That Kind Of Woman

I think we realize a little more something about ourselves each time we extend ourselves to others. It may be at the bus stop, with a smile and a hello. It may be a presentation at work or for school. It may be putting yourself out there to meet someone who lives a thousand miles away.

I am me. I don’t have to be the same person I was yesterday, or two years before that. That is such a blessed thing to realize. It’s so hard being accountable for other people’s feelings when things are out of your control. Distance, timing, or situation. 

We gave it a try, we met. Things were tough. Things were amazing. But, at the end of the day if I am not truthful to myself then what good am I to another person, especially another person who deserves me to be the fullest person I can to my fullest potential, then I am taking advantage of what they are willing to give.

I am not in a position to be in a relationship with anyone.

There. I said it. Actually, I dodged around that…

I do not want to be in a relationship right now.

Damn. That’s it. 

This I realize. It’s amazing to realize that, especially after years of not understanding why I couldn’t find “the one” to be with.

Because, (past me), you were and are so young. You are a baby in the world, your experiences are yours, not to happen once someone finds something worthy in you. I thought a lot of my potential as a person was wasted on the fact I was single. I mean, how messed up is that, to think that way as a 19, 20, 21 year old. My worth was determined in my eyes by the fact that someone wanted me.

Not to say I settled. I could have. I think everyone could settle. For someone who doesn’t treat you right, or who doesn’t make you feel happy, or any other reason. I was waiting for another person to affirm what I already understood about myself, but until they showed up I would half ass my relationship with myself.

Damn. When and where did that happen? 

What can I say? It was self doubt, insecurity and the overall feeling of being left out. You feel left out when you can’t find someone, especially when those around you seem to find a perfect equivalent. As I become more and more sure of the person I am, of what I am giving to the world as a whole, I realize that it was long overdue that I spend time cultivating myself. Doing things I like, getting better at activities I liked, doing things I wanted to. 

That leads to a different path, one that asks the question “What do I like doing?” and “Why?”. Then there is the whole “graduating college and spending a year in a topsy turvy world of possibilities” not that there is anything wrong with that. I have learned my strength, and weaknesses.

However, just because you know those things doesn’t mean you are suddenly complete. God, it sure doesn’t. I am a mess. I weep in the arms of my friends, I yell and laugh and dance in the company of kindreds. I make bad decisions. But, it’s how I handle the consequences. It’s okay to do bad things. It is, as long as you realize they were bad and you advance and adjust. 

So, I sit here. Realizing that I cannot be accountable for anyone but myself. I can’t. Not until I make a very conscious choice to merge my life with someone who also has realized that it takes a whole lot of self growth before you can grow as a pair. 

(Source: thatkindofwoman)

You make me want to be woman.

Pure woman.
Curve of the hips, soft skin.
Silky hair, parted lips.
Dark eyes, slip of the tongue.

We’ll lay in bed in the morning light,
me breaking and mending my heart
to every characteristic of your face.

I’d talk when you’d want to keep silent.

(Source: thatkindofwoman)

Don’t ever let anyone ruin a song for you. Sometimes people come in and out of life purely to share a good song with. Or at least, I have convinced myself of that.

They have taken some of time, maybe a little of your heart, but please I beg you don’t let the music that you at one time loved be taken away. 

It may have been your freshman year of college, in some guy’s devastatingly messy dormitory and he played Hey by Pixies every time you were together. In his car, or when you sat on his bed and stared at his hands as he stared at your mouth. Then suddenly, because you didn’t know or want to move fast, he was dating a girl with purple in her hair. 

It may have been junior year of high school when your sister got into a car accident and you were right there with her in the passenger seat suspended by your seatbelt and Billie Holiday’s I Can’t Give you Anything But Love was playing in the background, amplified by the adrenaline that was pumping.

It may have been the long distance love on that one monumental night while you lay breathless on the phone. And he told you to play This Must Be the Place by Talking Heads and you swear that every part of you was separating and colliding with the wish you were laying in bed with him, and that the distance was nothing as your hands intertwined listening to one of the most beautiful song you had ever heard. Then, only a year later to miss the best friend you had developed because you wanted and needed more and you couldn’t stay silent about it, and he couldn’t give it. And every time you hear it, you ache with a little of that hope which you felt that night.

