I am beginning to wonder if I have ever really known love as an adult. I can see my relationships clearly now that they have expired and I am beginning to wonder if I've ever been in love for the right reason and at the same time as I was loved by someone else. When I think of my most recent relationship -- which has been dead for almost two years -- I clearly see someone going above and beyond to make sure that my every need was met. If I cleared my throat there was water. If I rubbed my neck, firm hands would massage my shoulders easing away tension. And sex? Oh please! It was of Olympian portions. But did I love him, too? Did he love me fully the way I needed to be loved? The way I needed my daughter to be loved? I'm not so sure and that's why he is in the rear view.
"Looking back on love though the faces have all changed..."
My daughter sprang forth from the love I had for her father when he was a seventh grader and i was a sixth grader. We had been kids playing basketball in alleyways and walking the city carefree and young. That later blossomed into a high school romance that would withstand absences caused by his stints in juvenile detention centers. I didn't see him change because to me, we were still those same kids talking shit and hitting layups in the alley. Problem was, he was a grown man and there were no traces of the small-statured boy I once loved. He was a monster, yet I was fiercely in love with the ghost of his twelve-year-old self. He was an abuser, liar, and cheater, but I didn't see him. What I saw was the same little boy who wrote me a stack of letters so high that I had to ribbon them together to make certain that none were lost. That boy was dead. So what's a girl to do?
"I should be running / like a baby I still crawl..."
So here I am years later and what have I learned? I don't really have a ravenous dating life as some would assume and you can catch me at home watching Matlock wearing my sexy, satin bonnet. I would like to date, but I am not so certain that the man I need really exists. It's almost like I've seen glimpses of what I like and need in the last one. But, alas, even he was broken. Content with using me once I offered my kindness. So now, I am suspicious. Like the Vietnam veteran's child I am, I lay in wait for the first sign of suspect behavior with my twig helmet on ready to make a full- blown army crawl the hell out....
