LOVE LETTER: DEAR SOULMATE

Dear Soulmate,

I do not believe in wasting my words, and I doing not believe in making promises I cannot keep; but there are some things that I would like to promise...

I can't promise to always be able keep you safe and healthy and to ensure that no harm ever comes to you; but I promise to always defend you, always comfort you, always try.

I can't promise we will never fight; but I promise I will never lay hands on you.

I can't promise we will always be in our "honeymoon" stage; but I promise you I will always try to show you how much I love you.

I can't promise we won't face hard times; but I promise that I will always stand by your side and fight through it.

I can't promise you I won't have bad habits and vices; but I promise I will always put you first.

I can't promise to always communicate well or express my feelings; but I promise to always be honest.

I can't promise to buy you everything you want; but I promise to work hard to always be able to buy you the things that you need

 I can't promise that I will remember every anniversary and important date; but I promise to always put thought into the things I buy and do for you.

I can't promise that our relationship will be perfect; but I promise I will always love you.


Forever yours, my love, yours and only yours

LOVE LETTER: DEAR FUTURE EVERYTHING

Dear Future Everything,

One day, one beautiful, wonderful, glorious day, you will be my everything <3 It will be me and you against the world babe, and no one and nothing will ever come between us. That is a wonderful thought!

But I would be a fool to say it is going to be all sunshine and rainbows.

You're gonna have junk, I'm gonna have junk, and we are gonna have junk.

Right now, I'm stronger than I've ever been. And I am confident that I will be even stronger tomorrow. I have come to a place where I am done letting my days run me, I run my days.

I think that I am ready for you to come into my life. I can wait, but I know that where I have gotten to is a place where I can let someone in, where I can let you in. I am confident that no matter what we face we can face it together. When old junk comes up we will get through it together. When new junk comes up we will get through it together.

I cannot wait to say goodnight and still be able to fall asleep with you in my arms.

I cannot wait to wake up and have you be the first thing I see.

I cannot wait to surprise you with flowers on any old day.

I cannot wait for the good times.

But I also (and I realize I will probably eat these words) cannot wait for the bumps in the road. Not because hard times are fun, but because hard times will make us closer and stronger.

I am ready to take on the world with you <3

Until you say I do, and everyday after
Always waiting for you, and always yours

LOVE LETTER: DEAR SOULMATE

Dear Soulmate,

I cannot wait to meet you. I cannot wait to fall in Love with you. I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with you.

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I hope that you remember a few things...

   One day your heart will be the most important thing in the world to me; so please protect it.

   You are beautiful! Not just when you believe it, all the time. Inside, outside, nice clothes, or sweat pants-        100% perfect.

   All the little things that make you YOU- your weird habits, the silly things you do, all of your secrets-   Never change because one day chances are I am gonna adore all of those parts of you.

   Don't give up on Love; It will find you when I do.

   Never stop chasing your dreams; Never stop doing the things that make you happy.

 
From who-knows-when until Forever, yours

PERSONAL/LOVE LETTER: TO MY FUTURE FOREVER

To my future forever,

Sometimes It can feel like the sky is falling, like the earth is crumbling. I feel this, I'm sure you've felt this. However, life up to this point has taught me that no matter what the circumstances are joy can still be had.

No matter what storms may come our way I want you to know that I will always be anchored in hope. Hope that will come from within, and hope that will come from you. Quitting would be such an easy option; but I don't want easy, I want to be prepared to take care of you. I am glad for the hardships I go through now because my todays are preparing be for my tomorrows with you.

I am no stranger to hard times, I am no stranger to hard work. And when I find you I don't want to be a stranger to any quality that I can obtain. I thank God for my hard times, because that is when I learn the most. Everyday I do my best to grow and be better than I was the day before. I am not perfect, but I promise you that I will never stop growing. Sometimes I panic, but I never quit; and I will never quit on you.


From now until you are mine,
It is all for you

PERSONAL...I AM YOUR SOULMATE

Hey there. I am your soul mate, the one person on this earth who's perfect for you in every way. Yes, I exist, and yes, everyone else you've been with is a pale subsitute. We're meant to be together, but we've never met.

