Mine

Yesterday made something like the seventh week that "Jack" and I have been dating.  I still have plenty of moments of hesitation, times when we disagree or one of us is in a mood.  But for the better part of my moments, I am enamored.  I go to sleep wishing he was there.  I wake up excited that I'm a day closer to seeing him again.  And it's become comfortable between us.  We tell each other stories.  We share in each other's quirks.  I apologize when I realize I'm giving too much navigation advice in the car.  He offers me bottled water so that the fluoride in the tap won't collect in my pineal gland and damage my brain (but shhhh, I still drink from the faucet when he's not around).  I get a little worried sometimes that we're becoming too comfortable, doing the same things every time we see each other (dinner and bottled water and a movie), but I know that it's just as much my responsibility as it is his to keep things interesting.

I think I've mentioned it before, but my roommate put me on to this great science-based blog called Barking Up the Wrong Tree.  In said blog, there's an article about a set of questions created and studied by a scientist that have been proven to create a quick bond between two strangers.  The article presents the questions as an opportunity to bond more deeply with a romantic partner.  In the spirit of mixing things up, I'd love to have a night where we skip the movie and answer these questions instead.  I don't know how to bring it up, though.  I mean, I know it's as simple as saying, "Hey, I have these questions. What do you think about answering them?"  But I worry that he'll look past the simple statement and see the vulnerable intention behind it: "I want to know you, and I want you to want to know me, too."  Despite our increased level of comfort with one another, I find myself worrying about coming on too strong.  About investing too much too fast.  About liking him more than he likes me.

I know it's stupid.  I know he's a lucky guy.  But I am the queen of anticipating the improbable.  Despite the fact that I spend more than a week every year teaching my students about inferences (logical, evidence-based conclusions), in personal situations, I still give a heavy nod to the imaginary and the irrational.  For example, "Jack" is not always as verbally expressive about his feelings as I'd like.  The most likely explanation for this is that he is an American male and therefore is not socialized to be open with his feelings.  Perhaps he's even had relationships or experiences in his life which have caused him to be hesitant to share said feelings.  But after a while, I start to wonder if maybe it's something else that's holding his tongue.

This is usually when my therapist talks me off the ledge.  "Do NOT break up with him," she repeats.


Meanwhile, I am falling in love.  Not with "Jack"--there's plenty of time for that--but with my house.  Up until now, she has been a combination of a non-entity, a distant investment, and a pain in my butt, but she's growing on me quickly.  Over the last week, I have spent something like ten hours under her floorboards, cleaning out trash from the crawlspace, and another ten hours picking out colors and painting walls.  I've spent hours scanning items to reduce the amount of paper clutter being carried over to her closets, and I've spent just as many hours imagining where furniture will go, and how things will fit.  And I'm in love.  I may need to buy hundreds of dollars worth of caulk to close every gap in the house, and I may need to wear noise-canceling headphones at all times so as not to be a part of my neighbors' conversations, but she has taken a hold of my heart.

And it's not easy to leave the house I'm currently in.  For the last four years, it has been the place I have called home.  It has felt like home in a way that no other house has in my adult life.  Letting go of places and people has never been my strong suit, and I've found myself already missing its screened porch and glass doors and columns.  It's strange noises and fifty-year-old appliances.  But like old boyfriends and old not-quite-boyfriends, I know these things will pull more and more gently on my heart as time passes.  Until eventually, they'll settle into place as fond memories of somewhere I once lived, of a place I once called home.

Because this new house, she's mine.  Today, while painting, I accidentally scratched one of the walls with a ladder, and my first thought was, "Well, there goes part of my security deposit."  But the deposit has been replaced with a down payment, and the house is mine to decorate and damage as I see fit.  When I first made the offer, it was just a nice-ish place I could live in for a while.  A financial move and an opportunity to try and live on my own.  But she's begun to take on life and personality.  She's begun to look like me.  To feel like me.  To be a place I want to go, not a place I'm forced to live.  And like me, she is a work in progress.  I cannot completely change her; I can only make her the best version of herself.


Trees are sanctuaries....In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves....Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.  --Herman Hesse