I’m only a girl.

 “I don’t need to predict where this leads.

I only need to be present to what’s real.

What I feel with you is rare—not because it’s tidy or certain, but because it’s alive.

And I don’t want to shrink something alive into something safe.

I’m not here to escalate or terminate.

I’m here to listen to what wants to unfold between us, moment by moment.

If we meet, it’s not a contract. It’s not a fork in the road.

It’s just the next true step.

You don’t have to promise me forever.

But I can’t pretend that love grows best inside predictions.

And I won’t build a relationship by fearfully managing its edges before we’ve even stepped inside.

If what we have is real, it can withstand uncertainty.

If it isn’t, no amount of control will make it last.”

Eric and I had another four-hour phone call about how to proceed. He has doubts about whether I could accept him for who he is. He is polyamorous, pansexual, and enjoys group sex occasionally, although in his current life he’s monogamous-ish in his marriage. He doesn’t know if we’d be truly compatible if we had a relationship. I’ve been thinking and thinking about it. I can’t accept a relationship where he’s entangled with other women or sleeping with them. So maybe there isn’t acceptance after all. He said he needs understanding, connection, validation, acceptance, and desire in a relationship. That’s why he thinks it’s best for us to remain friends. He wants to put walls around what we have and I cannot accept that. I think that’ll be suffocating the tree. He said that what we have is something he’s never experienced with anyone else in his life, and he can’t find a word for it because he believes most other people have never experienced something like this in their life. I told him it’d be really painful that sometimes you’re nourishing the tree and sometimes you’re letting it wither so that it’s almost dying so that it never grows up. 

I’ve been going through a whirlwind of emotions for the past few days. Everything is blended together—there’s grief, pain, sadness, disappointment, depression, but also hope, dreams, and motivation to keep believing. How does a human hold it together in a situation like this? I’m only human; I’m only a girl. I wish someone could hold me right now.