red rose blooming on another man's vine.

so many things could have been said. to paraphrase someone i love, there were riots in my head. uncertainty has an almost pleasant flavor of familiarity, as do most less enjoyable emotions once you've spent several long, romantic evenings with them.

i tend to lose the big picture, this i know. details attach themselves to me, worrying. i hate to rely on the dog and the bone, but cliche is cliche for a reason. compounded, those details work themselves into a single, nerve-raw mass of pure energy. there's a sore spot, a specific one, and though it moves and varies in size and intensity, it never quite heals. when it gets hit, i'm down for the count.

there are a few things i rely on; the words in my head which these days get so rarely written down, fictional love affairs on deserted islands and the excitement of burgeoning friendships. to-do lists and etymolgies can sometimes comfort me. my plans, i wear them like armor. one of these days i'll fly out of here with only the things i can carry, and mimic the motions of the puppy with her unspent energy. these are the most important. i'll scrape my skin against the bare earth wherever i can find it and rub my muzzle against every available surface. if i'm lucky, somewhere along the line there will be sand in which to dig my wandering toes. no matter because in this respect the journey is not the destination but only just the journey, and i'll come out the end red and new and sensitive, scoured free of the sticky residue of privelege, the unbearable stink of entitlement.

that's not to say i do not struggle, because i do - mostly existentially as my life to date has been almost unfairly (and unfortunately) simple, free of many tensions with which most of the rest of the world must grapple. there are behaviors i can't break open, attachments i hate but fear relinquishing. socializations it could take lifetimes to bury. someone once told me i needed reprogramming, and he was right but for all the wrong reasons - those were selfish months, when neither of us could have cared less about anything but the two of us.

the point is that i know wanting something does not mean it will happen, and talking about it does not hurry it along. waiting is elemental - and luckily, something i for which i have a talent. i tend to look at change in terms of "eye of the tiger" on the boombox and a flippy ponytail with really cute workout clothes that never get sweatstains. i think that progress has been made, progress continues - in the past few months i've done some pretty brave things that i would have never believed possible.

what i wonder is, how many times can we choke it back? how many things have one of us wanted to say but didn't, for whatever reason? proximity is dangerous i know, and we hardly wear our hearts where they can be seen. but i know that with this tenuous stability, at least i am sometimes holding back enough to clog things up - having to shape my words around something in the back of my throat sticky and dense, like chocolate with too much cocoa. it won't quite melt and it won't quite move, and it has accented everything i say with timidity and a little taste of shame.

so tonight i am thankful for my friends, who are so beautiful, kind, thoughtful, patient and most every other positive adjective the infrastructure could bear. i spent most of yesterday near tears, winning fights in my head and trying hard to breathe normally. you follow them because you have the privelege, and luck is when you're loved back.

anger fades, as does insecurity. sometimes all you need is an evening.