Falling 100mph
He may well be the best gift I’ve ever recieved.
Maybe it is too soon to tell because so many ups and downs have happened in the last three years. Incredible defeats and even more incredible triumphs all culminating into this relationship. Life has felt like heavy glass in my hands. As if I were to move at all, it would all fully combust into shards and I would end up shredded… again. However, for some reason, this is different. Sure, everything is delicate, but it is not heavy. It is not exhausting. I’ve never felt this way.
He is light; he is calming. And, I have fallen 100mph fully into him.
I showed up drunk to our first accidental “meet and greet” as my dad cutely described it and slightly hungover on the second. There was no hiding or pretending to be anything other than me. I did not play it safe in trying to be someone I thought he would want. Mostly, because we met online, I had no clue what he wanted. He was still: he didn’t shake the ground when he walked or boom commands when he spoke. He read the room quietly but with ownership. Suddenly, I lost the need to fend for myself. He looked at me in a way I did not think was possible. For so long, I have relied on my natural confidence and fun personality to carry me through. I have known I am attractive, but have hardly ever felt beautiful. He looked at me different. Like, I was the first woman he had ever seen. I felt it to my core, head to toe, in every part of my body. In that moment, I knew that if even if it was just to him, I am beautiful.
He made me laugh, asked silly questions, and I enjoyed the present moment, which is very rare for this Enneagram 4/Leo woman. I cannot remember the last time life did not feel like a volcano ready to erupt at the slightest shake of the ground, but in a Miller’s Ale House, time stopped. All of a sudden, I had connected with a man in a way I did not believe existed for me. I thought my soul had been stripped of that ability due to the trauma this life had handed me. But, he never saw me as broken or damaged. Instead, it was like the woman I was created to be, before surviving became more important, could finally to life. A freedom to allow myself to be known, and loved, and to run wild is something I had merely dreamed of as a very distant possibility for me. Yet, with him I felt safe, I felt protected, I felt desired. Most importantly, for the first time, I felt like a woman.
I have spent the better part of the last 20ish years believing that womanhood walks hand in hand with perfection. That my flaws, from small things like little zits or being overweight to the countless times I have been called intimidating and the PTSD as a survivor of domestic violence that I carry around daily, have inherently disqualified from feeling the joy of being a woman because I am not pretty enough, or small enough, or pristine like fine china. Yet I am learning, in the arms of new love, that these imperfections are actually what make up the story of my soul. They are the starting point of connection with my entirety. I have wasted years of my life comparing myself to other women longing to be as sexy or small or cute and whatever I else I have believed I am not enough of. With him, I am already exactly as I need to be: fit for love, created for connection. Learning that womanhood is not found in any kind of perfection, but in the soul of a woman.
I have fallen 100mph for the man who sees my beauty and my flaws as equally beautiful parts of me. The man who I stood out to for no other reason than for being me without any other comparison to anyone else. Above all of that, I have fallen for the man who has helped me fall in love with me.
