so am i

"hello" seems too formal, and "remember me?" seems ridiculous. i know you remember me, because i remember you. that was never going to be in question. the bigger challenge was whether we’d ever be able to forget.

i haven’t thought of you every day. but i haven’t never thought of you, either. when i do, it isn’t the kind of recollection that feels wispy or comforting. it's visceral, the clean cut of a sword. one moment you are not in my mind and the next, you are so sharp and intense that all my attention is focused there.

so you see, even after all this time, you take my breath away.

time is a construct. our brains take 80 milliseconds to process information, did you know that? anyone who tells you to live in the here and now is a liar. by the time you pin the present down, it’s already the past.

if you had asked me back then where we would be 10 years later, i would've laughed and asked why, when we had today? i wouldn't have admitted to you, to anyone, that every now and then when i lifted my head from your shoulder and peered into the future, i could imagine you, and me, but not us.

i guess that’s the part no one ever tells you. you can love someone so much your teeth ache, so much that it feels like he is carrying your heart in his own rib cage, but none of it matters if you can’t find a practical way to be together. it’s like learning that you would be immortal if you could breathe nitrogen, but knowing you are bound to the oxygen of earth.

i was the meteor that crashed into your life when you were already living it. i didn’t have any more control over my landing than you did when you froze, looking up at the inevitable sky. you had a past and a plan and responsibilities. you had someone who already loved you. we were gasoline poured onto fire. with you i burned twice as high and hot.

for a while i was angry at you, because i had almost missed this.. someone i didn’t just want to be with, but someone i wanted to be more like. you were the bright shiny thing at the corner of my consciousness. i made myself look away.

well, none of this matter anymore now. but because you're reading this, i know that as long as you’re here, so am i. 

Live by Desire

 it can be difficult to separate what you truly desire from what you've been taught to want, particularly when it comes to love. do you wanna get married because you see it as a chance to create a meaningful commitment, or because you feel a peer pressure to? do you wanna have a baby because you long to be a mother, or because you assume it’s a box that has to be ticked in order to be happy? 

sometimes, even when we think we're making these decisions from a true place, there are cultural expectations & assumptions & family histories pressed up against our thoughts, which can make it tricky to figure out what we really desire for ourselves.

what i learned is that it's all about living by your desire. and it's important to figure out what your desire is, whether that's to marry & have kids or to create a new circle, & to stop making decisions based on the boxes that are already there.