dating mojo. or something like that.

i have this pair of earrings. not terribly exciting. little diamond studs. but i love them. they're practical--all purpose things that for the most part i can sleep in without them poking me in the neck. 

when i dated a guy a few years ago, one of them came loose while we were making out (like teenagers) in the middle of his living room. i quickly took it out, put it on a counter, and forgot all about it--other more pressing matters were at hand.

and for the rest of our relationship i'd ask him to remember to bring the earring and he'd say that of course i'd be over again and i could get it then and on and on until we broke-up. 

and you know? i'd be damned if i didn't get that earring back. 

(remember? i posted about it here. it was awful). 

for a long time i knew exactly which stud it was that he had held onto for so long. somehow it seemed important. 

in the next few months i found an almost identical pair at a fraction of the cost and quickly snapped them up. 

and time moved on and i lost track of which earring he had had and then i lost one from the original pair and one from the backup pair and was left with two studs that didn't quite match, but still, i loved them.

they got me through a lot. 

and then this fall, i lost one of them in the crevice of another man's couch. and the same day, lost the other somewhere on his bedroom floor. and it became this thing--this joke between us. 

those earrings are still lost somewhere. and somehow i'm okay with that because it was never really about the earrings it was about the guy, and the guy from the fall, well, i was okay with him having my secrets and my earrings. i knew he'd protect both.

but just a few weeks ago, when i found the same pair in anthropolgie on sale, i snapped them up, because not only are they still great earrings, a girl's gotta get her mojo back. 

and more earrings means more stories. 

fault lines

sometimes i'll catch your half-smile. out of the corner of my eye. and it'll call to mind, something else--another moment, i think.

and without even realizing it, i begin to swim towards a memory. through the blue, light refracting in water. and it feels just beyond my reach. always beyond my reach.

a tip-of-the-tongue memory i cannot place.

and it is then that i think i must have known you in another life. in many before this one. that we've been tied together so many times. that each separation has confused and muddled the line where you end and i begin. that each separation has seen you carry parts of me away, with you, into other lives and worlds. and i've taken some of you. and in missing you now, i'm missing those parts of myself. those bits you absconded with when last we met.

i'm wondering now if we may not just get it really wrong in this life. but if we haven't done brilliantly in some before. or may not do better in many to come.

i may be at a loss. i may be feeling a loss. but i need only unearth and draw upon the parts of you i snuck away with. wholeness. holiness.

perhaps the memory i'm swimming towards is something ancient. perhaps it hasn't yet been made. perhaps it'll be another half-smile that'll restore and return me to myself.

image credit unknown

what's in a name

it hurt her to hear his name said aloud.

to have it hang in the air.

it was a physical pain, as real as the splintered wood of the chair poking the back of her leg.

the sound of it snagged her breath. made breathing shallow.

you don't get to say it, she wanted to say. it's not your name to say.

but nor was it hers.

and that was what hurt.

that she had no more right--no more power--than that half-stranger across the room who had released it into the air--that half-stranger who mistook the easy smile for the whole of the truth.

that he was not hers to love or know or think about. that she might never say his name and have him hook her round the hips in pure ecstasy just at having heard it uttered by her perfect lips, in her own imperfect way.

that she might never see him again, know him again, love him again. that all that would be left would be his name hanging in the air, uttered by someone else.

so yes, the pain was real.

about those love letters...

i've been thinking a lot about love of late--of what a love story is,  what it means to love, to be loved, to love one's self.  and then this arrived in my email (from a lovely reader named meg) and i sent an email back immediately asking if i might share. so a huge thank you to meg for her lovely words and gift it was just to send them to me. 


Meg,


The love letters to your future husband are going to be helpful, later in your life when you might forget these times, or when everything is so long past it becomes a memory of a person you used to be and a place you used to live.
 
For many years I pined and longed for my one-true-love and I looked for him everywhere.  Every city, every coffee shop, every low-lit bar.  Looking back, I kept looking even when I was with a boy I thought was the one-true-love.  This should have been a red flag, but I ignored it, despite it's bright color.
 
One day, I stopped looking.  I forgot about it and thought of other things.  I planned to leave, move to New York and live an exciting life with the friends who were waiting in Manhattan and Brooklyn for me to finally leave the Midwest behind.
 
I found him:  I found my one-true-love.  I didn't quite know it on the first or even second introduction because we were surrounded with people, friends, and acquaintances in loud places.  Finally, we went out together, alone.  Our big, loud, funny personalities were quiet and careful with one another.  
 
We tried a few places for dinner and drinks, but they were loud and obnoxious and we were too delicate.  We found a dive bar, we ordered gin and tonics, we talked and laughed.  We walked back to his Jeep and he suddenly pulled me into a doorway where we kissed in the twilight on a May evening, almost five years ago.  We both just KNEW we had found each other, finally.  Finally.  Finally!
 
I will tell you that you cannot quite imagine how or when or who it will be.  Remember, you may not know immediately, but when you know, you know.  It will alter the course of your life forever and you will never look back, or, if you do, you will be grateful for the letters you wrote now.  
 
And yes, you will talk to him about the jeans, or lack thereof.  If you don't mention it, he might just guess because he will truly know you in a way you were never known or loved before.  And he will help you, even if you cannot help yourself.  he will try to understand, he will be there, he will love you unconditionally.  
 
I just wanted to let you know that it is possible to find him.  And even after becoming a wife and a mother, owning a home and a minivan and a swingset, I look across the room at him and I think:  Finally!  
 
Best wishes,
(Meg)

a sunday lover.

there comes a point every night when i crawl or hoist myself into bed and in the space between bended knees and face flat into the pillow that i give thanks for the comfort of a bed that is all my own.

for anyone who has ever shared a bed--be it a single night or several years--with someone who's not quite right, you know the joy that sleeping alone can bring. the not-quite-right provides a perspective like no other. a glorious thing that perspective is.

someone recently asked me if i mind being single? what a silly question. well, i haven't yet met someone who makes me wanna to give up my current Facebook status, so no. i don't mind it. not at all. i'm pretty sure that i wasn't so snide when responding to him, but he was angling, and i was side-stepping. (and just in case you didn't know, i'm not the girl that feels the need to list any sort of Facebook relationship status at all. so there). and why does blogger keep capitalizing Facebook for me? maybe i want a lowercase f...

damn, this was meant to be a poetic and lovely post about sundays and the space between and the yearning for a companion.

let me try again:

i don't mind this single life.

not usually.

but sundays are different. sundays i feel the absence upon waking. it is on sundays that i long for a brunch companion. or someone to help me with the new york time's puzzle. someone for whom to make an extra bit of coffee. someone to fall back into bed around noon with.

a sunday someone.




one of my girlfriends recently said she was in search of a part-time lover.

i'll take one just for sundays, please.