Member-only story
Don’t Tell Me What I Like
I am the expert on me. And that’s a good thing.
There was a man in my life, a loving man, an intelligent man, I would even venture to say a sensitive man.
He was also a damaged man, but I didn’t understand that at the time.
This man came into my life at a time when I was vulnerable. In crisis, actually, though I also didn’t know that at the time. I thought everything was fine.
He was loving and intelligent and, as I say, sensitive; he listened to me, he seemed to get me, he thought all my quirks and eccentricities were assets, not liabilities.
No one else at that point in my life listened to me. (I did not realize that I was barely whispering; there were so many things I didn’t understand then. So many.)
This man listened to me. He listened so carefully, and then he told me the story of myself back to me, in a way that was validating, and articulate, and intense, and irresistible, and really, really affirming.
(I know you know what’s coming.)
I like personal rituals, the little things you discover — by accident, maybe — and realize you like them, and then do them again, and then create a little routine about them.
