To me falling in love feels like being in a field of tall swaying grass in golden light with dusk crickets singing.
Feeling my toes on the rich dark earth and smiling shyly.
When I start to feel myself falling for someone, I am running barefoot through that field, feeling the grass run through my finger tips, laughing, looking over my shoulder asking, “Are you coming?” And I turn only long enough to hear the answer before charging forth with unhindered joy.
In that field comes all sorts of things.
Amongst the excitement and adrenaline of falling in love and the “what if this is my person” moments, I often get a case of the vulnerability chicken shits.
You know, when you feel your heart is exposed and opening?
And this state of being is a new context in entirety than you’ve existed in—a context of togetherness.
And as the yumminess of togetherness sits in so does the knowingness of sharing a space in your heart with a new human.
And then as you’re mooning away in your heart, all of a sudden the uncontrollable possibility that person could leave sits in.
Which leads you to the “AHH! I feel all these new breezes in my heart and they’re new and therefore actually really scary!” moment.
I coin these moments the vulnerabiliy chicken shits.
Sometimes vulnerability is exciting and fun, and sometimes it is terrifying.
At some moments in my life I hit the escape button when the vulnerability chicken shits show up.
That button looks like sabotage, running, or pushing someone away.
Because the context of togetherness with someone, after being comfortable in my own context of solitude and aloneness is a stretch.
It’s a big ass new boundary to live in and explore and adjust into.
There are sock drawers to share, beds to share, toothbrushes even.
I always think of new contexts in our lives like moving into a house.
The first night, surrounded by half unpacked boxes, you lay in bed and notice the fridge buzzes annoyingly and the floors creak and you hear a weird sound in the basement.
And you lay in bed thinking, “I hate this place. It will never be as amazing as my last home. I should try to move back.”
And then after a little while of existing in that new context you don’t realize the fridge buzzing, and you look forward to the creak on the faded cedar floors.
You have to be willing to vibrate outside of what you know, to make space for what you truly desire.
It’s a choice to stay—in these new contexts—when we sometimes want to squirm.
Sometime’s it’s okay to squirm while staying, too.
Our boundaries don’t give a fuck if we have a poker face on or if we’re crying through it–they just know when we shrink and when we stand tall.
Tonight I had the vulnerability chicken shits, and I stayed.