Sleeping

After a failed attempt at sleeping and a long night of exhaustion, I find myself wrapped up on the couch while Lewis sleeps (not so soundly, as I have roused him multiple times). I am a terrible sleeper, which makes me someone with which sleeping next to is fairly irritating.  So it doesn’t make sense to me that he sleeps next to me, when I interrupt dreams so easily. Not only does he stay, when he has another bed in his own home, but he loves it.  I  take pleasure in watching him sleep. His entire body stays warm, and even in wakefulness, I find myself resting my head on his shoulder and arm around his side.  When he is awake, he strokes my hair.

I daydream about when we will spend every night together. About when we run our own household, how we will sleep in the years before we have children, how our giant golden retriever will try to burrow between us. He fantasizes about how the bed will be in the middle of the room, the bed tables with books and lamps, how we both prohibit TVs in the bedroom.

I’m going to try to go back to sleep.

Happy New Years!

I meant to post this yesterday, but time got away from me (read: had a few bottles of wine with my mum, Lewis & Bridget).

New Years is supposed to be all about new beginnings. I don’t want a new beginning. I’m enraptured with where I’m going. I’m happy with who I’m going with. If I had a resolution this year, it would be to love myself more the way Lewis loves me. I am confident, I know that I’m beautiful, intelligent, and I know my heart. And that is only strengthened by our news:

We’ve picked out and bought a ring.  I had previously chosen a favorite. The serious price didn’t deter that it was meant to be mine. Aimlessly staring at jewelry in a resale shop, we saw it.  It was sitting in between many larger, more gaudy rings, between tons of other stones. But there was my ring. And so I asked to see it, praying that it could be my size, the accident of the present band being slight, I held hope fortune would issue a continuance.

It fit! I didn’t mean to want a ring purchased so fast, but between cost and the nakedness felt after I removed it, I didn’t tempt losing it. (I admit, I can barely lift it off my finger for a moment without feeling my finger tingle in disappointment.)  So now this gorgeous (and huge) topaz ring, with 14k Gold setting and a 1/4 inch silver band, is ours.

I hope everyone has started the New Year with great hopes and great cheer.

Love,

Elizabeth

Helene Cixous

 Helene Cixous is one of my favorite feminist philosophers, and a major reason I have started to write again.  She has provoked my animus.  

Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven’t written. Because writing is at once too high, too great for you, it’s reserved for the great – that is for “great men”; and it’s “silly.” Besides, you’ve written a little, but in secret. And it wasn’t good, because it was secret, and because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn’t go all the way, or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit, just enough to take the edge off.  (The Laugh of the Medusa)

I wrote a mess as a child.  But upon the first denying response to an autobiographical draft, I stopped.  I policed my own hand as to not offend the sensibilities of others.  Writing has become so personally feminist to me, something that allows me to step out of my restrained identity.

I am not bothered by the fact that having a (male)lover that has called me to write again.  I am in love, and I choose to be more myself, being confident in my ability to love. I am not afraid of being too much.  And he, my beloved, is the cause of my inspiration.

Christmas Eve

I woke up next to him on Christmas Eve, our first. He is whispering small wants into my ear.

“I have never been happier,” He tells me, still holding me. What these words do to me, no matter how many times I hear them is amazing.  At first it is like shock, I am afraid.  Anxiety stirs with the knowledge that I am not the only one living in love, which is more than I ever dreamt.  I cannot imagine being next to anybody but him, and he is who I think about.   This halcyon state physically manifests as warmth both deep within my breast and brushing against my cheek.  I am not subdued in the sense of and moderation or restraint, and yet I have no desire to move a muscle because my pleasure is matchless in this moment.

I stutter out something about being comfortable with him, I am always terrible with words around him. Still like an awkward schoolgirl.

Merry Christmas,

Elizabeth