onesupersecretbite

[onesupersecretbite]

It was two years ago.

The turning of the season always brings you back to my mind, when the days are warmer and the honeysuckle comes, and then the fireflies. I remember the feeling in my belly when I’d see your name on my phone screen, the flooding of feelings I couldn’t place even if I tried. Every emotion turned up to deafening volume, like the pounding bass of Mitski in my earbuds, rattling me out of my stupor, rattling me out of ten years stuck. 

You were so shockingly beautiful to me, every inch of you smooth and firm and painted with tattoos, gentle but strong and heavy, pushing all of the air out of my lungs. Rolling down the dark country road in your sleek German car, the air conditioning too cold on my shaking hands. My frozen chest, your body on mine, the warmth spreading so quickly that it hurt, like cold toes plunged into a hot bath. Like every bit of me waking up all at once, overcome with beauty and pain and terror and disbelief. Instantly hooked. Instantly desperate for my next fix.

You could not have hurt me more if you had tried. You took my broken heart and spit on it, you crushed the frightened bird of hope I had hidden in my ribcage. You opened a window and told me it was safe to crawl through, and then you abandoned me there with no roadmap and no way back to the safety I had left behind.

I used to hate you for it, but I don’t anymore. I didn’t know at the time, but you were the resting place between my old home and my new one, a necessary stepping stone. Without you I wouldn’t have had the courage to leave, and I needed to leave.

I want you to know, though- I still think of you. Probably too much, for someone who is happy and in love. I don’t miss you, but I think of you. I wonder what you think of me. I wonder who you were to me in our past lives. I wonder how we loved, how we hurt each other, how many times, how many ways. I know that you were someone terribly important to me, I knew from the very first time we met- your face was like a punch to my gut. The tension between us was immediate, and it lasted for years until our crescendo.

You and I are linked somehow, and this is how I can forgive you and how I can let you be. 

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Turns out I’m not the only one who’s in love.

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Erik surprised me with this yesterday because he’s a total keeper.

On one of our early dates we hung out and listened to the entire album start to finish and had all the same opinions and favorite tracks.

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My boyfriend just brought me a chocolate shake and mozzarella sticks for no reason and without being asked, so, you know. Keeper.

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Going though mountains of stuff in preparation for the movers coming tomorrow, feeling sad and overwhelmed.

He gets me.

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I mean yeah I keep not going to the gym but four hours of sex at night more than makes up for it, right?

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Exploring his new digs!

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He’s going out of town for the week and I’m super sad about it, but I just found out he ordered me this really fancy healthy lunch delivery service for a few days as a special treat.

He’s so good at loving me I don’t even know how to handle it. I could write a whole thing about the past decade of my life and how I thought I was always going to be the giver in my relationship, but I’ll spare you.

I can’t even find words to explain the way he makes me feel. Today he held me tight and said “I love you on a cellular level,” and yeah, that kind of captures it.

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We spent all weekend together again and all I want to do is be with him all the time.

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I had to scroll for like a solid minute.

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Getting a lot of random I love you texts and I’m not mad about it 💗

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I spent most of the weekend with Erik and it was wonderful. It’s so easy between us. He just makes my days better, and there isn’t any drama or angst. It’s just easy and safe and lovely. I finally introduced him to Henry and they were instant bros.

While Henry was napping we got into bed and had really great sex, then he fell asleep while I did some work emails. When he woke up we cuddled and I rubbed his back gently and we talked. Then all of a sudden I felt his heart start to race and I was like “babe are you ok?” But before I could even finish the question he said “I love you.”

I said it back. I’ve been feeling it for a while. He told me he’s been feeling it too but he was afraid to say it because he didn’t want to add stress to my life. I swear he runs everything he does through a filter of how to be the most helpful and kind and loving for me. He’s the most wholesome guy ever who just happens to be a devil in the sack.

Today I told my friend he’s a unicorn, and she was like “he’s YOUR unicorn, and you deserve him.”

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When you fall asleep early but your bf gets tipsy at a party you wake up to these kinds of texts. 😍

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[onesupersecretbite]

Guys.

That amazing first date has turned into an amazing month and I don’t even know what to say.

He is so kind and good. He doesn’t push me or demand anything from me, he just wants to be in my life, and because he doesn’t push me he gets everything. I realize I can be standoffish and withholding when I’m pressured, but when I’m given space and freedom and considerate nurture I am really demonstrative and loving. He brings that out in me.

He’s so cute. I like to look at him. We FaceTime for hours almost every night because I don’t let him come over to the house (being in the middle of a divorce with a kid in the mix complicates things) and he says he loves it. “It’s like being in a long distance relationship with all the craving but we still get to see each other.” He comes to my office for a quick snuggle on lunch breaks or we meet up at his house for an hour after work before I have to head home. The past two Saturdays we’ve spent hours in his bed together, watching the sun sink and the fireflies come out. He brings me dinner in bed and tells me I’m beautiful. We have the most amazing sex, over and over, for hours. I would go into detail about how this in particular is so incredibly healing for me, but I won’t. I’ll just say I can feel my body coming back to life with him. 

He volunteers regularly- just last week he was doing a voter registration thing, and he asked if he could join me at the food pantry when I go. He has a monthly donation to Planned Parenthood and he’s an NPR sustaining member. On our first date he took me to the RBG movie (his choice.) He’s a neurotic recycler. We talk about everything, we laugh constantly. He loves his mama and his sister and brother and his nieces and nephews. We are both fatherless, and we are both the hero children of our families. We both run our own businesses and we’ve both worked our asses off to get to where we are in our careers. We understand each other. 

He’s so smart and so funny and so kindhearted. I like him so much.

[onesupersecretbite]

You are kind in ways I had only longed for in some half-awakened state, the way you long for a dream that is already fading. My body absorbs your kindness. My body is the earth after a drought and you are a summer rain. You have rolled across my parched body like heaven opening up; you have bathed me in tenderness. Your kindness seeps into the hollowed out places within me and new life is growing there. Green shoots and soft moss and slick little snails, a whole ecosystem coming back to life.

In the tired valley between my hips, a meadow of clover springs up overnight. My knees become smooth river stones, my arms are a bower of roses. Fireflies dance around my head and, in the ruins of my heart, honeysuckle opens to the warm night air.

[onesupersecretbite]

“I know now, what I didn’t then, that affection can’t always be expressed in calm, orderly, articulate ways; and that one cannot prescribe the form it should take for anyone else.”

— Magda Szabó, from “The Door,” published c. November 1987