A long lost love always used to say that his perfect woman would be someone who could “keep up.” All of his doubts and insecurities around our relationship pivoted on that one point: could I keep up?
I tried. I ran until my feet were blistered and the breath ran ragged through my lungs. At the moments where I was too tired to take a single step further, I would ambush myself with a series of self-punishing accusations: Why wasn’t I just faster? Why wasn’t I just better?
I am relentlessly optimistic to a fault. I tend to love the world and its occupants more than myself. I see the good in others, sometimes while standing chest-deep in an avalanche of bad, and never fail to withhold the same kindness to my own faults.
The problem with that brand of optimism is that one day you turn around to find you’ve spent nearly a decade becoming your very own overly-aggressive sideline soccer mom.
I built a sanctuary around my heart to seal it off from the constant barrage of demoralizing questions: why, why, why? Why was I not enough?
I asked so many questions during those years. But I never stopped to ask why the “love of my life” spent all of his days running away from me.
The thing about playing a sadistic rendition of follow-the-leader with two people, is that the faster runner gets to decide every which way you turn. Every direction is coordinated with a waypoint on their map, winding you towards some blurry nondescript and ultimately nonexistent finish line.
Loving is not a race. I would rather notice the immaculate intricacy of each precious moment and adventure, than trip through my life attempting to pack the galaxies into a spoonful of time, while the brightest light already lies in my arms.
I want to hold onto the way your eyes look against a bluebird sky on a clear summer day. I want to learn each freckle on the nape of your neck and memorize the little branches that appear beside your eyes when you laugh with your whole heart.
If I get you, I want to sit right here, in this forested meadow, and hold your hand. I want to build our home, board by board - each pane of glass reminding us of the translucent space we traversed to finally find one another. I want to pick wildflowers from the field to place in the chipped pottery vase on our antique table, and lie in a tangle of flannel sheets with the windows left slightly ajar to the late summer evening - moonlight weaving silver webs through the breezy screens.
Home is here, everywhere, and nowhere - the simple stars that bore our bones.