“I don’t like to plan things” was my response to Jon the first time he asked me out on a date. The hot, humid July air hung thick between our silence; I squirmed unsticking my bare legs from the rough cement stairs of the apartment building where we both lived. Jon leaning against the porch pillar, both of us staring up at the soft winged moths banging themselves against the flickering yellow light bulb, neither of us able to look at each other. I wanted to take it back, I wanted to say “yes, yes I’d love to go out with you!” But I just sat there, stoned faced, protecting a broken, tender heart.
It's a joke between us now, me not liking to plan things. Words spoken that were so absurd for me to have said at a time in my life where I planned everything in an attempt to have some kind of a semblance of control over my out-of-control life. What I wanted to tell Jon was I couldn’t go out with him; that he was too good for me, he was much too nice, too normal. He drove a new truck and was responsible, he grew up in an actual house, a house he lived in his whole life, without chaos or trauma, things I couldn’t fathom or relate to. I saw myself as trash, broken, traumatized, worthless, dumb, I thought I had no future, no value, no chance for a normal life. I didn’t date guys who asked me out on dates. I fell for guys who whispered I was pretty, got me drunk and tried to get into my pants no matter how much I said “No!”
I think back to my nineteen-year-old self and wonder how Jon glimpsed through the cracks of my stone walls that I carefully erected and cautiously tended to. How was he able to see through the thicket of my thorns a soft place to rest, the start of a beautiful garden, a bounty we could grow and build our life upon.
In our relationship I have been the one with the vision, the dreamer, the one lifting my bare feet off the ground while he keeps his boots firmly on the ground, laces tied tight.
Just for that one summer when we were young, Jon was the dreamer, the visionary, the risk taker and he allowed me the opportunity to spend my life tending to my gardens instead of my walls.
With gratitude,
Angie
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