28th
Armored amor
I want to write about what happens when you have to harden your heart, when you try to and still, it defies you, cracks open, splits. Life is so unexpected and ridiculous and it’s funny how it really is all just a cycle that keeps going. Old love and new love smack against each other, and this weekend will be a test of how much I can be in the moment, how much I can forget, move on, not to pretend all that pain and rejection didn’t happen, but to know that they happened so I could get here, so I could know I am in exactly the right place, so I could be grateful for what I have and never ever covet what I don’t. It’s all so simple in my head, sometimes, and then all of a sudden it isn’t. All of a sudden there’s a glimpse of that old me, that naive, silly, flightly, foolish girl who wanted wanted wanted, a greedy brat who left her brain at the door. It’s weird to then be with someone who doesn’t want anything from me except me, weird and beautiful and scary. It makes me want to ignore my phone, lose it more often, think about giving up my city, maybe, if it means I get something else much greater than a big apple in return. I know that I can call my 2011 self as many vicious names as I know but that won’t negate that she’s still there, lurking, learning, somewhere inside me, sometimes not so far beneath the surface. I have to love her just as much as all the rest of me, even when it’s hard, even when I’d so much rather be very armored, as it were. Wouldn’t we all? Isn’t that always, always easier? I should know, and I do, and to try to live unarmored is what I’ve been striving for. I have no idea if I will make it. It’s moment to moment. Maybe I’ll choose the armor, maybe I’ll have to to survive. But maybe I’m tougher than I look, tougher even than I feel.
