meanwhile...

I'm in Olney, MD, in a Starbucks using the $3.99 / 2 hr "free" WiFi while Ashley is at work.

If I had known a relationship could ever be anything like this, I think I would have been a lot less willing to put up with things in my previous relationships. And if I had known that anything like this was even potentially in my future, I think I would have been a lot less inclined to spin off into existential despair.

I don't have the words to describe it, aside from saying she's wonderful. I tell her this, and all sorts of other things, all the time. She rolls her eyes and says I'm blind.

But I'm not blind.

I feel like I can see more clearly than ever.

Relationships like this put your whole life into perspective. You start being able to see yourself as a whole being, not as a collection of faults that make you undesirable. You stop trying to "fix" yourself, attempting to scourge yourself of your bad qualities to become some impossible perfect ideal. Because people aren't equations to be solved, they're complex, paradoxical, quixotic creatures whose differing parts of their natures do not always cancel out in the end.

As I said, I've been having a lot of trouble wording what I want to say on this subject. All I can say is that it's been life-changing.

I look at myself as a person, now, and, for the first time ever, I see a complete picture. I was always trying to focus on particular parts of myself, either to "fix" them or to escape the parts I didn't like. I'm not looking to escape anything, now. I just want the picture to develop as fully and strongly as possible.

( <3 )