I've had that thing.
That thing where I get a feeling grumbling inside of me, turning my stomach into knots. A feeling I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to have when I’m meant to be happy and in love. But it’s a strong one, one I can't ignore and am still unsure yet what it means.
I feel as if something bad is going to happen in this relationship, this new-ish relationship. And I don't know how bad or even what; if it is the sort of bad that brings a good change – a development, or a challenge - but something that is ultimately for the best, or if it is the type of bad thing that ends things. The type of bad that brings misery.
But the feeling is there and it just hit me and I feel it in connection to him, my boyfriend.
And while right now things are going so well, I have had some doubts. So maybe it's just those doubts speaking. Or maybe I've just been thinking too much this week. Thinking too much about the past - mine, and his. And how maybe our pasts will prevent any future together. I know I shouldn’t have these thoughts – I feel I shouldn’t, anyway. This relationship should be a clean slate, something fresh, something good, something new. But maybe nothing is a clean slate, because we can’t wipe away the past, we can’t even wipe away the now. New is an illusion. We are only new when we are born and then we begin to be filled, with the good and the bad and, we can’t erase any of it. All we can hope for is acceptance, I suppose. And the forgiveness of ourselves and the forgiveness of others. But even forgiveness can sometimes feel only like the ‘happy Band-Aid’ we put over the wounds we inflict on ourselves and others.
With him, at times, I feel as if I've won the lottery. That this is it. That we will last. That, finally, I’ve found my guy.
But then there are the other times when I see that we don't have much in common. That we don’t have enough to talk about to fill an evening. That we're on different trajectories and, worst of all, that I am not enough myself around him – I’m still too nervous to say what I really feel or what I really want because I want to please him. And the few small thoughts I have offered, have not been warmly received – rejected, even. But again, maybe I’m just in my head. Or perhaps too insecure. But the thought that maybe I’m not and maybe this isn’t right, despite how badly I want it to be right, is what keeps me up and has me writing these words here, now, in the early morning hours.
Or perhaps I just haven't learned how to be a girlfriend again. The city seems to make relationships an easy loop of one night stands, sugar daddies and dating ‘light', so it can be difficult to find the real deal.
And then there are times I look at him and think, "he's mine, he’s my boyfriend" and it makes me smile. And in those moments, we feel so right and I can't imagine myself anyplace else, with anyone else, forever. Every now and again I think, perhaps this feeling and these doubts are just the nature of falling in love. That being in love means continuing on through all of these different emotions and changes, two people who keep choosing the other. And I want to choose him. I think I do anyway.
So if love is in the choosing, then when do we decide to not choose, and why? If we stop choosing the other, were we ever, really, in love in the first place? When is it no longer worth pushing through the doubts and the bad moments? And how do you know? Does it all depend on your comfort? That can’t be right. What is the deeper thing that underlies this whole ‘love’ thing and keeps people together? 'Love' seems too general, too overused, it seems too broken a term and too broken a place to put ‘everlasting’. There must be a thing that is more than just love, to make love last. I want to know because I want to live in that space.
And so, is this thing I’m feeling simply fear, or is it, in fact, an instinct?
Do I leave? Or, do I stay – figure it out?
I don’t know. But this turning in my stomach exists and I can't exactly place it and I certainly can’t ignore it.