The Light I Didn’t Plan For

When I met the love of my life, I planned to live in a lighthouse in Maine or Massachusetts, own an intimidating dog, write thick, provocative novels, and, most of all, stay single.

Due to the absence of two working parents, I grew up in a house where love was presented as a form of torture — pinned to the carpet, my brothers’ spit dangling from their mouths, sucking it back up, and doing it again. The goal was to get fat saliva as close to my face as possible. The result was always a splat between my eyes. Still, a forearm rug burn was preferred to a random punch in the back of the head.

The display of affection from my sisters was marginally better — the violence contained to a hair yank, but generally, it came in biting words — the kind of words meant to mortally wound.

Homelife, Lord of the Flies style.

There were other things, too. Things that made me turn myself inside out, a calloused exoskeleton to protect my heart, and pushed the blood in my veins into a frozen sludge.

It was better that way. Safer.

I was nineteen and a half before I got my first kiss…from him.

I hadn’t wanted to go on that blind date. My roommate and his workmate made it happen: an all-day date in a cabin in the shadow of the Rockies.

We drank Arizona’s, shared Subway sandwiches and pizza in Park City, and played board games.