You may have heard the song in the background of a party where you were being broken up with in the hallway. You may have cried and wept to a song after your grandfather past away. You may have been throwing up into a trash can after a roller coaster, and the park speakers played the song over your nausea and fear. You may have told secrets, or lies to a certain song, and then had your trust betrayed. 

Don’t let anyone ruin any song for you. Don’t throw away that feeling, appreciate how it felt and realize that there are so may more songs to hear, and to appreciate the ones that you loved, even if the pain is still there.

(Source: thatkindofwoman)

Do you believe in the term, that when it rains it pours?

I guess I can. Good things come in threes. You’ll never be younger than you are just now. They all make sense. But, it’s just my mind whooshing around thinking about all these different things that have come across my conscious.

I watch Girls on HBO, and honest to a higher power, that is what I find my life and my fellow 20 somethings to be like.  It’s awkward. It’s too much alcohol, not enough good sense, and remembering each night and bringing it up to friends. I try my hardest to make good decisions, and in the recent past I have been looking out for myself, because for a while there I was letting the people around me dictate how I felt about myself. 

I laugh hysterically on the phone when I hear horrible sexual experience of my friends, and I jot down horrible dating stories that I myself have faced.  More recently, I have for some reason begun to re-attract men that have come in and out of my life in the past 6 years. Who are these men? Mostly friends. Guy friends that usually look at me like one of the guys. I played pool, or basketball, scrounged through thrift stores for vintage woolrich, or collected firewood for backyard bonfires. These boys have started to resurface wanting different things from me. 

Is it because I finally really accepted and come to terms with the fact my soulmate, or even a truly dateable guy will not be found in this bumble cuss county in which I have been born and raised? Now, suddenly these boys that I know are stepping forward. Either with grand proposals or declarations, with propositions, or asking to “hang out”. 

What!? Wait, hold on. Let me please straighten this out. You want to date me. You want me to be yours. You want to hold me when we fall asleep, and kiss me before I brush my teeth in the morning.

Okay. No. You do not know me. You have not taken the time to know who I am. Sure you knew me in college. You knew who I was when I was 18 and I wore jeans and my grandfather’s golf sweaters and I had those really horrible two toned glasses. For 5 years you coasted by with occasional texts, or phone calls, that you said annually happy birthday wishes on facebook. That one time we bar hopped and I won every game of pool I played.  That time you leaned into kiss me and I playfully darted away asking you what you thought you were doing, because honestly I had no idea what you were trying to do. We are friends. Barely. You knew me at 18, 19, or 20. You knew a girl I was. Now that I am a young woman, now that have certain things that are staples, you seemingly and suddenly think that I am everything that you have ever wanted. 

You don’t know me. You only see how I have grown since that time you kind of knew me. You don’t know who I am know. And honestly it doesn’t sound like you want to.

Why is it that my generation just wants to skip right to intimacy? Why do you want me to be yours? Why do you declare it at the local bar? Why have you never in the past year asked me out for tea, or asked me if I wanted to go down to the city, or maybe even just asked me about what I am doing with my life now, and what I want to do in a year?

You say I am the perfect woman, I am independent. You like how I hold my own at the bar, or the music I play at my parties. You like how I hug you, or how dark my hair is.

You have never seen me cry. You have never held my hand when we cross the street. You have never met my parents. Your leg has never brushed mine at a movie theater or under a table. You don’t ever talk to me on the phone when we fall asleep. Why should I be yours?

You have never heard my catty comments, or the way I refuse to let someone gip me in line. You haven’t sat with me to watch episode after episode of Arrested Development, or seen how neurotic I am in the kitchen.

These are things you may have heard about me, but good god don’t ever tell me you want to be with me if you’ve never once seen me comfortable in my own area or ever uncomfortable. If you’ve never met my friends, or never understood how I feel about sex, commitment and my body.

It makes me unbearably sad and angry when someone tells me they want to be with me, or sweep me off my feet.

You don’t know me. You know what you see about me. You know what you think you understand about me. 

You know what you see, what you want to see. You know what I have allowed you to see as a casual friend. As someone I joke around with in public, or those couple times we hung out with mutual friends. 

