I will not succeed in describing the emotional turmoil that has swept me through the last few days. I don't know if I can capture the aftermath. I've overtaxed both my rational and emotional reserves and everyone in me is drowning dry.
Standing-big-ocean is the rough translation of a scottish-gaelic word that means awe and loneliness like at the edge of a cliff. People are incredibly fragile and nuanced, have you noticed? Maybe I'll stop standing at big ocean, if I can somehow combine careful reflection with honest reactions.
So, L is alright. That's what matters. Hopefully AD's response will be to learn. Mine certainly was. In case one day I forget, after the qual party I kissed him and it got intense and wild and it was too much in the end. I wasn't thinking, because I didn't know I should. I asked, and he absolved me from responsibility with the answer we needed to fuck it up. I was confused, I was mislead, I was an idealist about it. This is bullshit, but I'm not going to rehash it again. This is all that's left. Some weird ideas, and some actionable items that came out of the idea that small things matter, and feelings should be verbalized.
After the party I went to dinner with my parents. They left me on the far side of campus where I met E in his room and we watched Firefly and we touched too much. His too much is a lower threshold than L's, so we can pretend it's completely innocent and it's nothing. But when his girlfriend was going to come home soon we got up and ate cake and when we laid down again we were in a different shape. It was so calculated, and I felt like we were lying.
Fast forward to Wednesday. In the morning L announces that everything is fixed, and the future is bright. I breathe easier. In the evening E comes to my house and we sew and we're making pants, but really what we're doing is not touching. We go hours without saying anything straight into each others' eyes. We make choices slowly and we don't tell each other the reasons. We barely even invent them, until we're moving as if there were no forces on us. We walk to Safeway and buy a dinner, a feast really: giant steak, kale, mushrooms, shallots. Dessert shipped up from the Bay. Shopping for food is so intimate, I remember men pushing carts like I remember injuries, it's ridiculously raw. Am I old enough to conflate my crushes? Can I start thinking of it as a pattern and not a miracle?
There was a miracle though. It was so easy to talk about. After dinner we were in bed and watched TV and I wasn't sure if I could put my head on his shoulder so I let me forehead touch it and I compromised and compromised until I got my way through tiny little contacts. Then we shut the screen and it was dark and we kept pretending for a while and then he put his arm under my neck and we still didn't talk about it for a while. We hinted. He mentioned selfishness and I groaned. He asked why and I said "I'm feeling pretty selfish right now."
When we finally talk about it... I don't remember how it even came up. I wish I did, because this is not the last time I will be in the dark wondering what we're going to do, and I don't know if it will ever go so smoothly again. We were already in agreement. I said something and he understood. He knew when he was being silly and liked that I told him.
So. This is all surprising. Ask me three weeks ago--or read this "blog" three weeks ago--and this was not the future. I guess there was some privileged information missing from my predictions.
I hope this reads like reality, because it doesn't write like that. It writes like imagination, except my imagination never puts me in pain. It puts me in harms way and then everything works out. Not only does it work out, but I defeat the danger with my bare hands and then bring home a trophy. Sometimes I donate the stuffed bear as a monument to women in physics. It stands in the P240 foyer. I wish I was kidding but this is my most frequently replayed fantasy.
I hope that this last piece of this barrage of surprises doesn't explode like it could, like the last one did. The only think that's still whole is Z, and that hasn't happened for a week. I have some things to talk about with him. I hope he can hear them. Everything will break. Leave my ideals in the dust. This'll be fun.
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