Thinking of you.

As told in 11s

(Think you want me to read this out loud to you? Click the play button above!)

1. I think our relationship is hard. I have been laying in bed since nearly 3 am thinking about you. About this. Wrestling with what I would say to you. Or, maybe, it’s just the caffeine in the Coke Zero I had with dinner. Who am I kidding? It’s definitely you.

2. I think it’s safe to say that you are the longest, most tumultuous, yet somehow most joyful relationship of my entire life—despite us being on and off again (and again and again). We have the kind of relationship I swore I would never be in. When we are hot, my god, we are hot. And when we’re not? Well, honestly, that may be when I think about you most of all. When we aren’t connecting? When I don’t know how to find my way back to you? That is when I miss you the most.

3. I think I struggle with how to be in conversation with you. Like me, you aren’t just one, flat thing. You can be lyrical, you can beg for brevity, while other times, you can go on and on and on. As if the entire dictionary is at your beck and call.

4. I think out of all my relationships, I don’t discuss you—or our struggles—with my therapist, because some things are too sacred to share. So, I keep our private details, well, private.

5. My journal knows about you though. You show up there a lot. And, I think if we are being technical, you make up the entirety of its pages. Every single word is you.

6. I think you love me, too. Always meeting me exactly where I am when I make a true attempt to be honest, to show up. You don’t even seem to mind when I come to you with these 3 am-thoughts—or even my darkest thoughts—well before the sun imagines opening her eyes.

7. Are we monogamous? I think not. You don’t make this a secret. I see how easily you connect with others, how available you can make yourself. How you share an entire language with them, while it feels like I’m just learning the ABCs of you.

8. I think you are just so damn sexy. Why do I find you so important? What is it about you that keeps me coming back for more? Even when I tell myself that the last time was the very last time. Like a brokeback romance, as hard as this is, I just can’t quit you.

9. I think I may be addicted to you. Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way, and I’m paraphrasing here, that alcoholics struggle with not taking the first drink, but writers struggle with the first think. I don’t know how much I struggle with the first think. In fact, I think I think too much. But Joan Didion famously said she wrote to find out what she was thinking, so I think I’m in good company.

10. I don’t know what our relationship might look like in the morning or tomorrow night. I guess I’m not sure yet. That’s okay, because I am coming to you to find out what I think.

11. I think our relationship is hard.

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