Dear Thirteen: A Soft Place to Land

For as long as I can remember, all I ever wanted was to be wanted. 

I wanted to be known, seen, chosen. After spending all day with my mind moving a mile a minute, I wanted to come home and have a soft place to land. Someone to depend on when times get rough. I wanted someone to buy me flowers, so I could come home to a full vase and feel loved. I mean growing up I would leave my house hoping I met the love of my life while I was out. 

The feeling feels most extreme when I see the girls I grew up falling in love. More than half the girls I went to middle school are married or have babies meanwhile I feel like the singer Raye: “Baby where the hell is my husband?”

It’s easy to see other people's lives and feel like I’m falling behind. Like maybe I spent too long trying to achieve greatness and now it’s too late for me to have the love I have spent much of my life dreaming about. I don’t have someone to text when the plane lands, or a hand to hold at the fair, I cook dinner for just little ole me. And that feels really scary. Like a boogie man creeping up on me. 

So, I’m pivoting. Instead of focusing on what I lack…I’m trying to focus on where I have seen and felt love during this part of my life. Places where I have sought softness out and felt it envelop me. 

Post club debrief

Like how I’m always free to host without having to check with a partner. My door is open without conditions. I rewatch my favorite shows and youtube videos over and over again without complaint from an audience. No one is asking me to justify the audible reactions I have to books I’m reading. I’m not begging someone to text me back because I’m too busy screaming at a football game. My life is full and exciting without there being a romantic connection in it. I’ve been filling up my empty spaces in a million and one different ways. I write my blog, I go to the movies, I read as much as I can. I’m enjoying this new chapter of my life and it is so wonderfully full and fun!

Still though, sometimes when I wake up my bed is colder than I’d like it to be. I think about the life I’ve made for myself and how I want to share it with someone. On those mornings, I remember my other soft places.

I think about the five girls sitting cross legged on my living room floor. 

I think about how we share a massive amount of Korean food. Plates get passed, music is played, and drinks flow. The way we dogpile into my bed to debrief the night before.

I think about coming home from work and making a U-Turn because a girlfriend wanted to have a last minute dinner. And meeting up at WaWa so we could get gas together. 

I think about how I don’t keep a wine stopper in my apartment because we’ve never met a bottle of wine we don’t finish. Then the drunken laughter while I play the harmonica and someone sings Piano Man.

That is the greatest love that I have ever known. Everything I could possibly know about love, I learned from them. 

Boys are fun. They’re nice to have around, I enjoy the warmth they provide, I appreciate when they put gas in my car. But it will never amount to them. It will never be as pure, as honest, as reassuring.

I might love him, but it’s not like I love them. 

And when they leave and I’m back in my apartment on my own; I put on my most cozy jammies, my fuzzy slippers, and I eat ice cream straight outta the pint. My home might just be me, but I think that might be ok. I still come home to a full flower vase every night; I just so happen to have bought the flowers. But that doesn’t make them less lovely. It just makes them mine. I have all of this love to give, why not give some to myself?

I’m my own pair of safe hands. 

I am a soft place to land.