The Playlist in Book 1

I made the playlist...She made one ... We put them together... It's shared...it's a metaphor...for the thing that we are building. And I am not setting the pace. 

See...

Usually it's me driving everything...the conversation...the questions...the next steps. You know, the fuckin process.

Except she broke it...she broke the process. And for awhile I confused it with disinterest...but she was doing something else. She slowed it down, slowed me down, and it created a space where we've somehow ended up on a similar page. If you ask her about this she'd probably not know what I'm talking about. But her initial hesitancy, that isn't gone, allowed us time to talk through things, allowed her to breathe and be comfortable. It allowed me to notice things I may not have otherwise noticed

And so now we're here...from, one minute not knowing each other to having troubles going  the length of a PowerPoint presentation without talking...

And so we add songs...the songs she adds are songs that speak to me in the same ways my own songs do. And it feels like we are looking for some of the same things. It feels like the songs we share are chosen because they're informed by the same kind of pain and joy.

I feel like she has experienced trauma..and hurt. I've felt that since the very first days after we met. She hasn't explicitly said so but I feel it in some of the ways she talks about past experiences, in the ways she's learned how to not deal with things, and in the way she just does not give a fuck what anybody thinks anymore. And it's that contradiction that I find compelling. The way she doesn't care but the way she keeps things bottled up.

The scary thing for me though is sometimes she takes the lid off the bottle... And she shows me things about herself that I find beautiful. But its a fragile process and my big dumb hands are nervous and so fucking cautious right now. But I'm not going anywhere because I think what we can provide each other might be worth the risk of hurt. 

See...

Her perspective on things that I share with her.. I'm beginning to rely on. Because they're so different from what I'm expecting her to say that they end up shifting my paradigm. And I think I've  needed that for a long time. I've been so stuck in how I think about things, my life, my goals.. It's been the same for so long. And then I share something with her and she gives me a perspective that makes change look easy...

Sometimes it's as simple as a picture... Hey look at this eye.

That's not an eye, it's a broken flower and it's beautiful. 

And I am floored and in awe.

I don't know what is going to happen in the future. But for now, we add the songs and we listen to the music...

And I hold on.