You see, there are 6 billion people in the world and you encounter at most about 1,000 people per day, so statistically our paths would cross only once every 16,500 years. if we're going to beat those odds you need to work harder, because so far you've done a spectacular job of messing this up.

Remember when you bought that pack of gum and the clerk asked if you wanted a bag, but you were in a rush so you said no? If you'd waited that extra three seconds you would have missed the next train, making you late for the play, so they wouldn't have let you in the theater until the first scene was over, and I would have entered the lobby--also late--and we'd have gotten to talking. We probably would have just skipped the play and gotten coffee and then...Pow! Fifty years of golden summers at the lake house.

Another example: Remember when you signed up for yoga class? You should have signed up for pottery class. I was taking a pottery class!! How hard is that to figure out? And don't just sign up for a pottery class next time, because I might have moved on to hip-hop cardio. I can't tell you exactly where I'll be because if you're really my soul mate you'll just know. Please just get it right! 

I guess what I am saying is, next time you think about going to the museum today instead of tomorrow when I'll be there, ask yourself: Do you really want to spend the rest of your life alone? Are you going to take the bus or are you going to walk? If you do walk and it's raining, how are you going to see me under my umbrella, unless I don't have one and you share yours, or I share mine and that's how we meet? So remember: Never leave the house without an umbrella...or with one. It's your choice. I think I explained pretty clearly what's at stake.

Are you reading this at a book store? I'm right behind you. Turn around!

Am I still there?

Gosh, you're a slow reader.

Point is, hanging over every decision you make, however small, is the sword of our loneliness. I am out there. Find me. But please hurry. I know we're meant to be together for eternity, but I can't wait forever.

LOVE LETTER: DEAR SOULMATE

Dear Soulmate,

Every moment without you I am missing you. Every kiss, every caress, every word. My heart plays havoc with my tortured soul.The tears want to spell out my vulnerability.  The pain wants to brand itself in my mind. The song my spirit sang- on pause.Needing so bad to hear I Love You, missing you. Needing to be held in your arms, wanting you. Needing to feel your kiss upon me, loving you.I need you now more than ever before. You set my soul at ease. Let me know that everything is OK. I just want to top...Missing you. When the Sun rises in the West...I will stop loving you.When the Ocean blue is drained...I will stop loving you. When the Earth stops spinning...I will stop loving you.When the Ocean freezes over...I will stop loving you. Until those things should ever happen, my love for you will be so true,Even when my heart has beat its last...I will keep on LOVING you!!  When I gaze deep into you beautiful eyes,all I can see is the bright starry skies.The twinkle in your eyes was a gift from up above,I am telling you this with my affectionate love.     When you stare at me with those beautiful eyes,I can see all the great passion you have for me.I can promise that our love and devotion will never die,because when I look into your eyes that is all I see.Your beautiful eyes are so deep,the way you gaze at me with such passion.While I lie in bed at night, it is hard to sleep,because all I can do is think of you.You are on my mind night and day,the thoughts of you are wonderfully right.I only have one more thing to say, I feel your eyes are watching me every night. Your beautiful eyes are so hypnotizing,no wonder why I feel in love with you.I feel our love rising and rising,I tell you this because, I am true.I LOVE YOUR BEAUTIFUL EYES.....

LOVE LETTER; DEAR SOULMATE

Dear Soulmate,

Come into my heart.Let me be your refuge.  Take solace in my arms. Let me be your peace. I will calm your nerves and share your pain. I will hold your hand and walk by your side. Share in my love make it yours.  Share in my life make it ours, I can't seem to put in words..the things I want to say.So I write them in these letters with the hope that one day you will know in your heart how I feel and that I care. You have found a place in my heart and you'll always be there. How could I have known you'd make me feel this way. So wonderful and sweet you are...sometimes I forget what to say. I love to hear your voice My love, you are so special to me.This lady God gave to me. Precious as any will ever be.EVERYTIME, I look into your eyes I see my life standing before me, EVERYTIME, I see your face I can't imagine my life without you,  I talk to you it takes my breath away, And I know how lucky I am to have a beautiful, wonderful, funny,  smart, caring, compassionate, and loving girl like you that loves me. There are no words to describe how much I love you, But everyday I think about us sharing our life together someday. EVERYTIME, We kiss I can't imagine myself without your sweet lips,EVERYTIME, I see you cry,I will wipe your tears away, Because I see myself hurting inside,EVERYTIME, I know I love you, And would give my life and my very last breath so you wouldn't feel an ounce of pain until the day I die. EVERYTIME, I know it will be forever, EVERYTIME...Ah, this crazy desire of giving a kiss on your lips.This almost impossible desire that consumes me inside.This anxiety to be with you To meet you just for a moment and be able to see your smile. Feel your hug. Feel your smell. Be able to touch you and feel you exist and know you are not just a dream. Be able to look in your eyes. Ah, this crazy desire To see you, just, for a moment, To be able to show you what I feel, And to be able to be by your side... Just to look at you a little and tell you how much... I love you

