If you haven’t visited Nirrimi Firebrace’s blog yet, do it. She has a way with words that…gah. Just go see for yourself. This piece for example:
More and more often I look at Bee without that manic consuming love. Often I look at him and he’s just Bee and I’m just me. Stripped of magic, stripped of electricity. These ordinary moments hurt me now and then, they seem to highlight the way love changes. I write.
“This is the part where your touch becomes so familiar that I forget where I end and you begin. Where I begin to talk to myself out loud because even though you’re right beside me it feels like I’m all alone. Where I stop wearing make-up, wear ugly old shirts all day, leave the dishes piled up by the sink and sing songs I can’t sing well. Where I’m cooking pancakes naked and you don’t bat an eyelid. Where I lament the fireworks of the beginning and romanticise the excitement of singledom. Where you tell me my soup is too salty and I tell you I hate that song you love. Seriously, I really hate it.
But this is the part where I don’t need to tell you why I’m crying, you already know why and you know all the right things to say. Where we work silently on our projects for hours on end without getting distracted by each other. Where we know each other’s bodies so well that sex is divine. Where you know just how I like my avocado toast (so much lemon) and I know just how hot you like your tea. Inside jokes, all the inside jokes. This is where you know all the characters in my stories and I know the narrative of your life as though it’s my favourite novel. This is where all games end and our flawed, messy, marvellous true selves begin.
This is the part where love whispers instead of shouts and even though it’s quieter now, it’s stronger than it ever was.”
I don’t know if there a better way of describing that daunting, yet wonderful, cross-over phase in a relationship more accurately than she has done it.
Josie Mattsson 