A lot of complete sentences to finish and incomplete thought that may have hurt or surprised you.

I have said all of these things to you in a half a dozen incomplete thoughts, but when I am alone, when it is just me and the monitor and keyboard, I can tell you everything, even the things I know you don't want to hear.

Like the fact that I really like you. And I knew I would. I also knew that this time would be different. This time I wouldn't cry. Or want you. Or make you into something you're not. This time, I took you for what you are worth. A decent guy with a quiet way who just likes me.

But now you don't "just like me." Now you don't just want to hang out with me sometimes when the mood strikes you and delight in my company or get bored of it and drop me off when you're done. Now you don't just want to chat every now and again and introduce me as just me and talk to other girls at bars with me a a security blanket.

Now you really think I'm something. Now you really say meaningful things to me. And you compliment me. And you are proud to take me out and talk me up and share me. Now you love me. And you are making propositions to love me for more than just today. For more than just the great quiet times.

But what if you don't?

What if I lose my luster?

What if I lose my mind?

What if when I am no longer this cool unfeeling quiet controlled woman you realize you never really even liked me?

So what?

So I really like you, that's what. You are so different than what i expect from life and love. You aren't a tiger, ready to pounce with passion and grief. You aren't a bear, cuddly looking with a fierce hunger. You certainly are not a fish, flaky and dry. I don't know what you are. You're a Boy.

A Boy I really like. A boy who I want to see happy. And well off.

What if you being happy means you not being with me?

I know, I've said that before to you. I have told you and cried my one tear and moved on. But you don't know the me before you. I me that was scared to be alone. And needed to cling to the idea of someone greater than I thought I was. Someone who would carry me and protect me.

You know the new me. The timid but awakened me. The me that can read people and who knows what she sees, even the most evil, is true. The me who has learned the difference between KNOWING a person is truly worthy and good at heart and BELIEVING that the best of a person.

With this new found self worth and agenda, I no longer need someone like you. I can now truly just want someone like you. Someone who isn't afraid to just be with me. Someone who doesn't own me. Or restrain me. Or need me.

The new me is also much more realistic. So what if we're not in a love to write home about? So what if we don't spend every waking moment together or wanting to be together?We are still a valuable asset to each other whether we have to be sitting close enough to touch or not. Whether you say at every moment "I love you more than soggy peaches."

Realism is sometimes disappointing and messy though ,isn't it? Being realistic is saying to yourself "There are things about me that this person hates. And there are things about them I'm not too fond of." Realism is compromise. It's realizing that no, you can't always have every quality in a person you like.

Life is the often times never ending search for that one other person for which you provide the necessary means for homeostasis.

That one other person whom you don't excite into a fluster, or sedate into a stupor. The person who you don't wait up for, because they are always home when they say they will be. Not the person you trust with your life but the person you trust to take you out next week and kiss you softly and say "I'm glad to see you. Let's go get a drink"

Real life is knowing that you are free to go. And i am free tog o. If things get too messy or too hard or just plain uncomfortable or boring or if you want something more or less out of life, you are free. You are free to love me as much and for as long as you would like.

I am free to see the insanity in holding someone forever. The utter silliness in the idea that there is that one person to whom you should shack your piece of life to and become one with for all eternity. Call it jaded, call it dismal, call in unchristian. But I don't expect you to love me and only me forever. I'm no longer blinded by my need for validation through another.

I am me and you are you and as long as we work out, we will keep this train going.

And, by having said all of this, I hope with all my tiny can-do heart, I hope you know how much I do esteem and value you. How much I want for your happiness. How much I see in you. How much I love you.

But I love you with a grown up heart. A battered, war-torn, sometimes sad heart. A heart that needs nothing but itself to evolve, but wants your heart near to compare notes, see the same pictures from different points, to hold.

I do love you. And I am excited to be in love with you. But I should hope I would never want to own you.

Good Timing.

"Are you sure?"

"Benny what do you mean 'am I sure'?" Who says that? Who thinks that? Why did I say that?

"I just mean are you sure you really feel that way? I would hate for you to say it and not mean it about 800 miles more than I would hate it if you never said it. Please, YOung I just... I just don't..."

Oh God. What had he done? Had he ruined it? Had he changed everything? Had he ruined that sweet soft moment with something he could never take back? Had he damaged that easy free way Benny looked at him and thought about him and drove in the car aimlessly with him while listening to music he knew she didn't love just to make him happy. He was sure of what he said, but he should have been more sure of how she would have reacted.

"It's umm.. wow. No, sorry I didn't mean... I only meant- I just feel a lot for you Benny, you know that."

"Of course I do. I know it so well, and i feel the same, it's just... When people put it like that, Young, it aways goes wrong. Just plain wrong."

