Nostalgia

"Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us." -Oliver Wendell Holmes

A touch by your hand has the ability to send me reeling into the past. With one stroke I am suddenly 16 again. Young, stupid, and completely smitten by just a gaze. With one kiss I am transported back to our high school parking lot. We're sitting in the back of your two door Honda under the moonlight worrying about getting caught. I am naïve and you are reckless. Through the years we have seen these two personalities clash in their attempt to become a balanced whole. I was naïve, you were reckless. I was hopeful, you were careless. I was determined, you were unimpressed.

As time passed we observed our emotions sort of...dancing around each other. Acting as if we felt all these emotions fully, when really we were so scared to jump in. I have had a three year long out-of-body experience..and boy have we changed.

When you came over last week, and as we lay together-nothing but tangled vines and chilled sweat-I realized just what we had amounted to. A hot mess. Nothing but questions, doubts, resentments, and confusion. I breathed in your smell that had changed so dramatically. A faint but recognizable smell of cigarettes contrasting the bar soap smell that had once been there.

I began to wonder what had changed in me in these past three years. Am I more comfortable? More refrained? Has my body lost its softness with the repetition of our night caps? ...do you even notice a difference in me?

The night came to an end- as they always do-and I realize that I'm not sad in letting you go..but relieved. I will definitely miss the ease in sliding next to you and rolling over to my side of the bed. Isn't that what all couples miss once it all comes to an end? The ability to just perform one movement and have their other half fill in the blank? This has gone on for so long that I began to yearn for the unknown. To wonder what it would be like loving someone else. In an instant I'm transported back to that innocent 16 year old- eyes wide with hope..and ready to jump in head first.