Hey Blunder Woman

This kind of snowfall

There’s a phrase that I’ve used over and over in my writing, probably ad nauseum, and it’s “a soft sort of sadness”. I like the sibilance of it (especially when I say it out loud. I’m a bit of a lisper with S.) The phrase to me sounds like the feeling, as if sadness is that type of snow that falls in heavy flakes and in pure silence. It’s a sadness that is not all consuming, but comforting somehow, in an artistic-I’m-alone sort of way.

I feel this soft sort of sadness today and most days when I think, really think, about dating. And it isn’t dating necessarily that I mean. I mean when I think about the kind of relationship I want…and that soft sort of sadness? It’s a longing. An ache. An awareness that I do not have the love in my life that I so richly want…and I feel…I deserve.

What I want is simple. I want someone to look at me and love me for who I am. I want them to light up when they see me. I want conversations, and silence, and passion, and above all, I want trust. I want love in the little things. I want to make him breakfast sometimes. I want him to play with my hair, especially when I’m stressed. I want text messages just because he’s thinking about me. And I want those kisses, those kind of kisses that start small and end with an ache so palpable you feel it in the entirety of your body. I want real, honest, true 100% love.

I don’t think I’ve ever had it.

I think I’ve felt it, once. Nearly felt it twice. I think someone has felt it for me. But it’s never been at the same time. And I seem to attract men in my life who feel all these things, but they feel them for someone else, and ultimately, I become someone they can talk to, share with, but it never progresses beyond that.

I had a conversation with someone on the phone last night, someone I would very much like to know, but I’m afraid it’s another soft sort of sadness. One should not read Pablo Neruda poems alone or they will quote things like “Tonight I can write the saddest lines” or “Another’s. He will be another’s.” See? I’m quoting right now.

I don’t have a great epiphany right now except to say that I am finally buying a house (this will connect. Just go with me on this). My whole life, I have drifted from place to place, experience to experience, and what I’ve secretly yearned for was a home. I will have that physical place soon, that place that is undeniably mine. I guess I’m looking for another home too, and forgive me in being corny, but it’s the kind of home you find with another person. That kind of comfort where you feel loved and honored, and you can sit on the couch together, nestled next to each other, so comfortable you don’t really know where one stops and the other begins. That kind of home where you just feel that anything that happens in your life, you will be okay because there is someone there with you, watching out for you.

Yep. That’s what I want. I think it’s pretty simple, and at the same time, it seems to me to be absolutely impossible.

That sadness? Still here. Soft and cool…but maybe like the snow, it’s not permanent.