falling out of it.

It strikes me that no one really talks about falling out of love. We speak around and about the moment something breaks. We speak of betrayal. Of the line that divides before and after. But we do not talk of how if often happens just as you fell in into it: slowly, steadily, decision by decision, gentle realization after gentle realization, unfolding and unfurling.

I suppose it is a restructuring of sorts. An alchemy of transforming memories from sharp shards to heavy, rounded stones that you then submerge in the murky waters of doubt. How it is second look after second look, choosing to put an end to the excuses you once made on his behalf. Excusing how he remembered nothing. Not a damn thing. And how that made you feel small and unimportant. How there was that time standing in front of the fridge that you watched as he pulled out a bottle of white wine. I don't know when this was opened, he had said. I don't know if it's still any good. How in that moment you chose not to say: It was two weeks ago. With me. You opened it with me, two weeks ago. His non remembrance, a betrayal. A small line. And your silence.

How you must decide to no longer gloss over the fissures. How you allow the angular nature of the narrative to elbow out a new story. More true than before. And less true too.

Because you know why he couldn't remember and you can't fault him for that. Sadness does funny things. Tricks of light and the mind and its memory.

The thing is--what keeps resurfacing--is the memory of that time he fell asleep his full face pressed up again the side of your cheek and you weren't sure how he could even breathe. It was such an act of defiance on his part. An act of affection for a girl who never slept all tangled legs and arms, but kept to her side of the bed. And for that little rebellion alone, you will love him. But you must choose not to love him now. So you tuck that away. For a later day when your own face is pressed into the valley of a different neck. Not better, but different.

And how falling out of love now is learning to accept kindness from others. From the man who does remember--the man with a memory that rivals yours--the terror and excitement this incites. From the man who takes the time to respond despite his busy schedule, who fills the mornings with an offer of coffee or tea. The man you sleep soundly next to because you're not afraid that at any moment he might disappear.

image via.

now accepting sponsors for the month of june.

email wilybrunette@yahoo.com for rates and info. 

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)