this is how you remind me; of what I really am
What does Amanda want? He asked.
I said I didn't know if I knew that answer, bereft by the pointedness and pointlessness of the question, bereft of that time when the response that was appropriate once existed and mattered. But as I spent the afternoon thinking of a five hundred word essay answer, and then spent the evening updating someone dear on the last about month and year in some ways, I realized that was a lie. Not specifically that I had lied or chosen to lie.
But it was a lie to keep thinking I didn't know the answer. In my heart. In my soul. In every inch of my skin. Every breath of my day. That I don't need to write justifications for it. Everyone in my life has already been here, every step of the way. They already know how and why, in every excruciating and miraculous detail. Maybe I need to own that as well.
That disabused of all my first year dreams, assumptions, loyalties, sensibilities, patience’s, compromises, excuses, naivetés, allowances, and respects, the answer has become rather startlingly clear. To everyone around me. To me. That he was right. It is the simplest question; the simplest answer. Deceptively simple, in fact.
What does Amanda want?
The very same thing she wants to give.
Everything.
Every. Single. Thing.
But what I want and what I expect
-- ask for, take, have, get in return for giving --
are two very different things.
I said I didn't know if I knew that answer, bereft by the pointedness and pointlessness of the question, bereft of that time when the response that was appropriate once existed and mattered. But as I spent the afternoon thinking of a five hundred word essay answer, and then spent the evening updating someone dear on the last about month and year in some ways, I realized that was a lie. Not specifically that I had lied or chosen to lie.
But it was a lie to keep thinking I didn't know the answer. In my heart. In my soul. In every inch of my skin. Every breath of my day. That I don't need to write justifications for it. Everyone in my life has already been here, every step of the way. They already know how and why, in every excruciating and miraculous detail. Maybe I need to own that as well.
That disabused of all my first year dreams, assumptions, loyalties, sensibilities, patience’s, compromises, excuses, naivetés, allowances, and respects, the answer has become rather startlingly clear. To everyone around me. To me. That he was right. It is the simplest question; the simplest answer. Deceptively simple, in fact.
What does Amanda want?
The very same thing she wants to give.
Everything.
Every. Single. Thing.
But what I want and what I expect
-- ask for, take, have, get in return for giving --
are two very different things.