09.08.2003 - 5:43 p.m.

(Warning, mushy entry. Normally I avoid mushy, but it�s been a while, and anyway I feel I�ve written it quite well.)

I was kayaking with the boyfriend yesterday, back into the marshes. The water was so high that it had erased or transformed all the landmarks I know: the derelict fishing boats have been turned around; tree stumps and fallen logs have become mere tips and shadows. There has been so much rain that the snails spend half the day clinging to the half-submerged grasses, waiting for the mud to come back.

I am much slower than he is. It�s funny, because I paddle at the same speed, but there is just something about his motion that is more efficient. I spent most of the time watching his back twist and reach, the shoulder blades skimming under the muscle and padding and skin. I am quite attracted to his back, which always confuses me because although it is a nice, strong back, there are significant love handles, and there are hairs, and often just a bit of plumber�s butt. It�s exactly this kind of contradiction that sends me deep into thought.

I have been thinking about relationships again, trying to integrate the conclusions I�ve made in the past with the ones I�m coming to now. I have been thinking that happiness must always be a kind of freedom. When I was single I managed my life the way I manage my finances: Always be prepared to pay for what you have. Everything has its price, its hidden costs, and every bill comes due. Happiness was the freedom from wondering what would hurt later, or how much, because I could trust that everything hurt, at some point, to some degree. Happiness was restricting myself to what I knew I could afford. And I don�t believe I was wrong to do it, although I think there is more to the idea of �afford� than I saw at the time.

The boyfriend and I stopped to rest on a sandbar on the way back, dipping our fingers into the water and skipping oyster shells that seemed so much more brittle than they were. We were talking about other places and other people, and it�s quite possible that I should not have mentioned, when the conversation seemed to call for it, that if I ever even suspected he was unhealthy for me, I planned to leave.

His face went very still, and this is why I wish there was a better way to say it, but I was still glad it was out there. Certainly he will hurt me, and I�ll hurt him, and for that I�ll stay, but if I ever once think he�s bad for me, I am gone. It feels precipitous to be grounding myself in a relationship on such a knife�s edge, or in any case, it should. But really, that�s the strength of it right there; I don�t have to shore it up with obligations and guilt and promises to myself about next time. It�s there or it�s not. I�m there or I�m not. Right now, I am.

Last night I slept alone, because it had been a while since we�d slept separately, and I noticed that love may feel like a choice, but never has been; that for all the freedom he gives me, I bind myself closer; and that leaning on him makes me stronger, and happy, and free.

(Anyone in the mood to laugh at me, go read this.)

-stonebridge

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