You Are The Calm I Never Knew I Needed

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When we met, one year ago I felt it – deep and pure in my core. A sense of calm and all-knowing washed over my entire body. I knew in that moment for whatever reason that you were going to be the person I end up with.
Our children raced through my mind. Our wedding. The modest three bedroom house we’ll share. The vacations we’ll take. Family photos. The hardships. The celebrations. I saw them all like some bizarre psychic flash, unprovoked and unwanted – but so very welcome.

In that one instant, I began to feel equal parts terror and serenity. A calmness washed over me and a small voice in the back of my mind said “there he is”. I felt nauseous and light-headed as I grasped the hand of my boyfriend and walked to my car. After that night, nothing seemed to matter other than the gradual, matter of fact, end of my current relationship and all of the roads that kept leading me to you.

Seeing you in random places, looking over and you’re looking right at me. Ordering our coffee, lunches and breakfasts the exact same way. Long nights seeing movies and drinking wine and tea and laughing like love drunk hyenas. You are terrified. I can feel it. I can see it. You say it.

Being around you calms my ions. You re-arrange me on a molecular level and create a balance within me that I didn’t know I could have. When you touch me, when we allow the impulses to take over and the electricity that has been slamming between us gets to spark and ignite – it’s magic. Magic sounds very superfluous, but it is. It’s magical. And real. And sad. And music is playing in my head and I can’t remember my name and you’re so there with me.
You are damaged and hurt and scared and afraid and alone and depressed.

I am open and trying to be vulnerable and scared and listening and growing and here.

The smile that creeps over your face when I walk into a room tells more than your hesitation.

The gentle hand on the back of my head and the tears in your eyes when we make love and give you away.

The way you brush my hair from my face before you kiss me and gingerly play with it while we fall asleep betrays you and your iron clad hesitation. The hesitation that is an armor that you wear to keep me at arm’s length from your heart.

You try to show me your battle wounds. Your scars. Your flaws. I admire them and tell you that you’re strong. But we all have them, love.

We all have scars. We all have wounds. We all have fears.

My friends say this must feel terrible, that I should be upset and crushed that we aren’t making our relationship a “relationship” right this very second. They feel like this should devastate me. Crush me whole and dash my hopes and dreams in the male gender. I wish I could say it does. I wish I could say as a feminist, strong, level headed woman I am not standing for this. And I’m not, standing for anything. There’s nothing to stand against. It’s going to happen – it’s already happening.

I know you feel how I feel. I’m not insane. I’m not the girl who gets massive crushes and becomes lovesick– and maybe that’s what I need to explain to you. But you know that. Because you know me.

You’re mine and I’m yours. It feels predetermined and destined. Not fate though, something more permanent and tangible. Like fact – or Science.

I don’t need a bragging, posted-for-the-world-to-see selfie a day, I don’t need fifteen check in phone calls or texts littered with Emoji. I just need you, your gorgeous eyes and the ability to trust the facts. I need the way you say words with hard “T”s in them. I need the way you kiss me and hold me. I need the levity you bring and the gravity you bring. I need everything to keep going the way it is – and all you have to do is let it.