One day, Mrs. Darling, you’re going to think back to a discussion on whether you’re incredibly strong or terribly weak.
Today is not that day. Today is a cleaning day and you need to shut off your brain and enjoy the mindless peace that lives at the bottom of a scrub bucket.

When you’re ready to come back, here’s a starting place for you to get back to where you are right now.

–

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.
-Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum LP

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.
-Washington Irving

People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain. -Jim Morrison

It’s been a long time coming, a long time waiting patiently. So much discernment.

We’ve opened up our doors, our home, our hearts. 

Our pants.

Well, “we” have in theory. But in application? 

He’s opened his pants. I’ve only had the opportunity to open my mind.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to move from a monogamous relationship to an ethically non-monogamous one? Shit.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to do so when once opened your partner is the first to find another? Holy shit.

How about seeking other partners when you’re an owned slave? When any potential partner needs to meet not just your high standards but also assure your Owner that you won’t be damaged? Holy fucking shit.

Years of the option on the table. Nary a single taker. 

Until.
 
You taste different. You smell different, look different, feel different under my fingertips. Feel different in my presence.

It’s not better or worse or even comparable.

That’s not the point.

That’s not what it’s about for me, for us, for this.

It’s about not writing off the chance to taste “other.” Other life, other experience, other challenges. Other opportunity for growth, for lust, for curiosity, for people.

It’s about welcoming in new energy. A connection.

A connection sometimes so brief. A fleeting memory of walking past a stranger and feeling as if the universe is pushing you towards them.

Sometimes it’s more. Sometimes it’s a mental connection. You find yourself completing the sentence of a stranger-turning-not-stranger. 

Or maybe it’s a physical pull and it’s all you can do to not close that six inch gap and feel new lips. My hands itch to unbutton you, to reveal more of you, so I fidget and blush instead. 

That connection (any new connection) would be left undiscovered if we weren’t open to “other.”

 I finally understand it now, after tasting you. 

After tasting new.

You tasted different. Not better or worse or comparable. 
 
 And you tasted incredible.