She Was.

I’m wearing heart shaped bruises from the tip of my left shoulder to the crease of my elbow. I like them. My shadow proof. Purple night blooms, I check them every day for sides of fading. I should be wearing long sleeves. But I’m not. Smirk. My validation(s). He has beautiful hands but his touch is different. I watch his fingers trace up and down my criss-cross thighs and smile when they disappear under the hem of my skirt. I like this image and I want to catch it, keep it, hold it, frame it, send it in emails across the currents. My validation(s).  His name is the same. What are the chances? His name is entirely not commonplace but here we go again. He is dark and tall and a -can you even believe it – migrant with the same name. I’m talking visa’s and mothers and lacoste tshirts and my heart is hammering out of my chest because this is how it was supposed to be and it is but different, I am the same, he is the same but it’s not him. He picks me up on his motor bike and we speed wind through the city and this time my hair is not tangled by the wind. It’s tucked safely under the helmet he puts on my head, won’t let me ride without, and before he clicks down the visor he tickles the tip of  my pink pink nose. I love the bike. I love sneaking away from work, meeting, in secret, I’m playing stupid games, carrying two jackets, it’s so cold here now, my arms wrapped around him, my legs tight around his. I love that he has a bike. I love that I’m the girl telling the other girls to get on, it’s fun, it’s safe, you’ll love it. My validation(s). In my room, he curls around me, his chest warm on my back, his breath on my neck, his fingers curled around my breasts. I wait for him to fall asleep and gently push him away. The first night I slept on the couch. I can’t  be held. I feel like I’m drowning, stare at the wall, don’t sleep. But in the morning, I wake up and his arms are tight around me and I like it, in that instant of being half asleep and half awake for this first time I don’t know where I am and I like it. When he is tired, we both are, his english falters and I find myself speaking slower, trying to catch the thickness of his accent, and when he asks me the correct pronunciation of something, when he asks me what something means, I do my very best to keep my voice steady and my answers thoughtful. And I’m showing him around the place where we live, and we are walking, riding, seeing, through other eyes and this is exactly how it was supposed to be. Just like I imagined it, the missed experience I mourned when I came home, here, now, in my bed, on my tongue, in my living room, and yet it’s not. It’s the same name but not the same person. And I do not know if I am with him because I like him, or because of who he reminds me of. I do not know whether that resemblance attracts me or repels me but I know that he is alone here, and, that predictably, I too remind him of a girl who wore her fringe heavy in her eyes. Just the way that I do.

Confess:

When I slept with this boy he didn’t remind me of anyone or anything. His accent, his visa, his newness, his name, it never even occured to me. I didn’t join any dots. I slept with him because I was tired of waiting for someone else. I slept with him because he is charming and because when I was sitting wrapped around him on the back of his bike I thought why not. I slept with him because he wanted to sleep with me. I slept with him because I was curious. I wanted to see if that heat, that need, that fierceness between me and that much bigger than me man was a product of my own imagination. If the rightness I feel with him is real, can be replicated, is even what I want. And it is. But I am not willing to let him know. I am not willing to do anything about it. He is completely emotionally unavailable. And I suspect, more and more each day, that I am too.

Confess:

I am sleeping with him still, because if I do, if I can, if I can sleep with someone just like him, with the same name, then I must be over it, I  must be past it, and I can do it again, and I survived and I’m the stronger one, because I’m the one stepping back onto familiar territory with my eyes open and I’m  not running away from the dejavu and the thumping of my chest doesn’t mean I’m weak, it means I’m brave, and fuck you asshole, he’s better than you and he is younger and better looking and he has a bigger – ahem – bike.

Confess:

I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. And I perversely quite like it.

The days drag as they move too quickly. It’s not comfortable being so big. I don’t move the same way anymore. My hair is too short. (No, baby, it’s just right.) I don’t find the time – I fucking hate that and, – hey, you’re funny in your shorts. It’s cold and the raindrops. (I like the cold baby, it’s just right). I hide your books, or I don’t, but I don’t say that they are yours. (That’s ok baby, as long as you read them.) Birthdays are missed because I don’t want to acknowledge them anymore, and some friends, some people are left behind because they hurt too much to look at and understand and remember other times and other places and other ways of being. But the sharing stays, and little blue men and too bitter coffee and chocolate that’s not quite right. (This is me now.) It itches (I know baby, but don’t scratch, it will only make it worse.) Why is it always this way? Why does it make it worse? (I don’t know baby, that’s just how it goes.) I don’t mind that it itches, but I don’t like feeling so big. (You’re not big baby, you’re just right, just right). Do you think we’ll make it on time? (I think we will. I think the clocks will stop til we get there, because it’s all about us baby, and we got no reason to be scared, to rush, to fix it for anyone else). You’re pretty babygirl. (I know baby, I know.)

