sleeps with butterflies

you say the word, you know i will find you
or if you need some time, i don't mind
i won't hold on to the tail of your kite
i'm not like the girls that you've known
but i believe i'm worth coming home to...
so go on and fly, boy
 - sleeps with butterflies, tori amos

one of the central themes of my life, and if you'd known me at age fourteen you'd never have seen this coming, is non-stop male companionship. i have not been single since june 7, 1998. one boy bled into another boy, who bled into the man, and that was it. now, obviously, that span is DOMINATED by my relationship with my ex-husband, which ran from september of 1998 until very, very recently. but the fact of the matter is, i've been half of a whole for thirteen years.

needless to say, this probably explains why i am not particularly fond of sleeping alone. i just haven't done it very much, and i got damn used to having the sound of breathing/snoring/dreaming next to me as i drift off. when the man took off to africa last month, one of the main things i hated about it (besides the whole exposure to malaria, being way too close to sectarian violence for comfort thing) was that i'd be on my own for all that time. but that distaste for alone-ness brought a cold, stark and really unattractive truth home.

i am clingy.

yeah, that's just not something you want to face as a grown woman. so i am faced with a serious dilemma: own the clinginess and risk pushing him away from me through the sheer burden of being more intense about us than he is, or enforce a romantic austerity program that will cause me sheer and unadulterated pain, all in the name of changing things. talk about a hobson's choice, eh? 'course, i suppose i could just bring all of this up to him, but honestly, he's not going to have a clue in hell how to deal with this. in fact, i'm sure he has no opinion on the matter whatsoever. he's very much a cloud, so to speak: he prefers to float along, doing whatever, in this regard. if he can avoid being wedded to a plan, so much the better.

did i mention i also overthink the hell out of everything?

yeah, so i think i'm just going to work on not worrying so much. on that score, the man has a very definite opinion: don't worry about it. don't worry so much. i'd ask you not to worry, but i know better. i just need to toughen up a bit, get a thicker skin, and oh yeah, learn to enjoy my alone time. just because there's not a man next to me as i lay me down to sleep doesn't mean something's wrong. (and it also doesn't mean the man doesn't miss me, either. food for my own personal thought.) i am worth coming home to, and both of us know it. so i don't have to cling so hard to the tail of his kite; he's not going anywhere. breathe in, breathe out, and relax.

besides, it's easier to sleep without the snoring. i think we can all agree on that.