Around the time we started talking, I thought that I had figured myself out.
So much of the last few years were spent in this murky-minded chaos, this emotional quicksand with no reprieve. I worked hard to pull myself out. I changed my conception of who I was as a person to get out, and it worked.
You can probably understand why I felt like I had a solid grasp of Zain.
Sobriety, clearheadedness, purpose, creativity, pursuing a career I wanted. That's pretty cool. I thought that was pretty damn cool.
You came out of nowhere and everywhere at once. Not to sound like a movie trailer from the 90s, but you changed everything.
During the months and years when I made an effort to dissect my personality and my mind, I realized that so much of who I am was built on one single need.
I needed to be understood; I needed to be felt and attended to; above all else, I needed to know that I exist, but only ever in relation to someone else. Like if I looked in a mirror alone the sight was just totally alien.
It's a cliche, but my happiness had a ceiling when I lived like that. I was always at the mercy of another person's emotions. Always at the discretion of the great other. And the great other is blind, you lost control to that being and you lose control of control itself.
Forget romance for a second. I couldn't even feel happy knowing that I was in limbo with this job I wanted. Convinced that their approval was the key to my fulfillment, I sank down deeper into this dumb pile of pity.
It was only at the tail end of that whole reconstruction of the self that I no longer needed that approval. And guess what happened? They called me the day after I fully processed that simple fact and offered me a job.
This isn't LinkedIn, I'm only saying that to give you context on what I'm about to say.
Ever since I watched a romantic comedy as a ten year old, and fully believed in love, maybe looking at my parents and realizing it wasn't really there I craved it. Ever since then, I needed someone to be happy with me for me to be happy with myself.
It's 2020 - the adjective to describe that mindset is "toxic."
I came out of a codependent, cough cough toxic cough cough relationship that took me to parts of myself that I hate. Jealousy, envy, neediness, ugliness. Those little shadows that get stronger the more shit and muck you feed them.
They don't have to win.
That all happened before I met you. And during that reconstruction, I became happy with myself. Myself alone. Myself Zain. Myself looking in the mirror and seeing a fully formed person. Myself not wincing seeing couples at the grocery store. Myself understanding that I deserved love; love from friends, love from family, even romantic love. But also myself understanding that I wasn't incomplete without that love.
So when a girl with a hot profile picture on Twitter started messaging me, and caring for me, and relating to me, making me laugh, making me eager for texts, making me eager for their presence in the world, I didn't flinch in fear. I didn't recoil with the thought that you could leave or go away.
I enjoyed you. I enjoyed talking to you, and learning about you. I enjoyed building a nest for you in my heart and my mind, and leaving my toothbrush over in your brain so I'd have an excuse to visit the next day and get it back.
I love that you're French, but I'd love you if you were American. I love your tattoos, but I'd love you with none, or covered in them. I love that you're a mom, and that you feel unconditional love to a beautiful human.
I love your music taste, and the way you say the exact right thing in the exact right moment to make me feel like the Universe knows I exist, even for just a second.
The truth is being the object of your attention feels like something out of Greek Mythology. In Greek myths, the true sight of a God or Goddess would blind and paralyze mortals. Gods always needed to shrink themselves down, dim their glory, cheapen themselves to experience the world below.
When you talk to me, or look at me, or think of me, I can actually feel it in my heart. Golden, perfect, warm, radiating out.
I know coming into this neither one of us expected anything, and we still don't expect anything concrete.
I'm just happy to know you. I'm happy to know the world has you. We're all better for it.
Truthfully, I didn't think after a couple months my feelings for you would keep growing every single day.
They do.
So I'll wake up tomorrow with an even bigger heart in an even bigger chest, wondering how much more it can grow before I pop like a balloon and the air coming out of me takes me all the way to Australia.
