Be here now

Yay for joyous reunions.

I picked TK and his friend up at the airport yesterday. Ever since the movie Love Actually, I always think of airports as such a happy place - full of people standing around waiting to be reunited. Yes, I'm turning into a cornball. Or really, I have always been one.

The two of us spent our time luxuriating in each other (wink) yesterday afternoon and evening. I surprised him with a clean apartment and brownies. He made me close my eyes as he put a jade necklace around my neck. It's pretty! It turns out that guys buying jewelry is a great thing.

Being away from TK for 5 days definitely affected me. .

He caught me looking at him a few times, which is normally something he does to me.

I'm feeling less cautious and restrained about enjoying the relationship and where it's headed. The intensity of the felings that I had for Sax over the summer, which in the end were unreciprocated, left me questioning the credibility of those kinds of thoughts. It took me a while to stop worrying that the proverbial "other shoe" was going to drop with TK.

A certain part of me is still protecting myself and rationalizing, but the other part of me is enjoying our time and making plans for the future.

Don't worry; I'm not imagining a wedding and the like (though two people in my life already are), but I am thinking about some trips that we can take together. First on the list is a trip up north. TK has never been to NY, and he hasn't been to Boston since he was younger (he lived in Brookline for a bit). In May I'll have some time free, and I hope he can get the time off.

It's been hard for me not being able to introduce him to my gals up in Boston. He's brought me into that part of his life by introducing me to his twin and a lot of his friends. I've been impressed by how nice they've all been, and I've genuinely liked them all. I've never really done that before - where I've gained a new set of friends I could call mine from a relationship. I think this time I am going to have that. Right now I'm starting to feel like he's missing a piece of who I am by not being able to meet my friends. There are a few people in Raleigh I need to introduce him to (MD!), but most of them live elsewhere. That's another benefit from liking his friends so much; I'm expanding my circle!

I've never been the kind of person who likes to isolate myself in relationships. I know how easy it is to spend all of your time with the person you're dating and block everything and everyone else out. I hate that. I dislike it when people start saying, "We don't like this; We don't like that."

I've always loved and appreciated the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke (go read him if you haven't).

He writes a lot about relationships (even though his own were a little screwed up, or at least unconventional in most people's terms). But he says some great things:

"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other."

“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.”

“I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.”

For me, it's always about finding that balance in the relationship. I recharge when I have me-time. I need to be able to tell where I end and the other person begins. I dislike the feeling when those boundaries begin to blur.

That kind of thinking seems to challenge the notions we have about relationships: "You complete me," "My other half," etc.

Hehe. I guess I wouldn't be *me* if I wasn't gushing on the one side about my new boyfriend and cynically analyzing on the other!

So my point (and I do have one), is that I'm glad that TK and I are able to be social and still have relationship time. More of that, I say!