LOVE LETTER: DEAR SOULMATE

Dear Soulmate

Two lips meeting one another in the stream. Exchanging words no one could ever interpret.They are wet and dry, depending on how they feel. So is the encounter of your lips with mine. We start a new day with a passionate kiss.Your lips embracing mine with love in our hearts.Mouth to mouth...your tongue caressing mine. Holding one another like a magnet. The kiss of love we'll never resist like the kiss of Angel, a heavenly bliss. Morning and night our lips never miss...a priceless kiss that makes our hearts freeze. A kiss we have is not a stolen kiss. A precious gift that God planted on our lips. Our first kiss, a memorable one indeed. Although I sneezed...it's a summer breeze. When we kiss, we also like to breathe. A burning sensation we always feel within. From mouth to mouth we resuscitate lost feelings. Through our lips we make love reign supreme. Our kiss is everywhere our lips fit. Kiss of love...touching wherever it wishes. Till eternity will the world watch the scene as we celebrate our love with a holy kiss.When I look at you  I smile inwardly and the warmth touches  my soul in a sizzling welcome of love, infinite --in its depths, its joy. When I look at you, I rejoice and the joyful feeling sends waves of love surging through my body in a rapturous welcoming of our being in love's ecstasy -- endlessly.

DATING: MUST LOVE DOGS...GREATEST QUOTE

You know what? Can we just skip all the small talk? You know, like, who are you? Who am I?  What are we doing here together? I have this theory that when you first meet somebody... .that's the time when you have to be totally honest... ...because you have nothing to lose. Five, 10 years down the road, gets a lot harder. You can't say one day, "Happy anniversary, this is me." It doesn't work that way. This is it. We'll never see each other as clearly and as nakedly as we do in this moment.  Right now. This instant. Here's my story. Here's what you need to know. I'm divorced, and I had my heart broken badly... by a woman that I really loved, but I think your heart grows back bigger. You know? Once you've got the shit beat out of you. And the universe lets your heart expand that way. I think that's the function of all this pain and heartache that we all go through. You gotta go through that to come out to a better place. And that's how I see it. What about you? Why is a dazzling woman like you single? You can do it. You can just tell the truth. If you know the truth. What have we got to lose?

After the dinner we shake hands, "good night," never see each other again.

PERSONAL/ DATING: THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY

Yesterday, I was instant messaging an old friend. Maria’s a delightful person whom I’ve known since early childhood – attractive, athletic, intelligent, funny, successful, and the mother of two beautiful children. She also told me that she’s getting divorced. Her husband cheated on her multiple times – and Maria’s rightfully furious. She’s questioning the meaning of her entire relationship. She’s questioning how she’s ever going to find love again in the future. Most of all, she’s questioning her own judgment, which is the hardest thing to do when you pride yourself on being intelligent and rational.

From what little I learned about Maria and her husband, it seemed clear that she willfully ignored his selfish, narcissistic tendencies because of what came with the rest of the package – cute, smart, successful, etc...I did the same thing in my marriage.So how do you know is someone is good or bad?

I saw this movie...“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, and it really got me to thinking:If you had EVERYTHING taken away from you – your body, your job, your whole self-definition – what would you be left with?

You’d be left with your mind.
You’d be left with your heart.
You’d be left with your spirit.
You’d be left with your kindness.
You’d be left with your generosity.
You’d be left with your sense of humor.

