A Stranger

I can only imagine this is how someone might feel, to have a creeping suspicion they are losing their mind, their way, or the decent shreds of how they hold onto the world. To show up and feel a stranger in your own life is nothing short of terrifying. To suddenly not recognize the landscape of the life you have built as your own, to feel strange and to see it clearly on another’s face.

We leave the blinds open while we sleep, and no one really sleeps. No one ever sleeps. It is interesting to feel as if we are having a conversation even when no one is using words. That elbows and familiar crooks of knees can say the things we do not yet have language for. There is so much we are trying to understand about one another. It is a wonder people ever fall in love at all.

I have theories on love and how we hurt each other, how foreign it must be to fall in love with someone new, how many rooms are built, and where those people go. But, you challenge everything I say, every false idea and the big ones I have built myself around. You say things like, patience and time and talk about the room with the view of the ocean.

I feel as if I am being slowly shown the way, back to something I once held dear, and yet barely knew. It feels both like coming home and burning it down at the same time, like packing our bags and deciding to live in another country.

Everything I thought was simple is not. And I find this to be a great relief.