where the mind will go.

in

it's a funny thing to love someone from afar. because the love takes on a quality of what cannot be known or named. it cannot be defined or settled. it, by definition, lives in a sort of fault-line. cracked and heavily tread upon.

it cannot be touched or felt and it most certainly cannot be talked away.

i know there are others out there who will say, this is not love then.

but it is. if there is anything i know, it is this: it is most certainly--most assuredly love. some very particular version of it.

and i know this because it is my experience.

i don't know that love at first sight exists. i'm inclined to think, no. but i have never experienced it, so how can i say? how can i know?

loving someone from afar is a tricky thing in this age of social media where much as you might want to--much as you might try to escape the reach of information, it's not so easy. and much as you might wish for their happiness--more than anything--there is still a sadness in watching it unfold without you.

i didn't understand that before. didn't know.

i went to a tarot card reader not too far back. and i asked about a guy. and a very particular lie that was told. and she said to me, he doesn't look too often--because he sees that you're happy. and this makes him sad. and i didn't get it then.

how you can want the best for a person? how you can truly wish them nothing but happiness? and how can there be a sadness in that actualization? how can both these things be true? how is it both selfish and not? how it is so achingly human?

you see only the snippets--you see the snippets and you fill in the blanks with your worst fears and unspoken hopes and there are all those damn unanswered, unanswerable question.

they haunt, they do.

and you wonder if this is forever.

and you move on. and you meet someone else. and they do too. and it's so good.

but still.

i guess this is what it is to be human. this is the human story--or mine at least.

and i know it could all change in a moment, in a minute. in the span of ten years, too, but that's mostly too far to think about.

you survive and you hope and they do as well. and you're left wondering if you've already witnessed the end of the story, or if that's still to come.




...

in

I don't want just words. If that's all you have for me, you'd better go. | F. Scott Fitzgerald 

on calling the guy. or not. and the best advice yet given..

in


a day shy of turning twenty-three my mother gave me the best advice of my life.

i was just out of college, the month was october, the weather was heaven here in new york--or just outside of it, in montclair, nj--to be exact--something tells me this retelling needs some exactness--a level of precision.

it was night and i was sitting on my mother's bed and we were talking about a boy. and i use that word deliberately--at just-shy-of-twenty-three the male in question was still very much just-a-boy, as i was just-a-girl.

this boy and i had been talking and messaging and beginning something-or-other and it was ever so thrilling--as it is when you find some version of the right person at the right time and there is even a hint of that nameless affection that cannot be pinpointed or dissected or explained away.

but we had hit some sort of wall. and there had been an exchange of words that wasn't terribly clear or terribly kind.

and it was nearly my birthday and i hadn't heard from him.

so my mom listened and then looked right at me and asked: do you want to call him?

and i just sort of stared at her for a moment, thought about it, took a breath, and revelation: you know, i don't. and that was that. and i've never looked back. i've never wished that i did call or did try harder or done any one thing differently in regards to that moment in time.

that question: do you want to call him? was so simple and so easy and so very much the point.

none of the well, i've called twice now or i've not waited a sufficient amount of time since getting his last text--no rules or regulations or impossible to follow tenants as handed down by the dating-gods (also known as other-girls-flailing-in-much-the-same-fashion). just a simple: what do you want?

as i'm getting older i'm coming to realize the simplest advice is usually the best. the path of least resistance, the most efficient--go figure!

want to act well? put the brilliant playwright's words into space. just speak the language. that's it.

want to lose weight/be healthy? stop with the counting and measuring and time-tables. eat actual food and move your body when you can.

want kindness in your life? show kindness to others.

want to talk to the guy? take a chance and pick up the damn phone.

of course, there are always exceptions. sometimes it's not so easy. sometimes it takes a little more work. sometimes you can't just pick up the phone because there's been too much time and too much heartache and something in your gut is telling you that you must wait.

but maybe sometimes it's as easy as doing what you want. following that gut feeling that says yes or no--that gut instinct so unrelated to pride and pomp.

because at least then you're owning you're own experience. at least then you make the rules and it's easier to live with the good or the bad that eventually follows. because you did what was right for you. and that's no small feat.