I love projects.
The only definition I've come up with thus far is rooted in raw honesty.
I've never been one of those people that does a good job gushing about feelings aloud. That involves way too much exposure. Voicing this stuff inevitably means that delusional hopes will be scoffed at by the people in my life that are rooted in reality. "Him? Riiiight, Meredith. There's not chance...He's way out of your realm of possibility". That's the fear, anyway. So the trend that began early was to keep it in. The tall funny friend I had a crush on my senior year believed that's all I wanted to be. This all blew up when a friend told him that I LIKED him. Oh my goodness. I hadn't ever told her that I liked him, but women know, I guess. And she liked him too, and this is beginning to sound a lot like a chapter from The Baby Sitter's Club. I considered this person that spilled my secret like a full glass of milk (we'll call her Stacy as she was the Baby Sitter's Club flirt) a friend. I actually considered her a good friend, and had it not been for my real friend, I wouldn't have ever known about the spilled milk. The real friend (we'll call her Dawn as she was principled) knew because the Logan of the whole scenario came to her and asked if I liked him; My real friend refuted this, and then she came to me, knowing all of this would be difficult for me to hear, and she told me anyway. This was my first lesson in this kind of love.
The above all sounded silly as I was typing it, but in high school it wasn't really silly at all. It was weighty and hurtful, and the lesson, though mostly in my subconscious, was to look for that character trait as it's something valuable and worth investing in.
I remember sitting outside in a plastic chair last year on a Monday, across from another Dawn I'm ever thankful for. Ten years later, and actual adulthood can still resemble the same childhood read. She sat across from me and told me information that was incredibly difficult to hear relating to a friend I couldn't help but have feelings for, and moments later, I felt like someone had thrown a jug of milk into my gut. The honesty of this friend is the thing, the very thing, I appreciate about her the most.
Last Friday over margaritas and mexican food, I gushed over our handsome server, someone I had engaged with flirtatiously a week or so prior. I had been told he may work there, and I didn't fully believe, so there we went, marching like girly troops scouting out the territory. It turns out the information I had been given was correct, our assignment was not followed out in vain, and I my innate sense of direction plopped us unknowingly at one of his tables. My dinner date observed, and because this honesty makes up her character, said somewhere toward the end of the meal, "can I make an observation?" Oh, how that sentence makes me nervous. "Yes," I cowered and said. "Well, you know how you told me the thing you didn't really like about the last one, how he flirted with everyone? Well, I just feel inclined to bring light to this one's innate flirtatiousness." Though I was aware of this, I preferred the idyllic bubble I'd been able to place around most of my logic throughout the course of our dinner, which was just fine, a harmlessly fun place to reside for an hour or so. Her shared raw and honest observation brought me back down to the ground, to the gutters, where I prefer to spend the rest of my time. She wasn't saying not to flirt, but to be careful when investing myself in his behavior, as it's likely bestowed upon the masses. Flirt, yes. Just be aware of what it is you're flirting with.
This love that continues to play itself out in my life is what I will call sincere. It can line itself up along the agapes and eros and the others too. It's raw honesty is rooted in a sincere desire for the best to come from truth shared, not withstanding difficulty, for the recipient. It has nothing to do with immediacy, or ease, and this is part of what makes it beautiful, and ever welcome.
