Early Daze

We've not yet known each other two weeks.

Already I know that if we had two decades, each day would have me peacefully reminding him more than once to please close the door or the cabinet behind him, or gently doing so myself.

I imagine him away for a time, finding every door I left closed still closed, and the toilet seat immediately useable. I imagine if the absence were prolonged, this order might bring me to tears.

I imagine finding our children half-dressed, his heart run away from him again, off somewhere with the chickens, and finishing where he left off as I ground us all.

Something in that energy keeps my high-inertia self in motion.

There are so many ways I might righteously come to resent it, if I didn't opt in right now. It might not take a full month! If I thought he might change, that I, or my desire, or my criticism, or marriage, or parenthood might refine him over time, I would be in for a world of suffering.

There is also the peace of not yet having opted-in, knowing we are still selecting the right distance and flavor for whatever this love will be. Imagining marriage and parenthood is not the weighty consideration it used to be, for me. Now it is a gentle daydream.

It's feeling good. Gooder than good. It's feeling easier and sweeter than seemed possible at first, and the tide of desire, choice, craving I initially thought might drown me is bearing me up, a delightful swell I'm riding with pleasure.

I have surrendered my attachment to what I can imagine.

I have declared that I want what is FOR ME. I am guided by this felt sense of what is for me, what is of the tone of my love, and I keep getting surprised what is included, what opts itself out, what falls through the generous cracks only to fall back in and stay.

In the meantime, I taste my preferences frequently, I test my standards for my own ease and peace in the circumstances which present themselves to me. I refine myself to be at peace in everything I encounter from life, and this frees me to pursue my preferences with gentle abandon.

Of course I go back again and again to what returns the most enjoyment. Of course I am easily distracted from anything that's not a perfect fit.