closeness is the risk

4/7/20

over the past week or so, this phrase “closeness is the risk” has been recurring to me, but this is the first chance I got to sit down and write about it (it seems the days are passing even FASTER since I started working from home, with work mingled into everything else I want to do, and now R staying home this week, it’s like everything all at once – love, personal pursuits, work- all mingled/no separation or order, which is what I think is making the time pass so fast).

In journal the other week, I asked, “How do I relate to R with more…risk and distance…?” Interpreting my dreams on this date, I’d uncovered some anxiety I had that the mystery or risk of first dating someone was now over with me and R since we’re married. And now I realize that yes, maybe that first-meeting-someone gleeful mysterious feeling is over. But that’s just one phase. Like, there’s a new risk, I realized. Closeness is the risk.

I’ve never dedicated my life to someone and meant with every conscious intention in my heart and body and soul to stay with them and love them and work WITH them as a team for the rest of my life (and while doing all this, not letting myself melt into whoever they are- still keeping all the healthy boundaries and habits that make me myself. Through all this, seeking the right balance). I’ve never, in this way (of commitment, of dedication), been so close to someone, and THIS, I realize, is the new risk, is the new mystery, the new awe: this slow day-by-day unfolding of what it’s like to let someone know who you are, really, daily, as a woman, as a sexual being, as a now 37-year-old adult, as the child I once was and hope to not forget, as the person/persona I’m still developing/aim to be, my family, my thoughts–everything—I have to (and want to) let him in where no one else has been, I have to at least try, without fear/anxiety/resentment taking over as I do this—THIS is an even bigger fucking risk (bc requires more effort and higher stakes) than the risk of when we first met and were just euphorically blindsided by each other’s otherness.

This risk is bigger and has never been done before (in my life)- it’s different. The challenge is to stand before him emotionally stripped naked, and with grace, to not flinch or retract or put up walls or hide ashamed. And it’s a challenge: it’s intentional, requiring focus and practice. It’s progress, I feel. It’s hard, too. It’s hard because I’m not used to it. But when I get this feeling (like I have now) that I’m some blind insect just putting feelers out into the dark and undiscovered, I feel like it’s the right way, for me. I don’t want to go back.