soapboxdiner

Rings of Fire

Maybe it's just that my meter is off, but if so, then maybe yours is off just a little too.

I think of my grandparents, married over 50 years. Neither was perfect, but each had a deep-seated knowledge of what the other brought into the partnership. And then grandpa died, and grandma was alone.

When she remarried, it was to a man who fulfilled her needs, though those needs were different than they'd been when she was young. And he returned to her a part of who she'd always been, and now in that new marriage could be again. Her care of him was within the microcosm of the home, and he brought the bigger world back to her. Perhaps that relationship in a small way is the compass by which I navigate love.

You said something to me Friday night as we lay naked in my bed. And you have said it before, but this time it silenced me, and I have not forgotten.

You start to learn my mind because I open it to you. You know it is the small things I watch, as those seemingly trivial acts and thoughts and words are the unprompted reflections of belief. They will more surely tell you what a person stands for than any extravagant display will ever reveal. And so it is in all the small one-liners that flow so effortlessly from you that I learn you.

You share with me secrets, but they are not your secrets to share. And I ask you, "The things that I share with you, you will keep them private, yes? What I share with you is for you alone."

"Of course," you say so convincingly, "that's what's called intimacy."

Trust, fidelity, strength, commitment, selflessness and altruism, these are the things that matter to you. I see. I watch you.

I tell you I am scared, but not hopelessly so. I am also brave, and I do not hide. What is inside is also outside and to know me, you have to know it all. These are the things that build and define us all. So I show you, and you learn. And the things that matter to you begin to have form for you in the context of 'us'. And then I watch what you do with that intimate knowledge.

And then you say this one small thing in the afterglow, amid the sweet and tender nothings. You say this small, freeflowing thought that you don't consider before its utterance. "You like me, but then again, your taste in men is questionable." You have said it before, but I laughed it off. You're teasing me, I know it.

We talk about stuff. Stuff. "This is so natural. It's a round peg in a round hole," you whisper.

Stuff. And then stuff.

"What your are your flaws" I ask, "What are your fears, because I don't see them."

"We all have flaws."

"I don't want to see them."

"You have to see them. You need to go into this with your eyes open."

With my eyes open. And the floor falls out from beneath me. Am I not seeing, or are you not showing? Or are you not showing in a way that I can see? I ask, and you say something but I can't hear. It's muffled under the raucous noise of your tangential streams of consciousness and easy diversions of, "What about you?"

It's not easy for you to lay yourself open to another, though it's readily apparent that you have spend many years in front of a mirror examining yourself.

And all this tumbles around inside my brain. My taste in men may have been bad, that is true. But each of them brought something into the partnership that I myself did not possess. They represented half of an 'us', and together we were a (perhaps perverted) manifestation of my grandparents' legacy that I hold to this day as one of life's most beautiful gifts.

Though those relationships failed painfully and often with life-altering effects, each contributed in the construction of who I am today -- the round hole you call so comfortable. It is not for you to good-naturedly poke fun at in jest. It is my past, my pain, my realization of self. And that tradition which I attempted to share with them is the same ruler with which I measure you.

But it makes me wonder, is that how you really see me? Likewise I wonder, am I really all that blind to you?

7:47 am - 07.20.08
previous | next

Home | Archives | Profile | Notes | DiaryLand | Random Entry