Strip away your looks, your home, your career, your money and you’d be left with everything that’s on the INSIDE. The person who doesn’t prioritize you now is NEVER going to prioritize you. So if Maria and I  wants to know where we went wrong in choosing our partner …The answer is was right here in front of us. We've been investing in the least important qualities.

Looks come and go. Jobs come and go.Money comes and goes What lasts forever is CHARACTER.

I’ve  have dated younger women, smarter women, more successful women, and so on… but I never met a BETTER than the next woman who will be my wife. If I were hit by a bus future...i know the next woman I will be with will be push me around in a wheelchair for the next 40 years. That’s what I mean by character.

There are no shortage of impressive men out there who make you tingle every time you think of them – but they’re WORTHLESS if they don’t put YOU first.

So the next time you’re dating a guy, don’t get too sucked in by his charm or his wit or his looks or his money…Instead, learn to appreciate the guy who does what he says, who says what he means, who makes it clear that you’re a priority to him.After all, the guy who doesn’t prioritize you now is NEVER going to prioritize you. Cut him loose and choose the man who loves you for what’s INSIDE. Because what’s inside never goes away.

ARTICLE:A Second Embrace, With Hearts and Eyes Open By MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS

I looked across the restaurant table at my date, an attractive brown-eyed man with two young children and a broken marriage, as he recounted his romantic history.

“I used to think the relationship part of my life was settled and I never had to worry about it,” he told me. “Now I think, if you love someone, you have to take it one day at a time. And you have to work at it one day at a time.” There was a hopeful gleam in his eye.

I smiled and thought, “I could be in a relationship with a man like this.” In fact, I knew I could. Reader, I had married him. On this night, long after we had thrown in the towel on us, here we were again, crawling back into the ring. This time, though, it would be different. We just never imagined how different it would become, or how quickly.

Our unraveling had not been a swift, decisive catastrophe but a smaller series of no less destructive forces. We came apart the way many couples do: via the gradual realization that we were unhappy, and the inescapable conclusion that our relationship was not a refuge from our unhappiness but a cause of it. We were two nice people who had been deeply in love but who found themselves, nearly 20 years later, in love no more.

Neither of us wanted to spend the next 40 years going on as we had, seemingly safe within an institution but deprived of its most essential nutrient. If we had not had children, it would have been simple. We no doubt would have disappeared amicably but entirely from each other’s lives. But we did have children.

As my friend Linda, whose husband left her while she was pregnant, once told me: “No matter what, it’s a lifetime relationship. I’ll be at my son’s wedding and my ex will be there.”

Likewise for us, there was never any question that the good will we had once shared, combined with our love for our daughters, was stronger than any current disappointment we could harbor toward each other. We sat together at school plays and parent-teacher conferences. We shared holidays and birthdays. We even took another apartment in the same building, to make the situation easier for the children. After a while, the wounds of the breakup healed, and a new friendship was formed, a bonding unique to the front lines of parenthood.

The end of a long marriage, especially a marriage with children, will shake your world to its foundation. If you’re lucky, you’ll eventually come out of it a little braver and wiser. It wasn’t long after the split that I realized I liked the new person inside of me that this heartbreak was forging.

What I hadn’t expected was that I’d like the person he was becoming, too. Then one day he said something funny and I laughed, and then he looked at me with a directness I had never seen before and said, “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m flirting with you.”

I’ve always been a sucker for a man with a smooth line. So I flirted back. And when he asked me to dinner, I said yes.

A short time later I strolled through a museum with my friend Lily, a woman who had recently reconciled with her husband after a yearlong separation. “How did you know?” I asked her. “How did you believe again, after everything you’d been through?”

“He said what I needed to hear,” she said, “even though I didn’t know what I needed to hear until he said it. You’ll see.”

Soon after that I went on a date with the father of my children, and over a plate of plantains, I did see.

Our reunion, low key and unmarked by flying rice though it was, prompted a variety of responses among our friends and family. There were enthusiastic cheers from the romantics, and there was skepticism and concern from others, who remembered all the miserable details of our unraveling. But falling in love again after a breakup is no simple matter of retreat. We are not the people we were when we met two decades before, and we had no desire to relive a marriage that had, to the best of both our recent memories, failed unequivocally.

