What a lovely and frightening world we live in

Caught
When I was little
My  grandfather would take me 
fishing.
He would bait the hook for me
and hand me the pole. 
Bare toes sank into mud
the thickness of mashed potatoes.
Patient,
waiting, 
quiet. 
"Don't say anything." He would 
whisper. 
"Can't scare the fish" 
And 6 years of brown hair
covered my innocent face
as I stared, wide eyed, into the water
Knowing there was a fish
in there, 
for me. 
I had never caught anything
a poor fisherman. 
Maybe I made a noise,
maybe I scared the fish.
Maybe I was in the wrong pond...


Older, wiser,
years have jaded me. 
Suddenly, I cast a glance into the water
Love weary and broken, but there!
a reflection--
A small stirring beneath glass.
I don't make a sound,
"Can't scare the fish" 
Resisting the urge
to thrust my hand into the water
and pull him to me. 
So we stay, staring, both thinking, feeling
needing.
To know there is still hope
and passion,
love. 


I slowly set my hand on the water, 
from the other side
he does the same
My eyes close 
and I smile--
Caught.


Always a romantic right? Ever since I was little I've been one actually. I've loved so completely in my lifetime, whether it was an animal, or a person, or a novel. My heart is a few sizes to great, and beats out of my chest whenever I encounter something that captures my romantic attention. When I was reaching adolescence I played matchmaker for all of my friends, I loved setting them up... often with my crushes. But I kept my feelings silent, I was so happy that there was love in the world, that even if it couldn't be mine, it could still be.

I still tend to think this way. The romantic in me falls in love with poets who marked in their pages that there was once something so great it captured all of their attention, and those tomes have become immortal documentations of what could potentially be the greatest feeling we know.

I know what you're thinking, don't get ahead of me.

Oh how cliche`, Valentines day goes by and suddenly we're reading another blog about love? Hear me out okay? This one is important.

So in all my searching for this amazing feeling, I've only ever truly felt it once. Or thought I did anyway. He wasn't perfect, but I thought he was. He was sweet and kind and when he looked at me his eyes would sparkle and made me forget my flaws. But when that ended I felt this sinking feeling that the poets had been wrong. I retreated into myself. I delved into my writing, became a writer even, and in that effort I started writing love into reality.

I would create story after story of romance, something I could never actually achieve. Who wouldn't want their life to be a little like a good movie, or a great novel? To find themselves impossibly feeling for someone that they barely know. That feeling that is all at once frightening and exhilirating. A feeling like some all powerful being, who I like to call my author, has said "okay, I give, time to meet your match. I think you'll like this one, I made him just for you." I know because I've said this to my characters. Just when they think their life is empty and they've been hurt too many times to ever love, but they patiently have faith in the feeling that the world quietly runs on, I give them their match, and fill them with confusing feelings of "I always have known it would be you, haven't I?" And I never realized how frightened my characters must have been of themselves.

All at once, everything is different. The world looks... brighter.

I have not stopped smiling in 4 days. Some of you have noticed. I have also laughed more than is humanly possible I think. I keep thinking about him. And I feel so incredibly happy, a feeling I can't remember truly feeling like this in I don't know how long. We have more in common than I ever thought possible. Granted he doesn't seem thrilled about my suggestion that he enjoy going to Disney World with me at some point, but so far? thats about the only thing that we DON'T have in common. We read the same books, laugh at the same jokes, watch most of the same movies, listen to a lot of the same music and we both can appreciate the nerdier things in life. Like he was written for me.

And last night, I was filled with this incredibly frightening feeling. "I've only known him for four days. How come I feel like this?" Well my characters will be written more realisticly now, thats for sure. Because I start thinking to myself, "isn't this a bit soon? Isn't it a little silly to go for the first one you catch in years? shouldn't you expand your horizons and see what else is out there?" But I'm a writer, I already know the answer is no.

Because when you're a hopeless romantic, you know, you just do, that something feels right, and it shouldn't be ignored.

This feels right, and there are 6000 miles between us. A whole continetn and an ocean to boot. While I hate the distance, it doesn't phase me. Eventually. A word I had come to hate before, a word that was another way to say Never. And now, I find myself realizing it means hope. Soon I will bridge the gap between us. Soon I will understand this complete feeling I'm feeling. It's strong, and I don't understand it. I haven't felt it before.

And I find myself so grateful that I didn't find it sooner, I may not have been strong enough to handle it then. But now?

Now it feels perfect. And I find myself quite... caught.