So I was Sexist.

When I was young, I believed men were storms.

They didn’t make decisions; they didn’t commit sins; they happened to you. They swept in and out and left wreckage or not. They were not accountable for what happened to you when you encountered their wrath. You could make things worse, but never better.

I couldn’t bear that the beast changed for Belle, but my child self was not worth changing for. So, instead of deciding the forces that shaped and splintered my world could be wrong when they so obviously had the favor of heaven, I called them unchanging. I called them storms.

Then I married a knight in shining armor. And my world fell apart.

Collin was beautiful and perfect and he’d never hurt me on purpose, but he was terrible at telling me what was happening in our Army-controlled life, and as my panic attacks worsened and life was terrible I could only blame me. I wasn’t prepared enough for the storm. I wasn’t smart or strong or good enough to handle finding everything out at the last minute. I felt worthless because I was, dagnabbit, and poor, poor Collin having to deal with a woman who fell apart when life happened to her! Then my dear husband told me the thing that sent all my careful defenses for him tumbling to the ground, looking not like love but just like barbed wire. “It hurts me that you never think I can change.”

And I blurted out, “Men don’t change!”

*three…slow…claps*

In the middle of my panic and confusion and guilt, Collin took my shoulders and walked me through how to blame him for a mistake. He taught me that my suffering could be his fault, and it didn’t bring on his wrath or make me an unkind creature of horror. It was easy to forgive him. I’d never gotten to before, and it was easy to start.

And then he changed. For me.

Men aren’t storms. They are heroes or monsters. Absolving them of responsibility for their actions isn’t kindness.  It’s just barbed wire.

The Surprising Thing about Being in Love

I thought I’d remember your freckles. That’s what I thought love would be like; I’d become a GPS of the little marks of you, a homing pigeon navigating by birthmarks like stars. I thought the warm, brown shapes on your skin would be familiar to me like the tree I’d climbed every day, or the kitten I’d raised.

But I can’t remember them. I shut my eyes when you’re not here, and I can’t find them anymore. So I navigate by scars.

Leaving the airport, I trace that mark on your hand from when you were a baby, touch the score in your dimple from the dog you forgave for biting your face. In the drivers’ seat of your car, I trace the line on your collar bone from when you helped someone move, the web of scarring on your lower back from carrying too much too far.

I find myself at cash registers touching the mark on the back of your heel from that awful pair of boots, or the cut on your shoulder from a box of rifles. I go over your shoulders, your abdomen, the bottom of your foot; like it’s a prayer I go over you. And when your face seems like something I made up, when even my photographs seem blurry and there’s no way you could exist for real and love me, I reach out and find your scars.

When you step off the plane with new white nicks on your knuckles, another mark on your back and the same smile in your eyes, I hold your arm and wait for my heart to come back from apart. And when you’re away again, for a day, for an hour, I close my eyes and trace our journey in your scars.