to know

i was wondering the other night, how well does she really know me?

i mean, aside from our amazing vacation in early may, it's not like we dated. we've never really sat around and said: "so, how about you?"

then i realized that she knows me better than most. perhaps better than anybody.

she's had access to my unfiltered mind, many times. that's something that few can (or would want to) boast.

out there on the trail she was subjected to unfiltered, uncensored, unrefined, pre-blog blather. like the bloviation you find daily here, except with more "ums", "ers", spontaneous courtesy checks for ticks, and fewer revisions, grammar-checks, and rewrites. the good stuff. the sudden flashes of if not brilliance then at least insight that pop up and then vanish before they can be blogged or remembered. if this blog represents any sort of "real me", then the trail banter represents the "real real me". more spontaneous. more interesting. more adventurous. more... real.

not only was she not repelled by the real real me, evidently she was drawn to him.

whatever floats your boat, i guess, eh?

i've always had a proclivity for slyly pronouncing what i really think about things, in the most outrageous of terms, to elicit responses from my audience that reveal to me how they really feel about me (or any given topic). (a good example is the sweaty computer chair on the main page.) and not only to find out how they really feel, but to see how deeply whatever it is that draws them to me runs. it's about finding limits.

i haven't found her limit, yet, which is fascinating. i know the limits of pretty much everyone else i know, but not her, even after all this time.

the trail banter didn't flow all in one direction. i know a lot about her from the same source. and i'm learning even more every evening, and inferring more from that each day. even projecting back into the past.

i pointed out last night (somewhat to my own shame and discomfort) that whenever it was that she "knew", i also "knew" at least as early as that. i find that many of our fears about this thing are shared, and the fact that i view her fears as unwarranted suggests that perhaps my (identical or at least parallel) fears are just as unwarranted.

that's comforting.

and the cool thing is that it works in the other direction, too. those feelings on the other end of the spectrum that i find coming at me from her direction, those feelings that i view in myself both suspiciously and hopefully, you know, love -- i find my fears about the genuineness of my own feelings allayed by the fact that she's feeling them, too.

sometimes i feel things.

sometimes i can't identify what it is that i feel.

sometimes i know what i feel but don't want to acknowledge it.

sometimes i feel what i want to (or ought to) feel but not necessarily what i naturally (genuinely) feel.

and sometimes i honestly can't fucking tell which it is.

so sometimes i have to (or choose to) rely on external cues to know what i'm feeling. and since i expect (or ASSume) that she's not one to throw that word around carelessly, i feel a little more comfortable every time i hear it from her -- a little more secure in my own mind that when i said it to her i wasn't using it any more carelessly than she.

i feel like i meant it and wasn't just fooling myself. and it gets more real each time i say it.

it's nice, every once in a while, to have your reality checks not bounce.