on root systems and the things I (never meant to) say

My outside voice is winning this week. It's a little odd when I've been quiet.

The silence comes when I’m morphing. The change is not something you see from the outside. It’s not something obvious, like hacking off your hair at the end of a relationship, or dropping 10 pounds out of sheer depression or getting a tattoo. It’s something that has taken root in my brain, in my heart and, unlike several previous attempts at root systems, this one has started to grow. I have to wonder at it. It has all the makings of something strong and fierce and fragrant, like the mint Frog planted under the water faucet in the back yard when I was a kid. That stuff grew like a weed.

This June finds me busy. I’m grateful for my friends, for trips, for a flurry of activity. I also regret that I can’t fit everyone in the way that I would like to this month. If you catch me in an honest moment, though, mostly I want to be by myself right now. I want that quiet that understands me, that doesn’t ask What’s new or What’s wrong. It’s nothing, really. And sometimes nothing needs nothing to support it, empty space to allow the roots to spread.

I know that things are starting to change, because my censor has apparently left the building. And when the censor leaves, what the inside voice has been thinking all along suddenly finds its way to the outside voice. I told my boss to shut up today. It was said, quickly, with humor, but I said it and I meant it. Shuddap. I like the guy. It’s not a bad job. It requires very little of me. But I know why I said it. I’ve reached that point where I need to be doing something else with my life. Sitting behind a computer monitor for 35 hours a week is a hell of a way to kill time. Slowly.

Last night during the course of a perfectly normal dinner conversation with the guy I’m seeing, I said I love you. It was there on the table before I even knew what I was saying. It wasn’t like I even thought of saying it. Hadn’t planned it. Had actually told myself days ago that I wasn’t going to say it first. I wasn’t thinking about it at all, and then there it was, all casual, and I spent the next 5 minutes mumbling incoherently about who knows what and acting like I’d just asked him to pass the salt. It was like nothing out of the ordinary was said. It came out like a remark. It was just statement of fact because it was true. I may as well have been saying the sky is blue. It wasn’t a big production. It was just how it was. Simple. To the point. Didn't require a response. I love you. You’re funny. Can we get these leftovers wrapped to go?

He goes to leave and it’s an odd goodbye for us. Not because I said three words but because he’s going to Cuba, and then I’ll be in Austin, and we won’t see each other for a couple weeks. We are each going to places that are mythic in our respective minds, places where we have roots, places that – if visited in the right mindset – could fertilize the goals that we each have ten-fold. He walks out and then turns around and kisses me again, and I know I’m looking like an anxious fool. What we are each in the process of doing with our individual lives is a big deal and the way I feel about us together after a couple short months is a big deal. But we let go of each other and I close the door. I’m surrounded by the silence I crave and occasionally dread, and can almost feel another shoot coming up in my chest as I’m walking through my apartment, turning off lights. You can’t cage this mint stuff, you can’t control it. It’s going to go where it goes, and all you can do is enjoy it.