To Say it Would be to Say Too Much

We don't really know what to expect from life when we're young and inexperienced, so we paint the brightest pictures of the loveliest things, imagining what could be. We come to expect these dreams to come true.

Cast off yet again from the gates to my dreams-come-true, I find myself back at square one (my permanent residence, it seems). But some things never changed.

So we sat together in a brightly-lit room, cheery because of its brightness, yet dim enough to hide some imperfections, and we tried to reclaim our younger days of youth and innocence, hoping to recapture the joy and optimism, at least for a time. The endeavor wasn't quite as successful as we'd hoped it would be; we became quite serious after while and our conversation drifted into matters of a grown-up significance, the kinds of topics our younger selves would have fled from with shrieks and waving hands. We involuntarily lapsed back into our new-found sedentary approaches to life, our not-unpleasant--if artificial--steadiness that smoothed the surface over the deep fears and emotional turmoils we sought to keep hidden.

We were perpetually in flux, stuck between our childish selves that we had half cast off with with sentimental sighs and denial, and the very necessary adult selves that were so carelessly sensible and boldly averse to dreams of youth, without any reason for either the boldness or the aversion. We were not ourselves anymore, and yet we were no one else. We were in a transitional stage between what we were and what we were going to be, yet we couldn't help but to wonder if somehow we were at our end. "They" say we'll keep going, keep changing, and eventually it will all make sense, but we had no idea where it would finally stop. We talked like we knew we would make it in this world, but both of us were painfully aware of the fact that the other was also floundering, with no idea at all.

In the span of years that took us from hopeful caterpillars to our current state of entrapment in strange cocoons, we'd changed. A lot. We couldn't help wondering if we ever would become butterflies--or even if we wanted to be butterflies; after all, that was the expected result of this cocooning business--or if somehow this was it. We hadn't been given a choice in the matter; remaining a bright, happy caterpillar was never something we could have chosen for ourselves. It was a limited tour.

There had to be more, I told myself, and then it occurred to me that there was. Through all the fun and adventure, the heartbreaks and tears, that we had suffered separately, we had also changed together, not apart. Like so many who stand watching breaches form between them, powerless to stop their expansion, this had been the case with us and so many others, but we had not looked at each other through it all. I was certain there was something different between us, after all this, but there was no widening chasm pulling us farther and farther apart. It was as though the widening chasms all around us had driven us both backward until we hit, back to back. We'd turned to find each other, standing alone together on precarious footing. We stared for a while, deep into each others eyes, before we realized it, but even then without words.

No, I said to myself, I'm imagining this. Because we're both lonely I want to imagine there is more. Without trembling fingers and thrills of delight, this feels like nothing. Love is always like that, so exciting and fluttery, right before it ends in abandonment. And yet, while I was feeling nothing like that, something about this felt even more right...

I love my friends, and I treasure the people in my life. I could never let them go, nor would I want to. Those who have removed themselves from me have left scars that never fully heal from their perpetually smarting insides. As he looked back at me from across the table, with the staid seriousness of a friend who truly understood and cared, I realized that a bridge of years had somehow spanned between us without my knowledge of when and how it was constructed. Deep currents flowed between us without separating us. Until that moment, I hadn't realized how much I wanted very much to never lose him.


My heart doesn't exactly race when I see him, and my palms do not grow clammy at the thought of his touch, yet a deep longing for him settles deep inside and overwhelms me with a desire to be freed from its cocooning bounds. I want him to know, and little pieces come out under the guise of silly jokes, and yet I am likewise perfectly content to remain as we are. There is no way of knowing, and just now, no drive to find out, where this feeling will take us, or even if it is shared. It's different, this thing between us, holding us together like a glue, and yet stronger than a traditional bond. There is no fear, no worry, no wondering, no "what if," only an understanding--quiet, peaceable, and still--that is, and has taken a very long time to become, a deep and steady love.













I don't seek a relationship "status" or even a name for this thing, whatever it is, because to replace that, there is a confidence I have never felt before in a thing I don't even believe in anymore..to name it would be to risk its coming undone, while here in its very indefiniteness it could remain always: known to us both and never mentioned.

To say it would be to say too much.