I've been working for hours on a little project for the upcoming election (No on 1, Mainers) when I'm interrupted by the MP3 I select to listen to nearly at random, without realizing, until it starts, the undeniable energy that it's going it's going to release into my bloodstream, the undeniable distraction it will pose. Bright Eyes' "Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To love and To be Loved)." What a great fucking song.

It pulls me from my focus in an overtired craze-- it's 5AM, but the clocks were just reset, so it's like it was already six-- and as I begin to rock to the beat and bang my head with sheer agreement to every word, somewhere in the part of my mind that's always quiet and thoughtful, I am thinking the words What do I want most in life?

The answer comes quickly to me, because of the song it's meaning and the moment and the energy and the sheer sparking undeniability of the truth:

What I want most out of life is to be as I am right now-- dressed in sweats and wrapped in a blanket, wearing slippers with the smell of of my feet and the dog crap they stepped in, lips chapped, hair a mess, and me, in a near-epileptic fit over the driving drum beat of some song, screaming out-of-key to every lyric-- and to be loved all the more for it.


In the car, when I'm doing singing both Ariel's and Ursula's parts in "Poor, Unfortunate Souls", and in the shower, pretending to be the lead singer of The Living End performing "Dirty Man" on stage (complete with air guitar). Doing a Bridget Jones' Impression (A la Jamie O'Neal's version of "All By Myself"). These are the moments in which I want nothing more to be exposed, and have the love that I so fear hinges on a narrow, careful view of me shine through. I want to be accepted for the facets that are ridiculous and loud. Appreciated for the moments that are personal and embarrassing. Loved for the things that I am, when there is no one there to love me for them.

This is why I trust in the love of certain people more than others: Jeff and I practicing a duet of "Baby It's Cold Outside" in his car, shouting "Indiana!" out of the windows of his car and practicing a play about how we met on a stage in an empty park in auburn, all only because they are our things to do. Jeremey and I typing lyrics back and forth and how seldomly I can't get the next line of whatever he's started, my asking him to call my cell while I'm out to dinner with someone else so I will appear to be more popular than I already am and him obliging me (twice), how ridiculous I felt the first time I had to ask him if he loved me, what a consummation it was when he said "yes" (and how we tell each other now, and it's wonderful.) All the history I share with Emily, good and bad-- South Street at Night and leaving things for her outside her window, the longing I have for her when something is happening to me that I know a guy just won't understand.

Singing "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" to Zack while we're in the shower together. And he likes it-- my Marilyn voice, the sidelong gaze over my shoulder, my body, naked and vulnerable and completely without excuse for itself. He likes it all; he loves me.

How did I get so lucky?


It's a weighted word, "Love", and believe you-me, it can cause some fucking problems. I've had to reassess, lately, whether or not it's really how I feel towards certain people, and whether or not I should be using it so freely. There are people who have made me regret using it, and people I know I won't be able to truthfully use it with, again. There are, at long last, people I used to love whom I now very nearly hate, and I can feel, in some instances, a seedling of acceptance of that fact beginning to push it's way to the surface. There are people who've changed their vernaculars and redefined feelings because they've given up the word, and still more people who have told me they never meant it when they told me.

But when I'm hanging up with Jeremey and he finds some cute way to work it in, when I'm standing near Jeff's car and we can both feel the silence before one of us says it, when I type it to Emily and hang in a tiny little moment of suspense before it appears reciprocated on my screen. When Zack came home, just now, and stood in the doorway with that look in his eyes that always makes me feel the words...


As Connor Says, "How grateful I am to be part of the mystery: To love, and to be loved." That's enough.


Let's not shit ourselves.

On with it.