There is so much, so much, too much, that has happened (to me and in me and around me) in just the past seven days that I am barely awake.
It feels like it doesn't matter what I put into my body to fuel it: This body does not want fuel. Finally it just wants rest.
Rest is on the way. Before rest, though, I have to talk to you. All of you. In particular I am thinking of the golden-haired beauty who is leaving this coast for the other. She will be sunnier and happier and lighter by several layers, there. I will miss her terribly. I will also have a new place to call home away from home. This is what I am telling myself.
This is what cannot wait to be told. These are the things that I have most recently learned about being in a relationship; they are freshly learned. It's my hope that my learning them might mean that you won't have to, at least not first-hand.
So. Not necessarily in order of importance:
It is fine, and can be beautiful, to enjoy being treated like a little girl by a man. Especially for those of us who never really had a chance to be anyone's little girl--the feeling is precious. But. Also feel free to insist upon being treated like a lady. Do not give this up if it is what feels good to you.
After repeated experimentation, this is what feels good to me. The balance is not all that delicate. The man who is worth staying beside is the man who understands this, intuitively.
The grace with which you move out of a relationship is the memory that will stay with you the longest, and a yardstick by which you can measure your own growth. The question is not whether you will experience pain; the question is what you do with the pain. Who it makes you, or doesn't.
Actually this isn't something I just learned, but it's been recently re-confirmed. Hopefully I've got it now. Hopefully you already have it, too.
Acknowledge your rage, if you have rage. Do not, please if you can help it, do not be ashamed of your rage. Try not to let anyone else's crazy stuff make you ashamed of it. It exists. It serves a purpose. You can control it and will learn things from it--what gets you ignited, what ignites others. Here's where to really listen up: Someone who genuinely loves you will bear this. Being rageful is not your most beautiful behavior. It may, however, be part of you. Along with your humor and your smile and your deep, deep ability to love. You are a package deal, not an a la carte menu.
If you can, if you're able to choose with whom you fall in love, try to fall in love with a man who has friends. Friendships formed in different ways. New friends and old friends. You will treasure the time alone, and he will recharge.
By recharging, you will not become his emotional fuel.
Finally: This, I think, is the real glitch to look for, the one underlying all of the other glitches.
Your soul, your hunger, your bigness, your brain are not shrink-to-fit. Do not try to push yourself into a suitcase smaller than what your life wants and needs to spill into. Do not start lopping off chunks of emotional limbs to appease another person's frailty, or fears, or failures.
If you do find that you are pushing yourself in this way, there is almost certainly someone exerting an equal or even stronger pull in the same direction--pulling for your smallness, your recoil, your less.
This is a good time to run like hell in the opposite direction.
