Topic: Love and Relationships, Girly Stuff
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8 years old, cold feet on linoleum, I stand in the kitchen and watch my mother iron. The metal steams and spits, the starch sprays on the counters and sticks to the tiny hairs on my arm. My mother's face reddens. say it: Red-hens. Woman.
They say red is the color of passion. Love. Eros. Fire.
Once when I was little, I had a crush on a boy. I ran around in my communion dress, my hair in a braid, to catch his attention. My mother sighed, then yelled,
look what you've done. You've ruined this dress, now you smell like the outside. Pine trees, fresh grass, and weeds. I did. But I didn't care, there was a rush in it, a chance to glimpse a boy who made my heart flutter. I'd roll in the dirt, pick up worms, chug soda for a chance to spend time with boys. Growing up in a house with two sisters and a mother, the opposite sex was always an elusive and elegantly mysterious animal.
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What I know now about relationships is that they can't be defined.They are the grey area that exists between two people, the combination of expectations, histories, and silent yearnings. They stand alone like a child, a mixture of two individuals that, decidedly, takes on a form of its own.
I myself have floated into and out of them with an accidental and adventurous attitude. No matter how many I have encountered, they still scare me, less because of the compromises and more because of the deeper parts of myself that come to the surface. Parts I don't want to admit I have, needy, love hungry, devouring parts.
Relationships are like that though, a mix of highs and lows. They are like a really great chocolate truffle, decadent and sweet, oozing with pleasure, pumping out serotonin like a fireworks display. But also riddled with sugar crashes and teeth decay. One must be careful.
They hold happiness and sadness so delicately the one can turn into the other with a slight twitch of the mouth. And the stakes are high. As a heart can open, it can also break. They are riddled with opposties:
♥love/hate
♥share/hide
♥appreciate/resent
♥want/loath
♥trust/fear
I have been avoiding this heavy handed subject because it's got me all twisted up. Makes me feel the scales of hope and destruction teeter back & forth. Makes me feel different than I did as a child. Because the veil has been lifted off love. There's no white knight, no savior in a suit, just a bunch of brokenly beautiful people, human as ever, trying--
Because as difficult as relationships are they allow us to touch the skin of our souls. And for that, they will always be worth creating & maintaining.
--Hand in hand we shall
explore
our monsters
and this great [big] beautiful world. --
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