This Girl That Place

Sundays have been my least favorite day of the week for going on two years. I know it’s just a day of the week and it doesn’t represent anything except a place mark of a day that changed my life in seconds. This Sunday, today, has been oddly tolerable. I give credit to this last week. It was interesting….if your definition of interesting is fun, silly, rewarding, enlightening, and a tad melancholy. The common denominator between the swinging pendulum of life and the feet I try to keep grounded was the people-the good, bad, and indifferent.

I look at people differently than I ever have before. I see beauty in the smallest of ways and nothing makes me happier than to get a peek at someone’s soul through their smile. Genuine people radiate and I want to surround myself with them….and I do. I love inside jokes and innuendo’s with the people that bring a smile to my face with the mention of their name. I adore the ones that know I need them by the tone in my voice or the words in a text, and those people-the ones you could sit and do nothing with and be perfectly content…..they bring calm to the chaos.

You, not unlike myself, are probably thinking age has everything to do with my new appreciation for simple and raw beauty. But, I don’t think that has a damn thing to do with it. I think it has more to do with life showing me what it’s like to lose myself in sadness and have people, people I would never have imagined, help pick me up and let me grow into who I am today. Wisdom have never cost so much.

We have all been through times in life where we place our self worth on someone outside ourselves  i.e. girls who believe if “that” boy or vice versa likes them then they are ok as a person. I’d like to think that is reserved for our teenage years but it’s not. I’ve been guilty as hell during different times in my life, don’t get me wrong. Rejection of any kind can do strange things to our minds….we want to be fill that empty space with something and the easiest way is to rebound the hell out of ourselves. But then again we tend to mistake sex for intimacy too.

There are a few people I am wildly attracted to. Like I wouldn’t do crap for a Klondike bar but I just might do some shady shit to be with them…just kidding…..maybe. Anyway, that crazy physical attraction in its infancy is purely animal. We’re hard wired to be attracted to good breeding stock. If that attraction is mixed with the right timing….boom… a physical encounter happens that is nothing more than just sex…..fun and exciting? Yes. Intimate? Not by my definition.

Intimacy, for me, is about unspoken communication, unyielding teasing, sarcasm that doesn’t go unnoticed, and chemistry you can’t find in just a good resume. It’s who I’d text at 3am when my brain won’t be quiet even if I know they won’t respond right away; it’s a hand in the small of my back reminding me I have their attention when 10 other people are wanting it and it’s the ability to crawl inside my brain and make my imagination go wild. Even though those things, those feelings, have been absent for a long, long time I can’t forget how they feel. Sex or intimacy…it’s what you want it to be and maybe for some you can’t have one without the other…..maybe I’m a little to mongoose for my own good.

When people ask me about dating I usually shrug my shoulders and look confused….because I am. I’m not sure anything with a label is on my agenda. I’m not shying away from commitment or even scared of it I just haven’t discovered what I’m really interested in. I know I’m not interested in owning another person. I want, I need my autonomy and would feel like I was being suffocated if I didn’t have some.  I see so many people struggle with wanting to posses someone and their self induced frustration is nauseating.  I wish more people would pay attention to the way they feel when people are around them. Do you smile? Are you curious to know more? Are you calm? Are you self conscious or critical? Do they float around your brain even when they aren’t around? We get so hung up on thinking instead of feeling and we load our heads with expectations, most of them unspoken, and then we get disappointed when things don’t go like we think they should- thank goodness we’re saved from ourselves more often than not.

Now, don’t lie, you know you’ve lived through wanting someone only to find after getting what you wanted that you wished for a do-over or a plain old didn’t do. I laugh about those situations now thanks to emotional maturity. It’s allowed me to appreciate the awkwardness that builds character….and great stories for later. There’s some uncomfortable delight in realizing not everyone is your person but they can still be a person in your life. Some of my favorite friends were a blip on my radar at one time, and we never dipped out toes, or anything else, into the pool on the other side of friends. I think if you push things you miss out on being exactly what you’re supposed to be in that moment of time.  I have friends, both male and female, that argue with me and say that guys don’t have girls as friends without an ulterior motive (and vice versa). Maybe that little bit of extra chemistry makes for a good friendship….or a story later on….juries out on that one.

I’ve always said I have the most wonderful folks in my life-always. It’s no secret that I have more friends than family and I have friends that are family. I’m never without a place to go or arms to hug me. Ken’s parting gift to me was people. I have lost count of how many he brought into my life and so many of them are connected back to him in twisted and tangled ways. I didn’t want to move to North Dakota and I still question a list of why’s to this day but, again, it’s the people that I’ve met here, as well as the ones that I feel like I’ve known a life time, that help make Sundays tolerable.

I hope this next week, that’s sitting on my doorstep ready to leap, is as good as the one it’s taking over for. I hope any doors that close do so swiftly so another can open quickly. I hope to catch glances that turn into smiles and find all the reasons in the world to laugh. I hope to never forget that I am the journey and my story won’t end no matter where I am or who I’m with…it will simply change direction and keep going…..

Much love,

Rach