though. I've had a few moments that felt like real epiphanies lately. Last night it was telling someone if they want something from me, the best way to get the chance is to bring me coffee in bed. I've always loved that. Softens me right up. The effort to make and bring it to me is basically my love language. For the first time last night, I realized why. Daddy used to wake me up in the morning holding my coffee. It's the way to make sure that I'm sitting up and fully awake or I'll dump it all over myself. These days, if I'm not already sitting up, just leave it on the night stand.

Another one was realizing why I love a man who gives me a hard time in the getting. I mean, surely part of it is knowing that nothing worth having is easy. Knowing that I love anyone who makes me work. Earn it. The other half is because I tailed Jay Tate for six months before he calmed his ass down and realized he didn't really have any choice in the matter. All of that led to what I think was the greatest love affair of my life. I guess it's possible that I feel that way because it never played all the way out. And I know now that it would have. I'd have outgrown him. He didn't have any room to grow with me.

I fear that I seek out these similarities like chasing the next best high. You never get it, and it will probably kill you. I'm getting better at all of this self-awareness and then action to follow. But you know what? I'm also chasing that person who fixed my mascara when it ran by licking his thumb and wiping it off. The person I let get that close to my eyeball and didn't flinch. Someone who notices. Someone who wants to do the small things to care for me. I'm chasing the person who tells me stories and hugs me in a way that makes me relax. I didn't even know I could relax. I'm chasing that person I don't mind asking to open a jar. I'm chasing that person who will lay on the rug and listen to records with me. That person who shows me that he wants to put me ahead of himself, even if that's not at all what I asked for. That person I want to be around because he is my best friend.

One more is that I rarely tell people about Jay anymore. It's all great until you tell them the end. And then all that's left of that whole story for them is pity. And it's so clear all over their faces. If I see that sorry-for-you face followed with "I'm so sorry" one more time in my life, I'll scream. They forget love poetry on the walls in sidewalk chalk. They forget standing up for me. They forget that part about how I cut my hair off out of spite and he fell all in love with me more instead. They forget those knee-high, patent leather stiletto boots and what he thought of them. They forget him watching me take out my contact lenses to make sure my eyes were really that color (they are). They forget a man in a skirt. They forget that he danced. They forget Blow. They forget the one time he ever showed jealousy because he was certain I was flirting with a stranger. They forget all of the story except the end.

The guys at the shop never did that. Not one of them. Not ever. No one there has ever felt sorry for me for the way I'm the most fucked up. It's not because they don't understand it. Rather to the contrary; they absolutely understand it. I don't think anyone ever has before. They all thank me for the work I'm trying to do. And that gratitude matters, it really does. But those motherfuckers have given me more than a few hours of work could ever repay. I haven't figured out how to tell them that yet. I will though. They'll understand that part too. 

And that led me to another realization. I gravitate towards these people who are as fucked up as I am. And honestly, in similar ways. Not the same. Oh no. I do not understand that. I just mean that a death you didn't plan that you are a part of is its own kind of fucked up. I'm where I am to see that you can get unfucked. I landed here to witness healing. I think to help me get to my own. And that has been a long and stubborn road. It won't be too long before I've spent more than half my life carrying this around. It's just around the corner that I will reach the half-life of the beginning. Imagine getting here before I realized I don't have to carry anything. Put that shit down. But the thing is that you can't just drop it anywhere. I'm pretty sure when it all slides away, it will be in a place that smells like diesel and beer and wet dog, brake dust on everything and some dog up in my space, right there onto the floor with the dog slobber and the mud and oil and god knows what. And I don't have to put down the good parts. Just the hurty ones.

I recognized this early as a sort of penance. The self-imposed part tracks, but I didn't really do any wrong. Penance for survivor's guilt. I guess it doesn't really matter if you are at fault if you carry the weight of wrong doing. That realization came to me with a whole mess of a man who will never get himself sorted out. That one is not the one I want to work with. But he had some glimmers of good sense and understanding of the world. They probably weren't even his own. And no, we absolutely cannot still hang out. Messy motherfucker. To speak that way of your children's mother. No. Just no.

All of that to say that I really am here for a reason. I never believed in signs or fate or any of that nonsense. You will find anything you want to see. But I'll be damned if I'm not changing my way of thinking these days. One thing is coincidence, two is a pattern, half a dozen makes you look up and wonder.

I'm peaceful in a way I don't remember. At least not for a very long time. It feels like it might stay around this time. I sure hope so.