Yet if we had taken the leap of faith it takes to end a long-term relationship, surely, we figured, we could muster the even greater trust it would take to open our hearts again. Besides, it was nice being with a man whose emotional baggage from his crazy ex I could really understand. And my children were happy about Mom’s new man.

What ensued that summer we began again was a blissful period of lazy days and tender nights. Then it took a severe swerve. On Aug. 10, I had updated my Facebook status to read, “Best summer ever.” On Aug. 11, I learned I had malignant melanoma.

As I lay in a hospital a few nights later, doped to the gills, bleeding from three surgical sites and hoping I was clear of cancer, he and I held hands and watched “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” on TV.

“I’m sorry about all this,” I said groggily, “because now you have to stick with me. Otherwise all our friends will think you’re Newt Gingrich.”

“I see you had this planned all along,” he said. “Well played.” But later, when I told him I knew this wasn’t the reunion he’d had in mind, he just chuckled and said, “You’re not getting rid of me that easily this time.”

As I recovered through the bleak period that followed, through a grim rediagnosis that left me with a prognosis of mere months to live and then into a clinical trial that shocked us by eradicating my disease entirely, he cooked dinners and did laundry. He arranged playdates for the children and read them stories. He picked up prescriptions and cleaned up enough blood to make Eli Roth shudder. He left me awed at a strength in him I had never seen before. I had never had to.

Our relationship already had attained a bittersweet edge by virtue of its status as a second go-round, but there’s nothing like journeying through the wringer together to take that whole skipping-through-the-daisies aspect out of your dates. Although our experience has been far from sexy, it has been peculiarly romantic.

Nobody writes songs about sitting on the edge of the tub while a man applies topical antibiotics to your oozing skin graft. There are no poetic odes to women with gaping scars, no sonnets to men who may be wearing the same shirt for the third day in a row.

But maybe there should be, because everything I thought I knew about love at 24 seems pretty absurd now. I didn’t know then that a wonderful relationship would one day become unsustainable. I couldn’t have imagined that later on, strangely enough, it would become a new kind of wonderful.

The wedding ring I so optimistically slipped onto my finger long ago, the same one I despondently removed many years later, is now permanently retired. But I wear a small moonstone on my hand, the symbol of hope. Hope for healing in all its forms.

Neither of us sees the world in guarantees anymore. We recognize them as the comforting fictions they are. We accept that you can’t always keep the promises you made when you were barely above drinking age. You can’t know how you will change, or what life will throw at you.

Having our marriage fall apart and having disease come in and try very hard to kill me did away with our cozy assumptions that the future looks just like the past, but with more laugh lines. But he and I have learned, because we have had to, the difference between the illusion of security and the liberating joy of the present, between obligation and choice.

And choice, terrifying as it can be, is so much better. We had to leave each other to discover that: to understand what it really means to decide to be with a person, one day at a time, however many days there may be. Love isn’t a fortress. It isn’t a locked room. It’s full of doors and windows and escape hatches, and they’re not scary. They’re how, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen, the light gets in.

A few weeks ago, after an exhausting round of tests and doctor appointments, we flopped together into bed, almost too tired to speak. We watched the ceiling fan spin, lulled by its hypnotic rhythm, until at last he spoke just six words: “I’m glad I didn’t lose you.”

I looked into semidarkness at the man I love, the man I once left, and said, “I’m glad I didn’t lose you, too.”

DATING: FINDING A QUALITY WOMAN

One thing is for sure....dating these days can be extremely draining....especially for us single man. Speaking from a single male perspective, I find it extremely difficult to keep going on and on and on...meeting, dating, becoming interested, only to find myself disappointed, frustrated and back to square one.  

As a heterosexual man, with standards, I think that it is a shame that it's so difficult to find a good, decent woman to fall in love with! I like to think that I am a good catch!  I'm educated, close to my family, I work, no children, a doctor, I have my own house, car,  and needless to say....I think i'm attractive :)....so really, I can't understand why dating has become such a task for me!  Not saying that I'm perfect, because I am flawed just like the rest, but I promise you, my good qualities out weigh the bad.

