My heart is waking up and for the first time in a long time I feel alive. A week ago my bestfriend for 2 years became my girlfriend. She is as radiant and lovely as she always was and more, and I am fumbling and tripping over every puddle I find myself in (the contrast, in my head, is quite funny). I’d be lying if I said the prospect of change doesn’t continue to scare me everyday. Even though I laid out all my cards to her and pulled out every disclaimer I could think of about how I’m absolutely going to be very much the same genre of person (this is because I am ace, continuously figuring things out about myself, and awkward), I am beginning to think there’s so much more to me and so much more to us than I’ve ever thought. I’m less scared of the change in our dynamic, more scared of the change in me. I find the need to channel every bit of limited, fair weather, literary power I have to accurately display every shapeless, complicated, complex, feeling I have about the urge to shout to everyone I have a girlfriend and she is amazing despite me being the most rigid, simple and lame person known to man. Hence, making this post.
I am actively dealing with change by fully embodying the change. What that means for me is choosing the mortifyingly vulnerable path to resemble being alive. I’ve learned that running from it has caused me to be dissociative, so, I won’t shield myself from all of that anymore in the hopes I get to at least be in my body when I’m experiencing devastating, wonderful things. My girlfriend is open, cheesy, affectionate in all the ways I lack and severely want. So I’ll try to one-up her by being embarrassing, honest, and openly affectionate in the only way I know how –through writing.
Where the faulted normalcy of my outer shell fails, the commended silliness of my literary inner being succeeds at. All of that is proven in every lyric and poem I’ve written and lied to her about and said they were about general concepts when really they were all about her. In every song I sent spewing blabbery analyses and media parallelism when in reality they only reminded me of her. In every info dump I do when we talk about media that made me vulnerable, that really just meant I trusted her with every bit of me, hear me, see me, I adore you. In every time she’d lay her head on my shoulder and her breathing sounded like waves crashing to the shore, back and forth. In every time I allowed myself to feel so much for her and my words fail to give something unsayable, I compare the feeling to a cliff dive to the sea –and how I wish I could tell my hesitant self that you did it, it’s fine, the water is radiant and warm and it glows when you’re around.
You’re alive but you’re terrified, for how can someone who used to be so desperate to pushing down the heart ever feel like there’s something beating at all? There is no reference point. The beating feels alien and it doesn’t feel normal…until ultimately, with patience, it does. Until it feels familiar. Until it feels welcoming and captivating and all I want is to chase it even if it means embarrassing myself in front of my girlfriend and whoever is reading this. This is my gift to her, this is my gift to the version of me who has it a bit more figured out than I do now.
May you be as silly, as serious, as passionate, as cheesy, as bold and as silent in power.
And to her, I love you very much and you know this already because I tell you every time you tell me. This is the least I could say as the unsayable amalgamation of what I feel. I want to give you the world. This is the new, innate thing that has awakened along with my heart. It’s all for you and me to share.
i love you 🥹
It's been 4 weeks since my best friend of 2 years became my girlfriend. 2 more days and we'll celebrate being officially together for a month. I've been so nervous writing this to her, mostly because I know I can never really match the literary prowess innate within her and honed through the years. I don’t know if I can express a lot or enough with my words. But, the love I feel for her moves me and continues to move me still, and I'd rather stumble and try than never try at all.
I’m at the point in my life where I constantly ask about and look for the person I really am deep down. I’m trying to become the person I want to be, and figuring and finding that out is probably the hardest yet enlightening part. I’ve lived most of my life buckling under the weight of expectations and identities other people have put on me - to try on, to dress as, to pretend to be until it feels natural (it did not reach that point). It’s disheartening that for the majority of it, I didn’t know I was doing this, helping other people bury me. The day I met my girlfriend was one of first few times where puzzle pieces of me started locking into place. I really am a person, I really am alive. Getting to know and spend time with her, I’m discovering things I’m actually capable of doing. I’m capable of loving this much, I’m capable of entrusting so much of my (ever-changing) self to another person, I’m capable of being this present, of letting myself be seen. I’m capable of giving my heart to someone else, and safeguarding and nurturing another’s in return.
When I get to be me around her, all media-driven and spewing analyses for days on end, I share that vulnerable space with her. I’m honored that I get to see her, I trust that she gets to see me. When I lay my head on her shoulder, I realize I found the place, the spot where I was always meant to be. A home for my heart, soft, gorgeous curls that feel like clouds against my cheek. I could breathe again. I could sleep here, I could stay here, I'll be safe forever. I adore you too. There is calm now, there is hope, there is light. A restless child finally allows herself to rest, to hold her kindred spirit’s hand, and to find peace despite the chaos and uncertainty of the world and life ahead of her.
I’ve told her this before (and at the time she didn’t understand why. I don’t know if she still doesn’t), but loving her is the easiest thing I’ve ever done. I think I should’ve been scared but there really was no question. To actively choose her and choose her still is obvious, intentional. Every time I allow myself to finally and slowly show her the extent of my love these days, her flushed look and shy smile cuts me open, blooming between the cracks of my ribs. We’re here, we’re doing it. We’re both being cringy and embarrassing that sometimes, it stops being those two things anymore. It’s just us, together in this gooey, wonderful stuff we call love. Something we’ve both been so unsure and so guilty to pursue, but everyday is proof that I’m glad we pushed through, that we made this ours.
I don’t have a lot of words for my future self but I want to tell her that as I’m hoping that she’s in a happier and better place now, I’m also happier and better than the person I was before. This is my gift to you, a resounding manifestation of the things you are capable of becoming and doing when you allow yourself to be more free.
And to her, I love you very much, my dear. You know this because I can’t stop myself from telling you all the time. I too want to give you the world (it’s funny and endearing how we’re both really competitive about this haha). You are very much whimsical and creative and open to the world in the ways that I lack. But what I lack in prose, I hope I make up for the gravity of my affections. This is my gift to you. The awakening of my sense of self and my heart is all for you and for me to share.
