A Brush with Love

No one doubts you constantly do your best. We all admire you so much for how hard you work. But some days, your best can be a B, and some days your best can even be a C, or some days, it could mean doing nothing at all but just breathing.

Do you know what a honey mushroom is?" she blurted out, plucking at the hairs on his arm, which was wrapped around her. He was silent for a moment before letting out a husky laugh "No. Why?" "It's the largest living thing on earth. Larger than trees, elephants, whales-this one living thing takes up over three square miles in Oregon." She could almost feel him turning that random fact over in his brain. She was glad she wasn't facing him. This would be so much harder if she had to look into his eyes instead of at the wall. "Like the mushroom cap is over three miles across?" he asked. Harper shook her head. "No, no. That's the amazing part. When you look at it-the part you see aboveground-it's this tiny little mushroom head. It looks so insignificant. They just pop up here and there" she gestures with her fingertips as though she could draw them in the air. "But it creates this root-like system called hyphae. And the hyphae-it spreads and grows and, kind of... takes over underground. One living thing, every cell genetically identical, spreading below the surface to take up this enormous amount of space." Dan was quiet for a moment. "Why are you telling me this?" he asked, placing a kiss into her neck. Harper swallowed and fiddled with the edge of the sheet. "Because thats' what my anxiety feels like-a honey mushroom." She felt Dan tense behind her, but she pushed on." A lot of times, someone on the outside, like you, maybe, sees these clues to it-my fidgeting, my mind seeming a million miles away, panic attacks. But inside" -she tapped her chest- "it's this intricate network of sharp pain and fear that's constantly growing and pulsing through me. It's always there, right beneath my skin, huge and controlling, but no one can see it. I just feel it. And it hurts. So badly. It makes me want to curl up into a ball or sprint out of my skeleton. This huge, inescapable thing inside me that controls me." she paused, picking aggressively at her nails; "It feels cruel to have your own body do that to you".

Harper, have you ever had the overwhelming urge to rip out your reproductive tract and use the fallopian tubes to choke the stupidity out of men? Because that’s where I’m at.

...everything about it is an uphill battle. But you get up. Over and over. Just to take another punch. Another hit. [...] But when you get up, that one final time, battered and bloody and not sure you can take one more blow, it teaches you how to heal. And then you go out, and heal others.

But you better keep Harper's name out of your fucking mouth or I will personally come to your house and feed your blond head up your asshole and make you tell me how it tastes.

But, most of all, I love you for showing me that love doesn't have to end in loss.

How do you tell someone you don't feel from anywhere because any sense of home was lost in a night?

Her constant flood of panic wasn't an emotional hurdle she needed to jump, it was her second skin, a pulsing physical barrier that kept her separated from everyone

I imagine it must be difficult to have masculinity so fragile you feel the need to take cheap shots at me whenever you can. Does it keep you up at night?

Their lips molded together in a conversation that words had failed. In that kiss, their weary souls reached out for tentative touches, soft strokes, offering nothing more than recognition and acceptance.