There must be good QUALITY and ATTRACTIVE women out there!  Why must we have such a hard time finding QUALITY women???  If I knew the answer to that, I would be a billionaire and off in a villa in Tahiti right this moment!

Now, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a hopeless romantic, because regrettably I am.  I can't help it, I just love LOVE!  I love to see people in love and in healthy relationships.  Oddly, it gives me hope.  Sure, sometimes I get around others who have seemed to find their love or they are married and seem to be so happy and I may feel a brief moment of saddness that I am not able to experience that feeling, but at the end of the day, I am glad that someone I care about is able to experience what so many of us single have yet to experience or experience again.  I refuse to be a hater...I think it's bad business for me to be jealous of someone else's happiness and love.....just for fear that I may mess up my "love karma".

I'm sure some of you ladies who are feeling the same way I am would agree that dating should not be this hard!!  I simply find it exhausting to be out there on the dating scene when it seems that the pickings of good women are slim to none.  I don't know about you, but I AM ABSOLUTELY TIRED OF meeting women who can't bring anything to the table but a headache and confusion!  I'm tired of scraping the bottom of the barrel hoping to find my queen of hearts!

What's a guy to do? The people will often say "Don't look for her, let her find you", "Pray about it and God will send your one", or my favorite "Your time is coming".... (mind you, doesn't it seem that always comes from your guys that are already married or in long-term relationships....smh lol).  I know they mean well, but it is so easy for them to forget how being single and out here dating these days feels when they have lucked up to get the love they have been waiting for.  To tell you the truth...let me luck and find a woman, I will forget how it feels too! So who can blame them? I can't! But the fact is, you feel some kinda way when someone who isn't in your shoes at that moment is telling you how the shoe feels.

Woman come a dime a dozen, but a quality woman is like finding a needle in a hay stack.  I don't believe that all women are bad...I KNOW there are still some good women out there.  The challenge is....not letting the dating scene exhaust you to the point of frustration.  I teeter on this all the time.  I can't tell you how frustrated I get when I meet a woman who has no concept of what it means to be a WOMAN.  She isn't working, she's out in the club poppin' bottles every week, she staying at home still with her parents, etc and she feels it's okay to piggy-back on what you have.  If it isn't that, then there's "Ms. Right Now"....the one who has no interest in genuinely being involved, she just wants your goodies and willing to do and say whatever she needs in order to make it happen.  

My quest to find Ms. Right has become such an exhausting ordeal, I even wonder if it is meant for me to encounter that "enchanting love experience".  I don't know....but I do know that eventually, something has got to give and get better....it sure can't get no worse!

ARTICLE: What Lou Reed Taught Me About Love By LISA SELIN DAVIS

When Lou Reed died last year, I learned via Facebook just how many friends had chosen “I’ll Be Your Mirror” as their wedding song. I wasn’t one of them, but that song, more than any other, taught me about love.

I listened to it endlessly the summer I was 16, when my father strongly suggested that, if I wanted to stay in his house for the summer, as the divorce agreement had decreed, I take a job doing hard physical labor in Saratoga Spa State Parkin upstate New York. It was called the Youth Conservation Corps, but it seemed like a kind of boot camp for wayward teenagers like me.

The job paid $3.35 an hour for digging trenches, building footbridges and learning about anger management and the medical uses of jewelweed, which grew wild along the creek. My father’s idea was to heal me through hard work and the grounding power of nature.

The work was torture; I was cut out for songwriting, not construction. But the worst part was riding my Fuji 12-speed there with a green hard hat on the rear rack while wearing ocher-colored work boots: boy poison, I thought.

Though I was disturbingly experienced (my older friends had introduced me to a variety of adult activities I shouldn’t have known for years), I’d never had actual sex or an actual boyfriend or been in love, and I wanted those more than anything.

After work one day, as I pulled my bike into our backyard, a boy was sitting there with my dad. My father was the local guitar teacher, and sometimes gloriously stringy-haired rocker kids arrived at the house for lessons. This one wore beige shorts stained with bike grease, a yellow-and-blue-striped rugby shirt, and — the apogee of attractiveness (for me) — very long red hair.

