before we knew
dispatch 84
hello friends,
We’re in July somehow because time is weird and wild. It’s a foundational month for my family, containing both my (fur) son’s birthday and also the day, so many years ago, that my partner and I realized we were in love with each other. So this is a post about love.
before we knew
Before we knew, I would stare at you through time and space and zoom screens. I’d type and re-type messages to you in a blank text window, paranoid that you’d read my love of you in the rhythm of my nervous typing and deleting. I wanted to be careful about what I showed you. I wanted you to think I was cool.
I think you’re so cool.
But the truth kept spilling out of the sides of me and that was scary too. Two years of friendship, the first friendship I ever discussed in therapy, which still seems important all of these years later. Over time, with shaking hands we wove our stories into each other. I knew you, you knew me. But I was still too much a coward to say the words we couldn’t come back from. The words that would change things. I told myself that I was good at burying the truth, but I have never been good at keeping anything from you.
You sent me songs and I refused to read into them. To listen to those playlists now is to know how you felt about me, but I couldn’t see that then. I wouldn’t. It was too risky. I was so scared to hurt the beautiful thing we already were.
The day before I told you I was in love with you, you sent an otherwise platonic text that ended with “I love you.” For the very first time in my life, my legs gave out. It took time to get myself off the floor, into bed, to stare at the ceiling until light creeped under the blinds, wondering if you love loved me.
You did. You do. You really do. Thank god or goddess or whoever is out there scribbling the universe into being.
There are cliff moments in a life, you tumble or you step out onto the air and somehow find it solid. The Fool card in the Tarot always has one foot off a cliff, the start of their journey. I’ve always been a fool when it comes to us, the start of the best journey I’ve ever mapped. One that I think has unfolded in timelines and dimensions a million times before, a million times again.
Moments or days where everything that comes before and everything that comes after are different somehow. Not a slow becoming but a moment of fundamental change, hooked into the center of you and making you into something new. That day, so many years ago wasn’t a chapter title, it was a whole book.
The real and true start of us.
Then years later, another impossible day, when I did not know that there was a ring in your pocket, and we awoke to the cawing of crows outside of our window. I will always remember the light through the stained glass, the shocked elation of realization, the fact that the audio cut out for the exact words that were only ever ours to hear.
Then we’re stepping out into the sun again. We are giddy, flying through the Quarter, tattooing vampire teeth on our arms. We walk through the wide, rainy avenues of the cemetery with a friend, stopping under the waving arms of a live oak in the cemetery’s liquid stillness, to place our hands on the trunk.
Everyday is magic with you. It’s not enough to say it, but that doesn’t make it less true. If this is what the years build, give me every year, every hour, every minute you’ve got. I want to see what happens next. I want to feel everything.
So, keep holding my hand as we walk down the street. Talk to me on the porch about whether it’s time to mow the lawn again or that thing you just learned about that song you love. Never, ever stop marveling at how natural it feels now. I’ll keep finding you every morning for coffee. Touching my foot to yours every night to make sure you’re still real, still here. You are. We are.
a patchwork of magic: culture recommendations
Things I’ve watched, read, listened to, etc etc etc that brought some power, enchantment, or other big feels into my life. This one should be about love, shouldn’t it?
And Love by Florence and the Machine: Nothing to be said, 2:44 of kindness to your nervous system.
Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue: “Anam Cara” means “soul friend”. A philosophical reflection on friendship, love, solitude, and death through the lens of Celtic wisdom traditions. This quote has been sticking with me “Love is also a force of light and nurture that liberates you to inhabit to the full your own difference. There should be no imitation of each other; no need to be defensive or protective in each other’s presence. Love should encourage and free you fully into your full potential.”
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller: A retelling of the love story of Achilles and Patroclus, from the latter’s perspective. I bought this for a train trip after loving her other novel, Circe. It was a quick read and a sweet story, her character development and eye for historical detail is top notch.
Thank you for being here. Here’s your gentle reminder to pause and do something sweet for yourself before you jump to the next thing.
until next time,
Lisa
so beautiful ❤️❤️
♥️♥️♥️