And so it begins

My other blog was funny. I don't know if this one will be.

I abandoned the garden because too many of the people I know "in real life" found it. It's hard to say everything that needs to be said when you don't know who's reading it, it's even harder when you do. Not that what needs to be said these days needs to be hidden. I have adopted a policy of honesty. It means crying a lot. That's the whole difference as far as I can tell. The deep, permanent lines scared into my forehead from years of holding back what I needed to say, from feeling what I needed to feel, are a constant reminder that letting things out is a better policy. It's also a policy that requires you to buy stock in Kleenex.

So anyway. Here it is. The story. Most of it. Enough of it that you'll get the point and not so much that you'll wonder why the fuck I'm allowed to use the internet. Probably. I think we all know that me and Over-sharing are pretty close to being bee-eff-effs.

Once upon a time...oh, who the fuck am I kidding. Slightly more than a year ago, I met someone. Now, the problem with this was two-fold; 1) I was married. 2) He was my friends former boyfriend. And she had left him in a very, very painful way. But I liked him. Not "liked" liked, but liked. We'd been communicating off and on, and then ON and on and then off and on for a while. One day, unexpectedly he showed up somewhere he knew I would be. And you know that feeling? The skip-heart that you get when you know someone is near? Even if you can't see him? I knew. We chatted for a few minutes and I was pretty sure he didn't like me. That I had failed to be as funny, or as cute, or as...whatever as he expected. The conversation was stilted and I bailed and spent the remainder of the event talking to the one person he wouldn't (the dreaded ex-girlfriend).

The way he tells the story now, he was scared shitless to talk to me; so afraid that I wouldn't like him that he was unable to convey how much He liked ME. Adorable, right? Right. We texted back and forth and then managed to meet on neutral territory in a way that we were BOTH equally scared shitless. While we started not quite at square one (we'd been texting one another for months), it was slow going with the "do you like?" and the "this one time I" stories.

I'd like to say the first kiss was a swept off my feet event, but instead it was more of a sitting on the sofa, fresh from the shower, exhausted from the day, pizza-breathed, hurried sort.

But I loved him. Then. Before then, I suppose. That was the start though. I was gone.

Months and then some go by and I have finished a marriage and stand ready to start a new one. To quote a friend "wow, you really let THAT body get cold, didn't you?". Hah. What a bitch. An honest, insightful bitch, but still. Yes. I know, it looks fast. It is fast.

Too fast? I don't know. Is there any way to know? I spent more than a decade with someone who's attention I had to beg for. I spent most of that marriage wondering how to be enough to someone who I couldn't ever please. I spend years dreading the ringing of my phone wondering what I was going to be yelled at for next. I lived on eggshells in a world with drawn shades. I lied. A lot. To everyone. Even myself. I said things were fine when they weren't. I said *I* was fine, when I wasn't.

I still lie about that. But the conversation goes more like this "are you okay?" "I'm fine" "Are you lying?" "A little". He knows. And more than knowing, he cares. The pretty lies don't cut it anymore. Let me tell you, kittens, that's a hard way to learn to live. It's so much easier to be Fine than to admit that you're not.

Even now, I struggle. I think I probably always will. I feel shell shocked. I try not to, but...well. Some battles you live through and some you survive. I have survived, but I plan to LIVE.