I had seen him before at parties with my friends, and each time I had tried to get his attention the only way I knew: by expounding on how depressed and in pain I was, speaking loudly about the drugs and stealing and temper tantrums, thinking this would make me attractive by way of emotional depth. I knew things about his family. There was some overlap of demons. But he never seemed to know me.

This time he looked up. I was desperate to hide, as if a searchlight had found me. I went inside and stood at the screen door and watched as my father taught the beautiful boy the Travis style of fingerpicking.

At work, I wore scratchy work gloves and pulled tenacious weeds from the side of the creek bed, and daydreamed anxiously of the boy with the long red hair. Every day I hoped to see him, but I feared it, too, lest he see me with my hard hat and work boots.

And then one Saturday afternoon I saw him leap into the water beneath the Hadley-Luzerne Bridge, the place where the Hudson and Sacandaga Rivers meet, 40 minutes north of Saratoga. It was a magical spot with a rope swing and swirls of black water, where my friends and I spent lazy afternoons and played guitars on the rocks. He had pale freckles all over his chest and collarbone that formed a beautiful dent below his neck. He mumbled hello to me.

I knew nothing about how to interest a boy, but I took off my nonwork clothes — tank top and cutoff jeans — and went in the river in my bra and underwear. I played the full tablature of Neil Young’s “Needle and the Damage Done” on the guitar. I put my body next to his as much as possible, standing close whenever I could.

A few days later the phone rang. My father answered, his face momentarily registering confusion as he handed the phone to me. The voice was so low and mumbly that I couldn’t understand who it was or what he was saying, and that moment of intense awkwardness seemed interminable until I realized it was him, and he was asking me if I wanted to go swimming at Hadley-Luzerne. Somehow I managed to say yes, even though I couldn’t breathe. He had asked me on an actual date. I had taken LSD and made out with strangers at the Holiday Inn, but I had never been on a date.

He picked me up in his battered yellow Subaru station wagon, and we drove north, listening to the band X. It started pouring. We ducked into a cafe, and he ordered coffee. I had never had coffee. I pretended I drank it black. It was bitter and gross and the best thing I ever tasted, because he liked it.

The rain didn’t stop, so we went back to his house and listened to the Replacements. He had a job fixing bikes, and he smelled like something tangy called Corn Huskers Lotion, which he used to get the grease off. Nothing else happened that day, but I was so happy, it hurt.

After that I kept seeing him — walking downtown, going to concerts — but we never touched. Then one Saturday night we met at our friend’s radio show at the local college, and he and I took a walk.

The night was warm and smelled of jewelweed, and there were meteor showers. He had that beautiful hair and the freckly collarbone, and it was too much. The waiting had become intolerable. I stopped, turned toward him and said, “What’s going on here?” I was almost whining. “What’s happening?”

He grew quiet and looked down at his shoes. He mumbled again. I think he said, “I like you.” But then he looked me clear in the eye and asked, “Can I kiss you?”

No one had ever said that to me. No one had ever been so solicitous and gentle and kind. No one had ever wanted me that way. They had used me that way, but never wanted me. I kissed him on the cheek as fast as I could and ran away, back to the radio station, amid the shelves of records and their musty cardboard smell. In this age of Pandora and Spotify, records still smell like romance to me.


Ten minutes later he found me there, pretending to study the cover of Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company’s “Cheap Thrills.” I couldn’t look at him. He whispered, his hot breath on my hair: “Um, that wasn’t really what I meant.”

We went to his house. He sat on the couch, I on the floor, and he made this awkward attempt to rub my shoulders. I was more on fire with desire and anticipation than I had ever been in my life, and as he leaned down to kiss me I scooted to the other side of the room.

“Why do you like me?” I asked him. “Why are you interested in me?”

I was just stalling, but he actually paused to consider the question. “O.K.,” he said. “I’ll tell you.” He said I was cute and funny and good at the Travis style of fingerpicking and had good taste in music, which among our crowd was the highest compliment.

My heart seemed to break upon hearing this list, but in a good way. Everyone else in my life could rattle off a list of my faults, but the beautiful boy saw what was on the other side of my misdeeds. Just as in the lyrics to “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” it seemed he was able to see the beauty in me that I couldn’t.

