washwords

In college, contemplating and confronting so many things at one – love, feminism, liberty, life — I began my wonderings about independence.

I wrote poetry in bluegreen notebooks:

Hanging from was not a good thing, I concluded then. I would not hang from, not from him or anyone.

So I didn’t. Didn’t say “I love you.” Didn’t love fully. And didn’t hang from.

I thought it would protect me. From hurt, from risk, from giving too much, losing myself, blending into another.  But the walls I built were sheer and cool and blew over in the wind. They were poor fortresses.

Thank God.

In came the stabs and embraces and hurts and loves of the people around me, whether I wanted them or not, whether I depended or not.

I am still careful with loving, with depending. I am an independent woman, with a good job, real estate , a life, a world. To me, that’s the easy part.

Being a “dependent woman” of sorts – depending on and being depended on – has been harder to learn. And it’s been 4th-of-July-fireworks explosively fufilling – a kind of love that grows and widens and stuns and satiates. I am still learning to hang from, to trust I won’t blow over or become an unnecessary appendage. Sometimes I do fall.  And sometimes, if I let them, someone or someones catches me.