In the late hours...

... is when I do some of my best (or perhaps my worst) thinking. It's that time of the night where I finally begin to relax from the activity of the day and just let everything wash over me. It's both freeing and torturous. Weird, isn't it? Yeah, I'll say.

So tonight the thing that I was thinking of was how it feels to be around Sally. I wanted to describe it and make it real for myself. This is the time of night I think about her too. No, it's not always sexual. In fact, more often than not, it's not. It surprises me every time. With her that is not my first thought, but it doesn't take long for me to go there. :-)

The thing I was thinking about tonight was how she makes me feel. It's very hard for me to describe, because I don't know that I have ever felt this way about another person. The best way to describe it is like being a teenager in love for the first time. If you've read enough of my blog, you'll realize the irony in that statement.

The fact is that I can really only guess what having that feeling is really like, as I never had that experience growing up as a young man. Never. It has a quality of expansiveness to it, of mystery, of delight -- of loving for the first time. Of being known and appreciated for the first time. I am simultaneously delighted and scared shitless.

The delight portion should be obvious. The fear? Not so much. I find that one of the things that I am afraid of is that I will find myself in a position where I lose her and never feel this way about another person. That scares the living daylights out of me. I don't know how to confront it, let alone manage it.

Ahhhhh, the stuff (un)pleasant dreams are made of.