Every month.

Every month I poke around in my baggage and pick at the scabs, and trace the lines of my scars of my past hurts. It’s like a hormonal binge eating session on my soul. I don’t get it.

I’m more used to high heels and happiness, but I doubt love and commitment and sniff at it like milk in the fridge, 2 days past the expiry date. I put Misty through the sniff test every month. It exhausts her.

Without question, I love her more than she loves me. I’m more attracted to her/him, than she is me. I suffer no illusions. And it hurts me sometimes. Especially at this time of the month. S/he does love and care for me, but it is not the stuff of dreamy fantasy for her/him. I am not a dream come true.

I woke her up tonight at 2:30 in the morning with a phone call to talk about it. Not for the first, or even 50th time, we’ve had a variation on this conversation in all the time we’ve been together.

S/he talked about how after being ga-ga over his wife for all those years burned him terribly. How looks and a passionate lust are far less important than a moderate one with a much better fit. That he will never be that intoxicated by a person again, and look past all the ways they don’t work.

My eyebrow remains raised.

Do you think that is possible? That someone can hold themselves above that chemical reaction?

My fear is that s/he is settling for me. That my love feels really good and after being in a 23 year long marriage where the person wasn’t attracted to you and you were treated like a rented mule, I’m a soft wonderful place to be. But there aren’t any big, life changing feelings for him. And nature, my dear friends, abhors a vacuum.

Tell me I am wrong.

Tell me it is my monthly, hormonal girl brain and I’m not heading for a KO.