2003-05-24
2003-05-24 - 8:51 p.m.
For something more upbeat, see Calvins or Cleaning House. ******** From Roberta Flack's See You Then (off Quiet Fire, 1971): lost, yes i am lost lost forever beyond your help and tender kindness i cannot see you're my cherished blindness
********* I feel a story coming on. At 16 I met and fell in love with a doe-eyed boy one day my junior, who we'll call LDS (yep, he's Mormon). We stayed together two years, which seemed like a miracle. He asked me to marry him on Christmas Day in 1991. I said yes, fully wrapped in the dreams he'd created, not realizing that the pressures of time, distance and families would pull as apart in less than six months. I dated other men; as time went on, I stayed with someone for three years who never really took me seriously. That was ok, because I didn't really take any of the men I saw seriously, either. I cared about them, I liked them, but I never loved anybody the way I loved LDS. I came to believe that what we'd felt was due to youth and hormones, that it would never be repeated. Then I met J, and my entire world was swallowed up and re-formed in the time it took him to caress my wrist on our first date. Here it was, adult love, active and spontaneous, full of challenge and difficult lessons and multiple orgasms. I was 26 and experienced in bed, but not in love. Now, single again at 29, I know what it's like to watch a love crumble. As silly as I've been lately, as irresponsible and party-oriented, I'm still the same deep inside - a woman who does her best to be smart and sexy, to live my life ethically, to tread lightly on the world, and to love freely. I've never said no to a real possibility for love or friendship, and I don't intend to start now. Finding a bond with someone is an amazing gift. I won't waste it. But nights like tonight, when I'm too jumpy to distract myself with knitting, can't make myself read and feel strongly the absence in my king bed, it's difficult. I'm afraid to love again, and at the same time I'm afraid of what I'll turn into if I don't love again. So tonight I'll do what I always when the fear overwhelms me. I'll climb into bed, switch off the side lamp, and breathe in sets of 8, giving up my body and my consciousness to gratitude for life, hoping that in return I'll receive the succor of sleep.
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former / latter
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