This post is not about sex.

I know!  Shocking.  But when Dylan and I first conceived of this blog a few weeks ago, I knew that I wanted to write sometimes about things other than sex because, inexplicably, I care what you all think of us.  I want whoever is reading this to see Dylan and me as people, instead of some kind of smut factory.  (Dylan agrees with this, I suspect, largely to appease me.  He has no problem with being a smut factory.  He particularly has no problem with me being a smut factory.  I digress.)  So, no smut for today.  Today I want to tell you a little bit about me, and Dylan, and me and Dylan.

I have no problem being single.  In fact, I like it.  I enjoy relationships too, and I’m very happy right now, but I have never been one of those girls who falls apart without a boyfriend.  My desire to be alone is really not based on a single girl’s ability to hook up with whoever she wants (though that is definitely a benefit).  No, gentle reader — I am simply too independent to be in a relationship unless I really want to.  I like my space.  I like to do what I want, when I want, and I want to be able to choose my own priorities.  Especially since I’m in college, and very involved with my life at school, I am not always interested in making time for people.  Is this callous of me?  I will only get to go to college once, and the experience is important to me, much more important in many ways than having a serious relationship when I’m 21.  I am very busy sometimes, and I do not have a lot of patience for people who do not understand and respect that.

Dylan, bless his heart, both understands and respects that, and I am relieved that he understands that just because he has graduated from college, I still want to enjoy and experience my last several years of school.  One of the best things about our relationship, for me (and I am not shy or private about this) is that we live in different cities.  Of course I would like to see him more than I do, and of course it helps that Philadelphia and New York are just a few hours apart by bus, and the trip is cheap and relatively painless, but in general I like the freedom that being alone most of the time affords me.  I like being in charge of my own time and not being accountable to anyone else.  I like being able to disappear into my bedroom or the library for long periods of time and not feel guilty or neglectful.  I like having my own space.  And I like, after several weeks apart, welcoming him into my home, putting everything else aside for a few days, and enjoying my time with him as a little vacation.  I like the escapist nature of those visits — the good food, virtually constant sex, and quiet, tender enjoyment of each other.  I like for our time together not to be mundane.

All of this is very old and typical for me.  I cannot remember a time when I have not valued my freedom powerfully within the confines of a relationship, and drawn firm, solid lines separating Girlfriend Ella from Independent Ella.  These distinctions have historically been very important for me, but as my time with Dylan increases, I am feeling the line blur, and it has been confusing.  As much as I have cared for him from the start, as recently as last spring I used to feel a mixture of sadness and relief when he would leave me after a visit — I enjoyed spending time with him, but I was ready to have my own space back, and sharing with him was exhausting.  My life back then, I recently explained to him, was only big enough for one — but I suddenly feel that it has grown to include us both.  Suddenly when he is not with me I feel a sort of absence.  His life is enough entwined with mine that while he still respects my independence, which is still necessary for me, I feel in some way that my idea of privacy has expanded to include him.  I am grown up about some things, but I will not adopt the hubris to claim that I am grown up about very many things.  I am 21 years old, and I am getting used to the idea of my first really serious relationship.  It is scary, but I like it.

This blog has thrown a strange distortion into my notion of intimacy and shared privacy, but I think that it has also intensified the lines that I can draw with me and Dylan on one side, and the rest of the world on the other.  By sharing so much, I feel a drive (and perhaps he does as well) to delineate even more firmly what is still private, and what is acceptably public.  It is certainly a learning curve, and something I am getting used to.  I am really enjoying the process of learning this with him, though.  I get a special thrill of pleasure from the way he writes about me — it is arousing, certainly, and I hope you agree.  I love seeing his opinion and thoughts on things we have done or will do or might do.  I love when he surprises me with things here, and I love his feedback about what I write.  What I really love, though (and this I did not anticipate), is the way his posts make me feel about myself.  I know that Dylan loves me.  I know, in fact, that he is crazy about me, he has told me this enough.  But I am not a girl without her insecurities (another story for another day), and while I believe him, his personal compliments to me are always received with a lingering, niggling little doubt.  He is, after all, directing them to me, with the design of making me feel good.  His posts here, on the other hand, are directed outwards, to you, and while he knows that I will see them, they are not created with the explicit design of giving me the warm fuzzies, as it were.  His praise for me here is gentle, less pointed, and organically genuine.  I can see, suddenly,  what he sees and appreciates in me, and it’s kind of incredible — it is an amazing and tender gift.  I feel, in a way, that he is allowing me to see myself through his eyes, and through that lens, I can see that I positively glow.

~ by Ella on October 30, 2008.