Pando
There is more us in this stage of life. More time for talking. More time for sex. More time to just be than we’ve had in quiet a while.
Part of this is simply the logistics of having older teens in the household. Part of this is a shift in me, this thing that has been unfurling over the course of the last three months. I barely know how to process it myself; I can only guess at how it’s affecting him.
We discuss it, a little, and I try to describe it as best as I can. How I’ve been so shut down that somewhere along the way I ceased to be me. He’s known this, all along. I was only fooling myself. Now that I’m working through it, it’s messy, and beautiful, and scary, but I’d rather feel the lows, along with the highs, rather than not feeling at all.
”There was a point when I decided to just love you as best as I could, as much as you’d let me. But it wasn’t easy.”
I can only nod in acknowledgement. There are still so many things that need to be healed, inside and outside of me.
He is like no one I’ve ever met, and I don’t just think that because I’m biased. There is an undiluted authenticity about him. He is always completely himself, whereas I filter every outward action against how it may or may not be perceived. I hate this about myself but I don’t know how turn it off.
Later on he gives me one of the best compliments:
You fascinate me. You are multi-leveled, complicated in the best way. You enthrall me.
Fuck being called beautiful. That is the way to my heart.
Being with someone for so long, there are facets of it I’m still discovering. How much you grow into each other.
“You know,” I say, gesturing with my hands to indicate a sense of vastness, “We are a mycorrhizal network. Or like Aspens.”
And he understands. Because we are.
12:29 p.m. - 2023-07-12