On love and time

dispatch 7

Hi friends,

How are you doing out there? I am back and 4 years sober and 33 years old and wow wow wow is life wild. This time of year has always been a time of big transitions for me and this one is proving no different, but more on that at some later date. Just to say that I am sitting in that nexus of excitement, fear, and openness that new beginnings bring. If you’re there too, you’re not alone.

I wrote this essay a few months ago but it feels perfect and right that I get to send this love letter out into the world today, from a place of particular gratitude for my life and this love.

I have always been a creature of the past, mining the lives of distant iterations of myself for meaning. But writing about the now is uniquely terrifying. It means trusting that the naming of it will not make it drift apart in the mist. But this love was a recognition, a beautiful inevitability, and the time that we have been a family has been the happiest of my life. This isn’t the whole story, just a moment of something that is so much bigger. Thank you for giving me the space to share it.

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[Image Description: A black and white photo of the person I love most in the whole world, taken while walking behind them down a street.]

On love and time…

This weekend we stayed in bed. Wrapped up in those sheets, those arms, my family knows how to welcome a day gently. Stolen moments of togetherness can make a life. This week marked two years since that weekend. Since the start of us. Two years since the waterfall. Since the airport. Since I got into the car with you, closed the door and breathed you in, knowing I would never let you go. For once what I had created in my head paled next to the real thing. This is a love story. 

On that first weekend of us, I remembered magic, found things I thought I’d lost. Everything I had taught myself, carefully and diligently, not to want. My heart is still so full of you that it is becoming something else, unbound by all of the things I tried to forget. 

When I was little I never dreamed of knights. I’ve never craved rescue, instead finding safety in the cynicism that love, the kind that remakes a life, is not quite real. I didn’t even bother to look for it. I didn’t know how. I used to look at couples in love and wonder how everyone was so much better at faking it than I was. A person, gazing at their partner lovingly was something to observe, to imitate, to parody. An Instagram caption. I assumed we were all actors but I was wrong. 

I fell for you slowly, then all at once and I’ll keep telling you, in case you forget. The beginning and the end of everything. That’s what loving you is like. And from the very beginning, there were physical symptoms of you. Something in the way you look at me, the sound of my name in your mouth could make me put my teeth through my lip. It would heal, but you should leave scars. I want to remember everything. 

There are spaces in my mind that I haven’t visited yet, or ones I’ve toured alone and locked away knowing no one would understand their shadows. But not you, you get me. Even the dark parts. This love is the most beautiful thing that I have ever made. The kind you could never take in all at once, a precious vastness.

When we found each other, we were both still picking up the pieces of lives we thought we wanted until they smashed to pieces. We cut our hands trying to find some pattern, some meaning without realizing the ways in which we were still shaping it. A mosaic of all that came before has become something brand new. I love all of the things that have brought you to me, every darkness, every joy. I have them, too; this collection of hurts. In the right light my skin is a lattice of white lines that tell the stories of things, some barely remembered. The years leave their mark and somehow you see it and you still want to stay. My love, I am skilled at artful delusion but I never had a chance at that with you. 

Before, I gave myself to a dead life because I thought that I had reached the outer limits of what I was emotionally capable of. But I revel in this, in you. My limits are so far beyond what I let myself see. Two years ago I couldn’t write a way out of the life I was in, but I knew I would have to. Something this strong demands it. 

A year can change everything. Last August we moved into this strange old house, built in the 1800s, all sloped floors and angled corners that don’t quite match. We walk through the rooms and marvel that they are ours, fill them with our peculiar whimsy. One week you found the gravesite of the first family to live here and we brought them a red begonia. You’ve always known how to honor old ghosts. 

Sometimes, you come out of your office, in your hands a mess of papers. You hand me some, invite me into your world, your brain. You sit quietly waiting for me to finish, your eyes a question. It’s a kind of heaven to watch you make things, the beautiful story you make of the truths you unearth so gently with a reverence that makes me stop breathing. Truths you aren’t afraid to look at most of the time and I envy you for that. There’s so much I’m still scared of. But there are moments you make me fearless, too. 

Two years, this life that I have to constantly remind myself is real. In bed we look at pictures of that first few days of togetherness, remarking in wonder that it is only stronger, more alive. This isn’t luck, it is breaking apart. I am so happy. I want to sit in that and feel it, not fear it. Feel the energy coiling, inviting joy in. I don’t believe in god but I am thankful to whatever brought me you. Sometimes, when we least expect it, things are just beautiful. 

If you had asked me to imagine this I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what it feels like. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what it is that I wanted. What I was seeking, before I even knew how to seek. I lay my head on your chest and it is the most home I have ever been. It feels like collecting parts of myself back, even when I am at my most low. 

We deserve this. I deserve this. I deserve to remind myself of that, too. Remind us. That happiness doesn’t last and we need to notice the moments. Experience the feel of this now. Not taking it for granted, not expecting it to be here tomorrow, but thanking it for showing up today. We are worlds. A collection of universes wrapped in such feeling skin. 

Assorted, rad things: 

The section of this newsletter in which I share what I’m reading, consuming, loving this week! I’m trying out little blurbs around what I took from each thing…do you like this? Do you just want the links? Let me know!

• The Recovery Disco podcast- My sweet, brilliant friend launched their podcast last week and it’s truly the bee’s knees. It blends fun and depth in that uniquely disarming way Valentine has, and I know it will continue to be an incredible recovery resource for folks. Also, listening to Valentine is just like getting a hug from a best friend you didn’t even know you’d been missing.

• The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson: Tove is my creative hero and someone I count as my queer soul matriarch. Known best for her children’s works, she was also an incredibly skilled novelist (and muralist and illustrator and many other things). This book is under 200 pages, a Nordic meditation on winter, the dishonesty of social convention, trust, community, love, art, and how we take care of each other.

• M Train by Patti Smith: A re-read from my drinking days (meaning I absolutely did not remember it the first time!), this ripped me back to Hurricane Sandy when our homes were one beach apart, both totally destroyed. It’s a strange reminder to pay attention to your dreams and be open to rebuilding in the wreck.

• Bach’s Coffee Cantata: Did y’all know that actual Bach wrote an actual comic mini-opera about his coffee addiction in which the main character declares that without coffee she ‘will turn into / a shrivelled-up roast goat.’? ME NEITHER, but now you know.

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Questions, comments, existential life crises? Hit reply.

always,

lisa