How could loving her be wrong, ever? He just kissed her forehead and made a move for the door, pushing back a secret tear and wanting to run.

"I would just rather say that you make me feel like summertime and lemonade and babies running through a sprinkler and the sunlight kissing our bare skin. Or like the moment just before the first snow fall when the whole world is holding their breath and waiting for the silence that follows waking up to a white morning in the middle of December. Or like the first welcoming hug after returning from a trip you didn't want to take in the first place. Please Young, I just don't ever want you to change your mind."

How could anyone stop loving her, ever? He just kissed her forehead and understood in the same moment what he was always feeling when she was in his arms. That she was sad and lonely and just wanted what he wanted to give her.

I want to write you a book.

About everything. Which would you prefer?

A coming of age story chronicling a girls navigation to adulthood while dealing with an oppressive father, stories of incest, all while supposing her mother of money laundering and other mafia-esque escapades.

An exhausting narrative of a kidnapped woman. Following her wedding day, she breaks down on the side of the road and is knocked unconscious and delivered to a labyrinth of evil by the man that stops to change her tire.

A love story about a man who waits patiently for the love of his life to find a happy medium between her split personalities. He's not looking for her to make a choice, he loves all of her. He just doesn't like it when Madison, her hard core porn personality forgets to untie him from the bed. Or when Toby, her tobacco chewing chauvinist smacks him and forces him to make her dinner.

You tell me. I probably won't listen, but i will try.

In closing your eyes; of things forgotten; Vulnerability.

"Benny," There was a sweet smile with nothing behind it. Nothing but a sweet afternoon kiss in the twilight after a sweet nothing day ended in a sweet nap.

"Yes Young?" She peered at him, eyes barely open, unfocused. Only able to detect his sweet nothing smile with his perfect teeth, she smiled back, rememebering that he'd just given her a sweet kiss, soft and light on her pillowy and delighted lips.

She, for once did not smile to make him smile. She smiled for Benny. She smiled from the inside out. She smiled to herself and thought, what beauty, what delight there is in falling comfortably asleep in someones arms and not fearing waking up with them. Be awoken with a soft sweet kiss in the orange glow of a perfect day.


*******************************


They chased lightening bugs and watched a storm roll over the far reaching plains as the daylight faded. She rocked in a swing as she looked at him, standing and picking at a piece of cornstalk.

She thought, how nice to frame him, just as he is now. Vulnerable. Watching. Seeking. Content in knowing whatever it is he is certain of. Deep in thought about a great deal of nothing so important.

She saw the turn of his hips under his khaki's. She noted to tweak of his muscle under his plaid shirt. She remembered how it felt just a few minutes ago to be so consumed in his arms but to be so herself, so free, so unowned. She noted this all and remembered it when things were unperfect. Not so sweet. Undone.

Because now things were just right. In the setting sun, inspite of the gloomy clouds and mosquitos, with ice cream running down her hands, while he smiled at interior dreams, yes- just right indeed.

Thank you Young, for sweet vulnerability.

"You could get me to agree to anything when I am just like this now..."
And your smile says, "But would you love me?"

We should leave our mark on peoples mirrors with lipstick.

And rearrange their furniture.

Ten thoughts about the Boy:

10. The boy and I had a delightful weekend doing Boy and Chick stuff.

9. I saw a paper on the floor of my car. It was a receipt. I picked it up. It said "Boy's Chick" in the Invoice area. I smiled.

8. He hates ice cream but indulges me.

7. He wants me to smile all the time. Not to make him happy, but to insure that I am happy.

6. I like when I reach over and run into him.

5. Maybe he's gay. Or maybe he just let's me annoy him and laugh with him and touch him and sing to him.

4. And I will sing to him, each spring to him, and worship the trousers that cling to him.

3. I want him to be happy. Thats why I smile at his corny jokes and wink when he looks at me, and send him bits of things I think he needs.

2. He doesn't love me. And I like that. Too often, to be loved is to be possessed.

1. He just is. And he lets me be.

Minding my own business, of which there is not much to mind

I had a strange moment full of eerie feelings this weekend.

On a delightful trip to Nowhere Virginia with the Boy who is slowly becoming someone, I got a simple text meesage that both hurt, shocked, offended and made me think.

It truly wasn't anything important or meaningful or surprising. It had nothing to do with gas prices or natural disasters or politics.

It was a hurtful thing said by an artful person with malice in their hearts who never says anything without a smile on their face or without following their insults with a giggle.

I won't tell you what they said because it should have never been said. It was an insult to my new found hapiness and an attempt to shame and mock me.

