My Someone keeps a mental running tab of the things I say that make him feel sorry for me.  He calls it The Top 5 Saddest Things Mallory Has Ever Said, and takes the opportunity to recite it when I am sick and pitiful and down on my luck.  The recent list, in ascending order from least to most sad, went like this–

5. “I don’t belong anywhere.”

4.  “Since my mom doesn’t call me anymore, I sometimes pretend she is trying to tell me she loves me through the books she lent me.”

3.  “Even though we just ate lunch, my belly rumbles because I am future hungry.”

2. “If I only had four wishes, I would spend a wish on a hotel room tonight that doesn’t smell like cigarettes.”

1. “Sometimes in the bath, since we can’t afford bubbles, I just make the bubbles with my butt.”

I like the recitation for at least five different reasons, because they remind me:

5.  …that I belong somewhere when I am with my Someone, and that my future belonging is mysterious but certain.

4.  …that I am working on my relationships even if they are hard.

3.  …that someone is tending to my hunger, and that my hunger is not a threat to my life.

2.  …that I am able to take care of my body in ways that are bigger than the bare minimum, anymore.

1. …that I am not as poor as I used to be.

Guess how much I love you?  Guess how much I love youuuu?

I was standing over a boiling pan of curry in Kelsey’s kitchen, cooking dinner with my Someone while Kelsey’s almost-three-year-old watched an adorable program in the next room.  It’s a cutesy tune they sing at the end, and one that had been catching our brains in repetition for hours after.

I checked the rice while my Someone stirred the curry, when my Someone started humming, then singing–

Guess how much I love you?  Guess how much I LOOOOVE you?

Something in me rattled, and then burst like water pipe after a long, cold winter–

“I don’t want to guess anymore!” I cried, “I’m tired of guessing!  I don’t want to guess anymore how much, or even if anyone loves me at all!  Why can’t they just tell me?  Why can’t you just tell me how much you love me?!”

My Someone turned to me, surprised.  Then, he hugged me.

“One,” he said, “sometimes I just make the bubbles with my butt.  Two, I don’t want to guess how much you love me…”

“It made the list,” I said, relenting.

“It definitely made the list.”

I guess that’s how much he loves me.

Today I turn 33.  I cut my own hair in parking lots with kitchen scissors, and then ask my friend or my Someone to help clean up the mess I made of my head.  I am closer to shaving my head completely, and realized last week that if I don’t do it, it would be a lifetime regret on my deathbed.  I think about dying less, but of my deathbed more.  I hope it has soft sheets and good lighting.  In the last year, I’ve unraveled half a lifetime’s worth of shame, and the tremors of it are still frequent, but fading.  I am dissatisfied with most of my wardrobe, but happier in my skin, so I don’t care as much that I am dissatisfied with my wardrobe.  I miss how sensitive I was when I was a kid, back when everyone told me I was too sensitive, and I am scraping callouses to get back to it.  This means that I spend more time doing nothing, wondering if trees transmit messages telepathically, and chewing my food more slowly.  I eat less sugar and drink less alcohol, but not from my enormous restraint and self discipline.  I just kind of forgot.  I’ve given up on having a stringent schedule, and have somehow become more productive, anyway.  I still love spicy foods, but now they make it hurt when I pee.  I think less of the life I want to live and more of the life I am living.  I am keenly aware that my frustration with my new dog is often in direct correlation with my frustration with myself.  My favorite colors are still yellow and brown.  I’m learning how to bind books.   I think about where I belong almost every day, and have no answer.  I am starting to believe that I’ve never belonged anywhere.  I’m not tired all the time, anymore.  I prefer chocolate chunks to chocolate chips because chips are for babies and I am a grown up now.  Also, chunks taste better.  I use the words “generous” and “grateful” more, but not in a Zenny yoga lady kind of way, even though I’m a lady who does yoga all the time.  I think frogs wearing hats are hilarious.  I am less afraid of snakes.  I don’t think snakes wearing hats are hilarious, but maybe they are less scary.  I managed to restrain from making any 33-year-old Jesus martyr jokes for this post.  But all the jokes I thought of were so funny.  I guess maybe 33 isn’t a step in the right direction, but a step in a direction, and that’s good enough for me.