He had his face very close to mine, that smell of cheap shampoo and Corn Huskers Lotion, and then he said: “I knew I really liked you when I saw you on your bike with the work boots and hard hat.”

I kissed him then. My teeth hit his and my mouth was open too much and it was messy and delicious and terrifying, and then we fell into a rhythm. I kissed him for the entire B-side of REM’s “Reckoning.” I kissed him so much I went home that night with red, swollen lips. I don’t think I ever experienced a physical sensation better than that burn. It seemed to wipe clean the dirty slate of my childhood.

I lost track of him years ago. I don’t know where he lives or what he does. I don’t know him digitally. I think of him only in analog: all that love twisted up with my records, which long ago warped and mildewed in my mother’s basement. But the lesson from “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” that someone can love me for what shames me most, remained. I sing those same lyrics to my daughter before bed.

The conservation job ended late that August. My soul — or my depression or anger-management problems — hadn’t been repaired by it. I hadn’t learned about hard work or resilience or any of the things the program was designed to teach me. But I was healed, just as that love song promised.

DATING/LOVE: SO MANY WOMAN TRYING TO IMPRESS

I've been on a number of first dates, or early dates anyway, during which the girl essentially tried convincing me that she was hot shit. This hasn't typically been outright bragging. In fact, I think in all instances that I can recall, the girl has ostensibly just been telling me about her dating history or personal experiences. But her narrative has been laced with comments about how she is usually the one to end relationships, or how she goes on a lot of first dates, or how she just can't seem to find someone that is intelligent but confident, extroverted but thoughtful, good looking but humble, etc. - all of which imply that she has options with men and is generally amazing. Other girls have talked almost immediately and incessantly about how much they've traveled, or their multiple degrees, or their great jobs. Their underlying message is "See? I am a great catch; you should want to date me." They are talking themselves up.

This doesn't annoy me or turn me off from a girl. As I said, it is usually stated very casually and comes across as factual rather than arrogant or cocky. I've never thought "Wow, this girl is full of herself," or decided that I shouldn't hang out with her again because of it. In most instances I've just listened, and quitely acknowledged that the girl was trying to put her best foot forward. Yet in most cases, after getting to know her, I've been the one to end the relationship and she's been the one trying to hold on. And she's looked stupid because, after coming in with such an obvious "look how great I am" speech, she's been the one to walk away unwanted. When pride comes before the fall it makes you look stupid, even if it isn't your pride that causes the fall.

DEAR SOULMATE

Dear Soulmate

Eyes deep..filled with mystery. And deep inside sparkles curiosity.The word "beautiful", does not describe, Your beauty in my warmed insides.It's warmth I have kept.I'm going to make you part of me. You're going to be a part of my soul. Every breath you take I'll take it with you. And in every thought of mine, You'll be there to make me smile and forget my sorrows.And every tear you shed I'll be there to help you through your pain. With every day that passes by  I will love you even more. And when we grow old and there is no more tomorrow, I want to be there by your side 'Cause when the day comes to leave  it all behind, I want to know that every day of my life was spent with you by my side.The desiring my heart has for you is so amazing,  I can't explain- your touch, your tender sweet kisses have left me someone new and I'll never be the same. Every time I'm sitting alone and my mind drifts far away,  I rest upon a memory of you and I, and smile, reccollecting what we did that day.The way your eyes search my body as if they're looking  for something exquisite, and once they seem to find what they're looking for, there they sit.Your hands explore me up and down,I know the love we share will always be around.Every time you come near me my knees grow weak, then you wrap your arms around me and your lips touch mine- it's a feeling so divine.I'll never let you go,you say you won't leave because you found someone you love, and this, I should know.I still have the fear deep within my heart,that someone else will take you away, if they notice how intriguing you are.You say that even if someone does, it won't change a thing,because you and I have love, something no one can take away, and to you that alone, that's everything. I love you my darling, my one and only everything,my world revolves around you, you are my reason for being.But now I must go, for I am late for a night alone with you,never forget how much I care about us, and to you, my heart will always and forever be true.