Love.

 

We’re in a new phase of the Kitten Calendar adventure now, friends. It wasn’t an accident when the word snuck into some goodnight GIFs. The Shy One loves me back. We had deep, complicated conversations in the days following my Big Jealousy Weekend, and those eventually landed at him saying the phrase.

He loves me. I’m loved. It feels like a safety net and a bedrock and a sunny meadow and a beach day.

Being loved isn’t new of course. Though I couldn’t always be in touch with it, I’ve been surrounded by so many different kinds of love all along. Work love, art love, nature love, friend love, even the sometimes-impossible-seeming family kind of love. Sweetie-Now-BFF and I have loved each other since 2001, with no signs of dissipating. On the teetering cliffs of romance, I’ve had a strong foothold in love, maybe that’s how I grew into someone ready, or just, he was one of the very-right ones.

I’ve had so many (JEEZ so many!) connections with men that have felt fulfilling, sexy, exciting, and (from my end at least) loving, for a few weeks or a few months. Sometimes I told them I loved them after they were gone, after a this-girl-is-crazy-loving-me-after-just-a-few dates reaction was no longer a worry or concern. I’ve loved. I’ve been wanted, liked, and THOROUGHLY fucked. But this.

It feels, a rare thing in my shifting/fleeing/healing/losing heart, like the earth is steady beneath my feet. My life can be serene, or lovely, or a cyclone of emotions, or a mess, or a newly vacuumed apartment, but his love is holding still beneath it all. A harbor. A cove. A weighted blanket. I can mix as many metaphors as I want. I’m in love.

It's tempting to remind myself to stay vigilant, to wait for some imagined other shoe to drop, and it always could. But The Shy One has asked me over and over by now: Have faith. There are tricky parts, disconnects and differences to listen and squabble and evolve through. But I have a home in someone beautiful. A home in this moment.

I fell asleep with him the other night. It took several Tums and some melatonin and eventually I’m going to have to stop feeling too self-conscious to get up and have my night cereal, but for a couple of hours, I slept. Next to his beautiful, strong body, his soft hands petting me, his breath in my hair.

My cat is very shy. She usually sleeps with me, either right next to me or perched on my hip. When there’s company, she generally hides in the closet. Dates have only known her as a grey streak as she runs from the closet to her hiding place inside the couch.

But Saturday night, while I was laying blissful and awake next to The Shy One, I heard the grey cat’s claws kneeding the side of the mattress. I reached down to pet her, and she jumped up. She sat on my hip for a moment before she remembered there was a non-me person in the bed. She fled almost immediately, but still. It feels like progress.