When my brother told me about how he learned his feelings for a girl were mutual, I didn't quite know what to say.
He told me he had started blogging again -- like I had always encouraged him to do -- and that she had started reading his posts. When she wrote somewhere that she was sick of boys looking at her as a pretty girl and nothing more, he wrote a blog post as a discreet response to her. She read the post and wondered if he was writing to her. She visited his blog everyday, waiting for another post that she could dissect and untangle strands of words written for her eyes only. In person, they would talk for hours about meaningful things -- not the kind of stuff that dribbles awkwardly out of your mouth at a mixer. No, it's the kind of stuff you share with the one, who you think understands you like no one else does.
I think back to the first incarnation of this blog. A bitter nostalgia rises to my throat.
Last night at the club, I sat one of the booths lined along the wall opposite the dance floor, watching the revelry with detachment and inhaling the scent of booze and cigarettes. My friends were entangled somewhere in the pulsating crowd, but I was in no mood to join them. I was exhausted -- the charity banquet I co-organized had concluded just hours ago, and all I wanted to do was sleep until noon. The last thing I wanted to do was plunge into the mass of sweat and body heat and fend off the circling vultures looking for a girl to grind.
Whenever the conversation of romantic relationships arises, people often ask me if I care that I have been perpetually single. The answer is more complicated than a single "Yes" or "No."
In its first incarnation, the header at the top of this blog once read: "On risque de pleurer un peu si l'on s'est laissé apprivoiser." You risk tears if you let yourself be tamed. I have lived my entire life untethered, and for the most part I relish that independence.
But there are those moments. They creep up on you at the moments when you're the most defenseless. In the darkness of that nightclub, under the pulsating lights and in the haze of smoke, I wanted something else. Not someone to grind against, not someone to make-out with. I wanted someone next to me in that dimly-lit booth, someone who would let me rest my throbbing head against his shoulder, someone who would appreciate the dry, witty comments running through my head about the other partygoers. I wanted someone who would like me even without the black eyeliner, the chandelier earrings, the red dress, and the black heels. I wanted someone who noticed me in ponytails, Nike Airs, skinny jeans and Ralph Lauren v-neck tees. I wanted someone to talk to, someone to write cryptic blog posts for, someone who will discover the private incarnation of Sophelia Lee and embrace her loneliness until the ice all melts away.
