all growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience

What’s the most annoying habit that other people have?
    Being themselves.
    There's not much as difficult as backing away and letting someone else live a life you wouldn't choose for them. Making tough choices, looking away from seemingly obvious truths, enduring hard things, wearing a cloak of "should" and hiding a soul of "wish" beneath....
    I have given Nick, my ex-bf, a whole lot of crap—on the blog and elsewhere. Some of that was earned. (OK, quite a lot of it.) But those three years are not just a blur of bad memories. We laughed ourselves sick, and ate our weight in curly fries, listened to good music, watched a lot of movies, and we were friends, of a sort, most of the time.
    The best part, though? He was the most spontaneous guy I've ever dated, and he liked the spontaneous stuff that I liked to do. We'd plan an afternoon of staying in and watching videos, but if one of us said, "I really feel like going to the bookstore," we'd just as likely hop in the car and drive to any one of our dozen favorite bookstores within an hour or so of where we lived. We spent lots of time in the car, for that matter, not really going anywhere but just enjoying the trip and the conversation along the way. The whole relationship started that way, with a few late night dates—honest to God—in the woods, sitting on a blanket in the pitch dark, talking about everything and nothing. A great way to get to know each other. I loved dropping everything to throw on jeans and a sweater and meet up in 15 minutes to head off for who-knows-where, spur of the moment.
     "Johnnie Walker" was sort of the same way. He's gotten some bad press here, though perhaps less than he earned. That relationship, primarily long-distance as it was, appealed to my impulsive nature. He would call, late morning on a Saturday, and we would talk for literally the entire waking day. (I saved the phone bills from that period, which were itemized down to the individual calls, and there were many, many days when we talked for 3-6 hours at a stretch.) We would email and all that, too, but those calls were something special. I especially remember him calling on the way home from a casino after a late night of poker—and he lived on the left coast, so his late nights were very, very late for me. He was all excited about how the game(s) had gone down and spent a lot of time describing the play, while I floated up to consciousness from being dead asleep. I distinctly remember lying there thinking that there was nowhere I would rather be, nothing that I would rather do, than lie in the dark and have that conversation. Yes, it took a while to get back to sleep once we were done talking, and I was half asleep the next morning. But that impetuous time together—that "date"—was just what I wanted, and how ever many years later, I still recall it with great pleasure.
“We do not believe in ourselves 

until someone reveals that deep inside us

something is valuable,

worth listening to,

worthy of our trust,

sacred to our touch.

Once we believe in ourselves

we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight

or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”

[E.E. Cummings]

    It's hard to step back, let go, and let someone be who they are. I failed to master that (or even get a really good hold on that) with either Nick or Michael, as they did with me. Still, I'm grateful for those messes. They shook me up, helped me realize what I don't want and won't put up with—and let me enjoy lots of spontaneous good times, which is part of what makes me who I am.

[from a list originally found on Tumblr - this is #9; the title quotation is by Henry Miller]