I’d made a plan: I would follow this road wherever it led me. I’d ignore all the others that crossed its path, no matter how intriguing or promising they looked.
One thing I never forgot from my Latin class is that a language that is descended from another language is called a daughter language. It was the beginning of the next era of my life, like this is of yours.
He pushed on, pillaging my pack, inquiring sternly each time before tossing another item I’d previously deemed necessary into the get-rid-of pile.
It seemed as alive in its dying as a hive of bees was in its life.
It was as if I’d finally come across a mountian lion and I’d remembered, against all instinct, not to run. Not to incite him with my fast motions or antagonize him with my anger or arouse him with my fear.
The only place I could reach her. In me.
As I sat there with him, I felt the way I always do when alone in certain circumstances with certain men – that anything could happen. That he could go about his business, mannerly and kind, or he could grab me and change the course of things entirely in an instant. With Frank in his truck, I watched his hands, his every move, each cell in my body on high alert, though I appeared as relaxed as if I’d just woken from a nap.
Only boring people get bored.
Her love was full-throated and all-encompassing and unadorned. Every day she blew through her entire reserve.
I’m sorry,” she said and reached over and squeezed his leg. She couldn’t help but think that she’d ruined his life. It didn’t yet occur to her to wonder about having ruined her own.
You aren’t afraid of love. You’re afraid of all the junk you’ve yoked to love. And you’ve convinced yourself that withholding one tiny word from the woman you think you love will shield you from that junk.
If you continue using avoidance as the main tactic in your romantic relationships with women, you’re going to stunt not only your happiness, but your life.
But transformation often demands that we separate our emotional responses from our rational minds. Your rational mind knows that men leave their wives for younger women all the time. Your emotional response is you can’t believe your father did. Your rational mind knows that it’s hard for even strong, ethical people to sustain a long-term monogamy. Your emotional response is you’re shocked your own parents failed to do so.
I hope you can do that someday with someone else,” I said when he didn’t reply, though the very thought of that someone else pierced my heart. “I hope you can too,” he said. I sat in the darkness beside him, wanting to believe that I was capable of finding the kind of love I had with him again, only without wrecking it the next time around. It felt impossible to me.
We’re all just walking and walking and walking and trying to find our way, that all roads lead eventually to the mountaintop.
What’s on the other side of the tiny gigantic revolution in which I move from loathing to loving my own skin? What fruits would that particular liberation bear? We don’t know – as a culture, as a gender, as individuals, you and I. The fact that we don’t know is feminism’s one true failure. We claimed the agency, we granted ourselves the authority, we gathered the accolades, but we never stopped worrying about how our asses looked in our jeans.
How frightened those kittens were, and yet how they persisted. How when two strangers offered up their palms, they stepped in.
She looked at her parents, clear-eyed and astonished, like she understood exactly who she was for the very first time. A prisoner of her own body.
What you’ve got left after all the fools have departed are the old souls and the true hearts.
There are so many tiny revolutions in a life, a million ways we have to circle around ourselves to grow and change and be okay.