KISS ME, KISS ME, KISS ME

When you're young, or, at least, when I was young, certain things seemed inevitable. Standard 90's, middle-class, cishet stuff -- you graduate, you go to college, get married, get a job, purchase a yacht, invest in a timeshare, and so on. And it isn't until you, or, at least, I got a little older that I realized that not only are those things extremely evitable, they can also seem a bit more (or less) desireable depending on the day.

For unreasonably long stretches of my life, I've felt plagued by aloneness. Whether with people or by myself, I felt alone. From the miserable second I was pulled out from sleep and forced to face the day to the merciful second I fell back in -- alone. And, for me, the solution was to embrace the isolation.

I did end up going to college. The genius that I am, it took me an extra semester, but I'm lumping that in here when I tell you this: Those four and a half years were complete and utter, pre- The Jungle-human-shit-smeared-meatgrinder, Lovecraftian-brain-snappingly, inconceivably morbid waste of god-damned time compared to the past four years of, when it all comes down to it, an amount of joy and fulfillment I had not previously thought possible.

And so, this is to tell you that today is my fourth anniversary with this wonderful human, this person who inspires me to be my best self, the awe-inspiring, the beautiful, the lovely, the funny, the co-recipient of the "Owner of the Cutest Cat In The Apartment" award, the love of my life, Mary Jessika Stocker.

Four years seems pretty good. Let's see how eight feels.

4-17-19