She knows how to love him (finally, first time). So this is ease, the quickening, the knowing. She can read every expression, every half smile, dark brow, flickering cheek. It’s how loves comes, this. She feels close to him. Without reason. No great amount of time. But time used well. With stories of breathing into dead mouths. With eyes lowered that don’t meet. And sighs in the dark. And from nowhere he knows reads her too. She doesn’t understand it and what she doesn’t understand has always scared her. All she knows is that she wants to protect him every time. And she does well. And she wants to make the smile come and the hurt go. And she does well, when he lets her. And most times he does. And the thing that hurts her throat is the way he protects her back. Never, no one, ever before. And she feels her vulnerability all of the time, and he does not touch that. And that hurts her more. In the way of fear and unsteadiness and lack of trust. And that flash of smoke blue stops time and noise and people and there is knowing from somewhere inside her that has never spoken to her before, and she finds more patience and more quiet and less ego, and less self. In a good way. And he sees right through her, even though he promises nothing, which is comfortable because she doesn’t know what to ask for. He sees her soft underside and he pokes it, in just the right way, the way that she wants, and the nights are endless, and she holds on, and holds on. The questions he asks are not questions, they are discoveries. She doesn’t say as much. She doesn’t need to use words and persuade and create and convince, because she is knowing known. For the first time, finally. And she’s read about this before, and laughed, because it’s not for her, and here it is, holding her hand, and she knows why the failures, because her hand has never fit before and her body has never wanted before and she’s never felt right and steady before, with two feet, planted. And it is still less than nothing. This coming. This ease. This knowing. This love. I will not admit it. We will not admit it, (we admit to less that may be more, because we are safe). We are. I am. He is. He is beautiful to her. And he talks to her soft.

Now, I am only comfortable, I only find comfort, in the act of sex. This, given everything, yes, it surprises me. But when I am with him, in the dark (his choice), when there is no room to think or doubt myself or overanalyse, to wonder, to second guess, I find myself. I’ve always lost and found myself in sex. In the push and the pull and the coming together completely, entirely apart. In sex. When his hands are in my hair, and I’m breathing his breath, and no, there is nothing romantic in this, (except, perhaps, our vulnerability) and we are talking, talking, talking, it’s like I find my words and my tongue and my confidence, and my limbs and my clarity. For months afterwards, sex, me, bodies, that kind of trust was repugnant to me though I wanted to be fucked, and now, in reverse, I cannot bare the conversation, the trying to protect myself. And that’s just it, where it lies, when we are fucking, I am not trying to protect myself. I stop trying and I am. And he makes that possible, or I do, I don’t know, but I do know that I feel completely myself only in the dark, no coverings. I’m choking on feelings, and my self assessment leaves me falling short always, now.

.

I’m so tired of the girl-women that I have to interact with. Of their 22 year old self assurance. Their bullshit confidence. There is no sisterhood sister. I was lectured last night, for hours on end, a 22 year old girl. Her 37 year old boyfriend. How I need to be a bitch. How only bitches get ahead. How you shouldn’t sleep with a man for at least a month. (Is this The Rules?) About how she makes him work for it. About how all men are bastards so you have to “get things” out of them. And I’m equal measures horrified / fascinated. I’m too soft apparently. Too earnest, too trusting, too generous, my heart is too big, I will only get hurt, I cry too easily, I am too honest, I am too easily led. Love is an anachronistic notion. Relationships are a mutually beneficial exchange. We barter youth, beauty, our vaginas -  for jewellery, cars and front-of-house jobs. Have we really come full circle? And I feel like a dinosaur, with my ideas of touching and my extension-less hair, my pale skin, and short clipped fingernails. I lack the requisite silicone packaging and the perfect O shaped mouth. And when I talk about feelings, when I talk about caring, I am laughed out of the bar. And I wonder, is it really me? Or is this just the world that I have fallen into. And while the rational, reasonable part of my brain, can recognise their inexperience, their reliance on the self-help crap that I loathe, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder. And then the crazy comes, of which I have more than my fair share. And what I really need, isn’t his whispered reassurances, or his amusement. It isn’t to note that he handles the crazy well. It is to find some way, to know, to accept, that I, me, I’m fine the way that I am. And to hold onto that. Somehow.

Is the idea of two people feeling love for one another that ridiculous? Is that what we believe these days? Really?