I am so sensitive to this that I cried. I bawled my little eyes out while the helpless Boy just shrugged and pet my arm and looked at me with big brown eyes telling me it wasn't that serious. Which maybe it wasn't. Maybe to you. Or her. Or him.

But to me, this person might as well have said,

"You are a sham. Everything you do is obnoxious and over the top. You do not deserve even a shred of peace. I hope that by saying this, I rob you of not only that which makes you smile, but your pride in yourself as well... I'm just kidding, of course, you should lighten up and learn how to take a joke."

The really horrible thing is that they didn't even say it to me. They said it to a friend. Who was visiting with someone I hardly know. Who knows nothing about me. This friend barely knows my situation.

The worst part? I wasn't there to defend myself. I wasn't there to refute the rumor. Or to support it. Or to cry and ask this person why would you embarass me in front of people I barely know, people you surely have nothing to do with?

Now I am just hurt. With no recourse. No avenue to say "Hey please don't treate me like this. It is unnacceptable and if you choose to do this, I will have nothing to do with you."

No way to let them know that their actions and words are often just plain hurtful, malicious, mean spirited and unnesessary.

And now maybe The Boy who is nothing if not tolerant and quiet and sweet and calming very well might think I am a little on the looney side. Maybe a little jilted. And I am. I am a little hurt. And slow to mend. And still picking myself up from the past few years.

So maybe this was a good thing.

Maybe him seeing me breakdown will show him that I am not impenetrable. That I am a real live girl full of songs and sweets and sentimentality.

Or maybe he'll just run the other way.

And maybe that's all I get.

When you think of her smiling, does it make you smile?

"What do you mean, Young?" She tilted her head and squinted against the bright sunlight that was invading his bedroom. From the corner or his pillow, he peeked out at her and saw a world enraptured in light.

"I mean, what do you want Benny?" It was always better to allow her to form her own opinion, especially about tender matters of the heart.

"What do I want? I want... I want..."

"Do you want to be happy?" It was always better to lead her heart to form the right opinion, especially about matters concerning her hapiness.

"Of course."

"Does he make you happy?" This was before he knew how utterly sad she truly was, and how it hurt her heart to lie to him.

"Yeah, of course."

"Well then be with him, but if he doesn't make you happy, if thinking of him doesn't make you smile, if kissing him doesn't make your heart fly, then I think it is time for you to reconsider..."

"Reconsider... what?"

It wasn't worth making her cry.

This was an opinion she would have to form her own.

A Chapter in Which Young John Lets Her Down.

I knew this was coming. I could feel it. Things can't be perfect forever.

Everyday, we make small sacrifices for eachother. We let die in our selves small desires the other doesn't share and fan flames of attraction that we share. She started wearing her hair down and reading modern literature for me, I shaved and watching romantic comedies for her. No, no they're not life. They're not moving across country or buying a house with a white picket fence, but they are the humble beginings to fruitful relationships.

These small allowances are the solid beginings to respect and dedication that two poeple need to communicate their deepest secrets and desires to one another. They are the starting line. The first stone to a long road of hapiness and simple attachment.

And then I let her down. And then I saw a small tear fall out of her eye and heard her sigh and I couldn't undo what I had done wrong. I couldn't make her feel that i never meant it. i couldn't show her how terrible i felt to have made her so.... so...so despondant. So untrusting of this thing we have. This "like" thing we are nursing. This relationship we are building on respect and comfort.

There she was, leaning on the edge of the bed, holding back a deluge of discontent and all I could do was sit in silence and wonder.

Why couldn't it be a simple fix?

I suppose if it were simple then she wouldn't be sad and I wouldn't feel as though everything I did and wanted for her were feeble attempts at making myself the man I thoght she wanted.

Maybe that's all we do. We just all of us pretend to love what the other loves and want what they want until neither one of us exist.

Or maybe we work together to become on flesh that wants one future and one life.

I wish I knew...

There is something that I do on occassion that gives me a great amount of comfort and healing.

Something that reminds me that things are not as bad as they once were, nor as good as they will be.

Sometimes, when I have a moment or two to remember, I like to stop and read my blog from this date last year, and the recorded years before.

One year on this day I was in love with Mr. Hamster and wanting nothing more than to be his everything and pack his lunches and iron his shirts and make his children.

Another year it was Mr. Future Millionaire who I will never stop loving, but whose love has changed a great deal over the last 7 years.

I can't even express how melancholy some of it makes me. The stupid fights i picked, the lame retreats I made into myself. The parties i threw or wanted to throw. Loves I lived and shouldn't have written about so that now i wouldn't regret their passing when I read about how well or unwell they really were.

I have loved a lost and written everything down...

These are the things that make people drink.