Valentine's Day

a saint, a rose, a life

I came in through his front door, his only door. And so the same door I always did, but there was a slightly different feeling about it each time, depending on my mood and whether we entered together or he buzzed me in.

He kissed me immediately upon my arrival very gently, his arms wrapped around my body as he did. Like I was something delicate, something he needed to hold onto.

He poured me a glass of white wine, or maybe vermouth? I can’t quite remember. One or the other. Sometimes I felt like I was a pretty girl in a fairytale, or in a romantic comedy, when I was over at his apartment and he would sit down next to me and pour me drinks and make me dinner. Because when had a man ever cooked a proper dinner for me before? (Alright… another man once or twice in the year prior, yes, I can be honest. But with him I had always sat up very straight and smiled without showing my teeth too much. I had never acted insane around him, for better or for worse. And I had told myself this meant that I was, that we were, mature, that this was just what an adult relationship was like. But I found the following year with J., that I was actually insane again.)

So: Valentine’s Day, here and now, with J. Something about sitting at the table, eating dinner with him like this, was so tender. Perhaps it was the wine too, but I felt as though my head had been dunked into a tub of warm bathwater. The conversation was sweet, flowing easily. (Different from the year before where I’d often had to ask to ask myself: was it real that I was this happy? Was it true happiness, or rather a kind of delusion? A kind of desperate need to know that I’d made the right choice between two potential suitors?)

I can remember too, back to the man before both of them. I’d never really been able to eat around him, that was the thing. I’d always told myself that it was the strength of the butterflies, my desire, this music in my stomach that made it so I could never just relax around him. The few times he’d taken me out for dinner I’d eaten half of the food on my plate, at most, before my stomach closed up in nausea.

I would not have been able to imagine, at that time, the act of eating with someone else ever being genuinely enjoyable. But I could eat dinner and share a dessert now, even. The sweetness of chocolate, the sharpness of fruit, way it could tingle and melt on your tongue… Food had not felt erotic to me, not in so long, but suddenly these days, it could be to me again.

And then after dinner: our move back to the couch. I felt it, the way he folded me into his arms, the way I felt his body against mine. I could close my eyes and feel that I would fall into him forever. My head, warm and dreamy, and then my body, safe against his.

I cared very much about the way J. saw me. I was aware of my deep desire to be perfect beneath his gaze.

My lipstick: either pink or red, depending. Pretty and sweet and girly. It made my lips sparkle just a little bit.

The foundation I painstakingly applied to my whole face, so that it gave me an artificial glow, even though he had already seen my red, open pores and my irritable acne scars. I was not beautiful in the morning when we woke up together: I always felt this. But somehow I was pretty in the way that a girl can be when she wakes up after having had too much fun the night before. The faded remnants of her makeup, the strange glow of her skin. The still-puffiness of her lips. Hormones trying to work their magic, I suppose. To make her still-desirable in the morning light.

My bright and defining wish was to be beautiful. Beautiful—though there were times I could tamp that desire down, of course. I did not particularly care about being beautiful at work. This I could take or leave. I liked, even, to be able to turn it on and off. Myself at work, pretty enough, but faded. Just a girl, one you maybe wouldn’t even look twice at.

But surely, when I went out in a crowd… or on evenings like this, all alone with him, and under his gaze… here and now the thought of him ever not finding me beautiful was unconscionable. It was very childish, borne of low self-esteem and a need to hide the fact that I was still uncertain as I’d been as a child. To become a young woman rather than a frightened girl. I may have fooled some people, but I probably never fooled him.

As we said goodbye the following afternoon, I felt my heart reaching out for him still. Saying our goodbyes, even if only for a short time, was always somewhat painful. It was sweet too, because I knew I didn’t have to worry that he would go cold on me and disappear completely. But still it was painful, that feeling of letting something you treasured wander farther away, if only for a couple of days.

So I felt blue walking home, yes, but also something not so far from happy—sweet enough that the blue feeling pierced me just tenderly enough to nearly be pleasurable. I wished I had my earbuds with me so I could listen to music: cotton-candy sexy songs about happy girls madly in lust or love or both. Silly pop songs, the kind that would have made me want to scream and claw my ears off a couple of years ago when I’d still been hidden in bed. Desperate, desperate, to forget. This felt like perhaps the most tangible sign of growth yet, that such frivolous music could make me feel joyful again.

Joyful… in my life, surely, I could be happy. I needn’t be small and anxious forever.

There was a feeling beneath the beat of my own heart that let me know this anxiety, this terrible sense of dread that I’d carried around for what felt like forever, could go away, could get better. If I was lucky enough, and strong enough, to be able to let it.