pushing it

Last weekend, for the first time, I danced- unchoreographed, partnerless though not alone, and maybe a little too uninhibitedly. It was not pretty, and I hope that next time you're out dancing with other people, images of my shameless movements haunt your memories to help remind you what *not* ever to do in public. You're welcome.

I was happy, and unfettered to float into highs that weren't just from consumed chemicals.

I also cried in front of you for what I think was the first time. I came home feeling like you had seen me naked- though not, like, completely nude. Like I had just bared a scandalous part of the front of my soul through an open duster, except without shame or pain or any other negative things attached. Exposing my physical self seems like no big deal in comparison. It would be easy let you use my heavily flawed and muscle-deficient body for some artsy photos if for some reason you ever wanted to and asked nicely enough- not because I'm becoming more confident, but because I trust you to see and use it well. and prolly make me look a trillion yen better than I really do.

I guess I should be giving you this level of vulnerability, not necessarily in these same ways, in reciprocation for how demanding I've been of you, though it's far from an obligation. I want to give it to you, along with so much more. I'm sorry if those demands have hurt or strained or compromised you. I've been too careless. I haven't been calculating the consequences, because the only consequences I've cared about have been growing in closeness with you, no longer fearing intimacy, and giving you whatever I possibly could out of my meager self and means to make you smile or laugh or catch a glimpse of how profoundly treasured and Loved you are.

You give me so much, and I get sick to my stomach to think of what I've unthinkingly tried to take from you on top of that. Specifically, your own vulnerability and trust. I have neither the place nor the power to try to hold onto you so tightly, given your past and current experiences and burdens, and all the bidges i've brurninated myself along with by standing on too long.

I'll apologize to you in person for this too, but I am so sorry for ever insisting that you feel about or approach our friendship in any particular way.

Something in me has been broken down sometime in the last several months, for good reasons and with positive results, and I realized its absence that night. I'm almost certain that it was simply fear. The icy coating of anxiety and insecurity that has coated my thoughts for so long now melts in your presence. What the eff have you done?! That alone should scare me, but it doesn't. Maybe I'll learn enough about this phenomenon to give it its own post someday. Until then, I'm onto you, and I'm sorrynotsorry for occasionally giving you nonlethal overdoses of me in the process.