His named rolled off my tongue like a marble, smooth and certain, echoing across his bright kitchen before returning to my ears like a familiar song. I couldn’t believe how natural and comfortable it felt. It’s is as if we’d been family all along. Like I’ve been there life times ago, and now a life time again.

—

Not too long ago my ex pinned me with a word: avoidant. Says I ought to look at myself more deeply as not to “run away” from love.

Is that what I am? An avoidant?
I thought I was just walking away from his chaos.
—

I remember my first kiss. I was about 12 years old. I thought this was it. I had found “love” the way it’s written in the fairy tales.

The boy never wanted to see me again.

Very quickly I learned that a kiss could actually mean nothing. It was less a doorway to love and more like a soap bubble: beautiful for a breath, then pop. Gone.

Rude awakening.

After that I became obsessed with kissing. I remember keeping a tally of the boys I had kissed. Each name gave me a little jolt of power. Proof I could kiss a boy and not care. That I could be nonchalant. Detached. Almost smug. Julian, Danny…it doesn’t matter. Next.


Later, as an adult, I had many relationships, most of which I ended myself. Strangely, the ones that never became anything were the ones that gripped me the most. The intoxicating cycle of chase, touch but never quite catch is like the violent rush and crash of an amphetamine. I’m alive! Electric and devastated all in the same. Mmm. Ow. I’m awakened by the wreck and feening for more.

So naturally, when I think about settling with one person it starts to feel crowded, like the walls are closing in. It reeks of routine: sameness, monotony, the tired little “How was work?” at the end of each day. God, is this it? Does the adventure end here? How unbearably dull.

On the same token there is nothing but a desire to be with the one who makes getting smothered by walls all the rave. That’s the thing about feelings, sometimes they make no sense. You can want and not want something paradoxically so.
—

So fast forward back to you. Back to your kitchen. Back to the sound of your name ricocheting off the walls. Back to all the ways you are kind, thoughtful, intelligent, sweet, caring.

But still…

Something doesn’t feel whole. Like a thousand-piece puzzle with the very center piece missing. An absence you can’t look away from. Bummer.

Does that mean I’m avoidant?
Or could it mean that I simply haven’t found you yet?