Flying High

I feel so extremely excited about my relationship with Kyle. I'm anticipating the future. It feels so good to be able to take a risk and get such a positive response. I am excited for the future. Making plans with him to go to Hawaii has been a blast. It is something that I have wanted to do for so long. I'm so glad to have a partner to travel with. I asked for a cute guy to take with me and I got him.
The situational similarities between my relationship with Kyle now and Luke back in 2000 are kind of freaky. I started dating Luke in the summer of 2000. I had been with him for 3 months, then left for college, we had a long distance relationship going on and 6 months later, I went to Hawaii. Now with Kyle, we started dating the end of December, 3 weeks later, I head to LA. We have a long distance relationship and 5 months later, we're going to Hawaii together. What is going on? Why is this pattern seemingly repeating? The fear I have is that this is a repeat of events past. When I think about that, I know it's not true because I am not the same person I was 7 years ago. Kyle and my relationship is leaps and bounds better than anything I have ever known. It's more concentrated and intense. I am taking risks and opening myself up in ways I didn't know possible. I can't believe how connected to him I feel. I don't know where our relationship is going but I love it. Even being this far away from him, I feel safe and happy.
Mom said that Kyle and I are what was supposed to happen. My soul must have chose to have this kind of great love and romance happen in this way. Going to Hawaii and having a great time with the man I love. I must have known this and was so ready for it to happen that I thought Luke was who I was supposed to be with. Got ahead of myself. :)
It's fun that there are so many great romantic ideas out there. We're looking for love and someone to love. I never thought about it before. Never imagined my wedding day or my dress and bridesmaids. Never thought about how happy I would be or my husband. Never even thought of putting those two words together: 'my' - 'husband'. Weird. But the last time I was with Kyle, laying in bed next to him, looking at how his hair curled on his forehead and the serenity in his face as he tried to fall asleep, I was overcome with emotion. At that moment, I knew what it must feel like to stand up in front of my family and friends with him in front of me and tell him how much I love him and am excited for a future with him. To cry and kiss him and tell everyone about my feelings for him in that most public of ways. I got a glimmer of it anyway. If he asked me to marry him the next time I saw him, I don't know what I would say. Really don't think I'm ready for that or even want it right now. I just 'get' it now. It makes sense to me in way that I couldn't grasp before.
I wasn't excited about anything before. I barely felt human let alone loved and cared for. Now I'm planning a week long trip to Hawaii and thinking about all the possibilities that lay before me. I'd love to plan a trip with Kyle every year. Go on a cruise to Alaska, bike around Europe, tour Japan. Anywhere with him is a good time.
I want the first time I tell him I love him to be in Hawaii. Maybe under a waterfall, or watching the sunset, or on a moonlit beach. I was thinking that I didn't want to say it first. But now I do. I want to be the first one to say it. I want to know what it feels like to bare yourself naked like that. All raw with feeling and fear, "How is he going to take this?", "Does he feel the same way?" And I want it to be at just the right moment. The right moment could be anything, just so I can see his face when I say it. See the look in his eyes when the words hit his ears.
FEAR - Feeling Excited And Ready. It has been so long since I have done something that I have been excited about and a little scared to do. The feeling of life that is coursing through me is so intense. I feel like the universe is placing stepping stones down in front of my feet just before I put them down. And I'm walking fast!
Here's some quotes that I found to try to capture these feelings:

To me there is something thrilling and exalting in the thought that we are drifting forward into a splendid mystery-into something that no mortal eye hath yet seen, and no intelligence has yet declared.
Edward Chapin
Love and magic have a great deal in common. They enrich the soul, delight the heart. And they both take practice.
Nora Roberts
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
e.e. cummings

Catching up

I wrote this email to a friend recently. Thought it was interesting.

Ok, to be completely honest in our catching up, I've had the year from hell. Yep. I started out 2006 thinking that I was going to get my license to teach high school, plan Luke and my wedding in August, get married sometime in 2007, build a house and live happily ever after. Somewhere in the middle of last year, things started falling apart. I was nearly 180 pounds, (I'm closer to 140 now if that gives you any indication of how much this sucks.) I looked at my life and realized that it wasn't working. I didn't want to be a teacher and have nothing to look forward to. I saw my life stretched out before me. I saw Luke and I doing the same thing we had been doing for the past 6 years and I didn't want to continue. I wanted something more. So I did the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I broke up with Luke a week after my birthday. Packed up my stuff when he was at work one day. I cried the whole time. I felt like such a jerk. (asshole is actually the word I use most often) Here I had promised this great guy that I was going to be his forever and now I was taking it back. It's awful. I have never broken up with anyone before. In all of my relationships, I was the one to be dumped. There are so many things that weren't working with Luke and I. It's so sad. As I was cleaning up the house this December, I kept running into old love letters that I wrote him. Did you ever hear of a love letter that was an apology? It seems that those were the only ones I ever wrote to him. How sad. He was never really interested in my family, never let me be me in public. I couldn't hug my friends for crying out loud. If I did, it would start a fight. Jealousy, evil beast. I was living in a hole. SO, I moved out July 28, started my student teaching. Moving is behind death and divorce as a super stress 'thing', by the way. Finished that out. It was fun and hard. I was fighting missing my best friend and breaking up with him. Around November I finally started to realize that Luke would be better off without me and I didn't need him to be happy. I had it all figured out by December. Moved back home Christmas Eve. That was my year. Pain in the butt. The good news? I met the sweetest guy. Met him the day after Christmas at a party my lead teacher threw. He is super sweet. A musician. Lives in Nevada- another long distance relationship for me. I have decided that the universe (or god, goddess, whatever you choose to call it) has the best sense of humor. He lived right next to me the whole time I was doing my student teaching and I never met him. And he seems to be perfect for me in this moment. I nearly told him I loved him the last time I was in Nevada. In the midst of this great joy, I'm freaking out because I live in the big city of LA, I'm starting a new job, I'm taking acting classes and finding that I am WAY out of practice, and then, there it is. That little glimmer of guilt and sadness for what I left behind. I don't know if Luke talks to you much about what happened. But he told me that he won't have anyone else. That I am his dream. That sucks. I find myself really wanting to talk with him, find out how he's doing but then I stop because I don't want to give him any false hope. And I am petrified of the moment he discovers I am moving on. I don't want to hurt him anymore. But it seems inevitable. Woh, that was a lot. Hope I didn't dump too much on you and you are thinking, "Uh, Genevieve, I was only being polite when I told you I wanted to catch up, you crazy bitch.".