Don’t expect me to fall into your arms or bed because you tell me pretty words one night. Don’t make excuses why you haven’t asked me on a date. Don’t blame it on circumstance or time. 

I am too polite to embarrass you. Instead, I tell you that I don’t want to ruin our friendship. Which is the truth. I tell you that I don’t think it would be a good idea to automatically jump into a relationship. Because it isn’t.

I don’t want to be with you, because you do not know me, and you certainly haven’t tried.

Be my friend, a constant feature in my life. Not a guest star that rolls in and expects everyone to know the plot. I don’t know the plot. I know who you are in the settings in which we have become friends. Much like the paper dolls I had as a kid, you got the doll, her clothing and the scene. School, the playground, in her house. 

If I were a paper doll, you are seemingly fixed already to the scene. The bar, and our friend’s house. You always wear the same thing, and we only ever talk briefly, or maybe we’ve had a couple conversations that close down the bar, but never really hold any meaning. 

Don’t treat me like a one dimensional person then profess your feelings to me. I am not the woman you have drawn up in your mind. 

You don’t know me, and you certainly haven’t ever tried. 

(Source: thatkindofwoman)

I write about you, but I would never write you up in a pretty package so that one day you appear and all of those things I wrote suddenly weren’t just things but actual memories.

It scares me sometimes. How much I have this image of a man that will love me as much as I love him. I want a story to tell my kids.

My mom and dad first met when they were kids at a friend of each their family’s farm and they played baseball in a field. McCarty kids, and Keegan kids.

Then my mom was 18 and driving her father’s company car through an intersection about 3 blocks from where I now sit. She spotted my dad, a stranger to her, walking through the gas station parking lot and ended up causing a big accident when she bent the frame of the car. She said she couldn’t look away. 

Then when she was 24 she bought him a drink from across the bar. She remembers him fondly, shying away from hoards of women. Tall, handsome, and quiet.

I was driving with my dad last night, the sky was dark and we were coming back from upstate New York. My dad’s driving had become more relaxed, as it was the middle of the journey. We chatted on and off about this or that, I was reading Pablo Neruda translations and feeling tired and sore.

I asked my dad what he remembered about the night my mom bought him a drink. I thought maybe he would just agree that it had happened. Instead, I was brought to tears by his tone and how carefully he recollected details. The way she wore her hair that night, the shirt and shorts she wore, that she wasn’t wearing her glasses and he remembered specifically she covered her mouth when she laughed. Maybe she was self conscious about her teeth, he wondered. At this I interjected that I loved my mother’s bottom teeth slightly crooked and pearly. Beautiful teeth, he agreed. He loves my mother more than I have ever seen a man love a woman, adoration and pure bursting love. They hold hands, and kiss. Wrap their arms around each other in greeting if my father has been gone away on business. 

I ache at times for a grand love, and I read somewhere that the greatest love story you will know is your own. But, god damn, my parent’s story is beautiful, and honest.

I just know that I can write all the fiction I have in my soul, but one day I hope that my great true and real love story will be told, even if it’s just to my kids when they get to be my age. 

(Source: thatkindofwoman)

I think a lot of what happens between people that fight is that there is anger, hurt, fear and misunderstanding. Even if it’s just one party, who won’t hear what the other may or may not be saying  it will keep the entire relationship on the edge of a rocky precipice. At any moment it will come tumbling down. 

But, as one of the parties you need to understand what you can and can’t do. You can’t force someone to feel how you feel, or to feel a different way. Instead, you need to understand that you can and cannot carry that hurt around. You need to understand the love that you carry and that no matter what you stood by it. 

(Source: thatkindofwoman)

We swore to each other in the inky darkness,
that we would meet each other,
toe for toe.
Those lies held us together longer than any of our truths would.
Instead, we met others that held us together with quality.

No longer did we use force and quickness to patch up the problems.
We dissolved.
We disappeared.

In it’s place we became separate.
We found someone who was meant to be.

Meaningful silences.
Words meant more.
Touches felt more.

We found ourselves in matches.
Not pairs. 

“Please don’t go” wasn’t an option. 
“Won’t you stay” was never said. 

We had to stay. 
Without them we couldn’t see. 
 

(Source: thatkindofwoman)

By Ryan O’Connell

You will fall in love with someone who annoys you, whose orgasm face looks and feels pathetic. Despite all of this, there’s something keeping you drawn to them, something that makes you want to protect them from the harsh world. What you fail to realize, however, is that you are the harsh world. You aren’t their noble protector — you are someone to be protected from but it takes a lot of dates, a lot of nights where you question whether or not you are actually a good person, for this to ever resonate with you. When it’s over and whatever love is left is put back in the fridge like a sad plate of leftovers, you will finally understand that you have the power to hurt someone. You can either hurt them or love them and it’s up to you to decide what kind of role you would like to take on in future relationships. What feels more comfortable — being the one who loves more or being the one who’s loved less?

You will fall in love with someone who’s cold and always seemingly pushing you away. When all is said and done, they will be forever known as the one person you couldn’t get to love you. Unfortunately, it will hurt and sting worse than the good ones, the ones that chopped up your meat for you and picked out an eyelash from your eye and were nice to your mother, because love often feels like a game we need to win. And when we lose, when we realize we couldn’t get what we ultimately desired from a person, it makes us feel like a failure and erases all the memories of those who loved us in the past. It’s a permanent smudge on your love resume.

You will fall in love with someone for one night and one night only. They’ll come to you when you need them and be gone in the morning when you don’t. At first, this will make you feel empty and you’ll try to convince yourself that you could’ve loved this person for longer than a night, but you can’t. Some people are just meant to make cameo appearances, some are destined to be a pithy footnote. That’s okay though. Not every person we love has to stick around. Sometimes it’s better to leave while you’re still ahead. Sometimes it’s better to leave before you get unloved.

You will fall in love with the old couple down the street because to you they represent the impossible: a stable, long-lasting love. You’re trying to get someone to like you for more than ten minutes. A monogamous “never get sick of ya” love seems unfathomable. “What’s your secret, sir? Do you just say yes a lot?”

You will fall in love with smells, the good and the bad kind. You will want to wear your lovers shirt because it makes you feel close to them and you’re okay with being that PYSCHO who is legitimately sniffing their shirt in public. You will fall in love with sweat, certain perfumes, the smell of the season in which you fell in love. This particular love smells like fall. It smells like Halloween and a roaring fire and leaves and fog and mist and candy and food and family and whiskey and sex and the lint that collects on sweaters. When it ends, if it ends, you will never experience another fall without thinking of him, her, it. The memories will stick to the ground like a mound of leaves and will only dissipate when the weather drops.

You will fall in love with your friends. Deep, passionate love. You will create a second family with them, a kind of tribe that makes you feel less vulnerable. Sometimes our families can’t love us all the time. Sometimes we’re born into families who don’t know how to love us properly. They do as much as they can but the rest is up to our friends. They can love you all the time, without judgement. At least the good ones can.

This is where I’m supposed to tell you that you will fall in love with The One, a person who isn’t too cold or too nice. Their “O” face is perfectly fine and they’re not afraid to show how much they love you. This person is supposed to wait for us at the end of the twentysomething road as some kind of reward for all the heartache and loneliness. We deserve them. We’ve earned this kind of love.

So fine. You’re going to fall in love with The One. You’re going to fall in love with someone who will make sense beyond college or a job or a particular season. They’ll make sense forever and won’t ever want to leave you behind. I’m telling you this not because it’s true but because it NEEDS to be true. Everyone is entitled to this kind of love, so why not? Have it. It’s yours. Blow out the candles on your 30th birthday, holding their hand, and let out an exhale that’s been waiting for ten years. Do it. Now.

(Source: thoughtcatalog.com)

To think, that there is someone who just wants you.
Just as you are. 
Cracked bones, crooked teeth, rough skin.
They see things to love. To want.

Messy hair, bad morning breath, and minutes filled with hiccups.
Someone wants you.

They want to hold you close, and breath in the scent of your skin.
They want to stand on your stoop in the frosty air waiting for you to let them in.

They sweat sickly sweet with you on hot summer days hiking to abandon water sheds.
Will rub your sore muscles with concern and care.

Will overindulge with you in your not so vicious vices.  
Will whisper true love’s words into your hair and neck in the dark morning light.

They will want you, so bad.
Ache, toss and turn.
Imagine.

And you, will want them too.

So bad.  

(Source: thatkindofwoman)