An Exercise In Naked Rawness

11-11-13 - Kingston Gate Pub, Kingston Hill

I have a short time before I meet Morgan again, so I'm sitting here in a pub, the Kingston Gate, with a rum and coke and just writing. I wanted this to be an exercise in just random writing within a time limit, so whatever I get done between now (20.05) and when she arrives to meet me, is what I post, so forgive me if it ends suddenly and without resolution, that's just how it's going to go this time.

I've spent most of today asleep, unintentionally. I was supposed to be going into work to do some tidying, but nature took over and somehow I woke up at 17.00, fully clothed and slightly sweaty, where I'd just fallen asleep after seeing my sister and brother-in-law and their two kids at a soft-play centre in Epsom earlier. I'm not complaining about my exhaustion, it's the good kind that results from a life well lived. I've been seeing Morgan a lot recently - I hope that she doesn't see it as too much, but I kind of trust that she'll turn around and tell me that she needs space - with nights out like karaoke at a local bar in Epsom, or out meeting up with her friends at the Weatherspoons in Kingston. Sometimes it's just her coming over to mine and us leaving at 7.00 so that she can catch a train to work, or me crashing at hers and seeing her onto the very same train before I head back to Epsom.

There's something strangely nice about waking up with her in my arms, asleep on my chest, something that I just can't quite put into words. I'm not sure how to describe how it makes me feel to fall asleep with the woman I love and wake up still there next to her. It's beyond description, and - for a cynic like me, at least - something strangely alien and obscure. I'm not used to it, but it feels amazing, and I know it's something I don't want to stop. If I can continue feeling this forever, I will be the happiest man I could ever imagine.

That's kind of the thing that runs through my head constantly. I am happy, truly so. I am happier beyond what I had ever imagined, or dared to even dream that I could be. Of course, everyone has a list of things they'd like in life, things they want out of a relationship. A tick-list, if you will, of what one looks for in order to be happy. If I had ever written that list, I'll be honest, it wouldn't have been too long. If I'd dared to be cheeky or to really push the boat out, it might be double that original length, but as it happens, every box I could have written on either list has been struck through, and there are so many more that I could not even begin to dream of writing down that have been added and subsequently marked off.

There are conversations we've had in the brief time that we've known each other that I've never had before, and even those that I have had before have been different. I've mentioned marriage and kids before, but never truly seriously, and those conversations have never felt natural, let alone not wrong. I'm sure my sister earlier, when we were talking, was likely getting quite tired of Morgan this, Morgan that, but if she was then she masked it well under questioning and what seemed like genuine interest.

I'm taking Morgan home to meet the family and a few friends next weekend, and this has me in a whirlpool of mixed emotions. On the one hand, I cannot wait to share my world with her and to show her off to those people I have known for so long. I cannot wait for them to see this woman who has made me so unbelievably happy, this woman of whom I am so unashamedly proud of and utterly and completely in love with. Of course, this is mixed in with that fear and trepidation of "Will everything go ok?". I'm not worried that they won't like her - they've met people who I know to be much less than she is, old friends that I have long since cut contact with and even then knew to be wasters, and been nothing less than open and friendly - I know they will love her. She's just that kind of person. I'm worried of the obvious things, like baby photos, and embarrassing stories, but also of things less obvious, perhaps. I hope that my home town is acceptable to her. I've told her before that showing her my world often feels like a pauper taking a princess on a tour; not that I view her as some kind of snooty aristocrat, far from it. I just offer my world humbly, and hope that it is worthy. 

We talked only last night about this, curled up on her sofa watching 'Change Up' (a film that I was utterly unprepared for, one of those films that presents itself openly as something I won't like, but that I end up thoroughly enjoying regardless), about how there is so much of my world I want to share with her, so much that I want to show her of where I have been. I want to see her world, where she grew up and lived, I want to wander the streets and alleyways of her hometown and get lost in them, see where it all connects. I want to understand her world, meet her family and friends, and see where this all began.

But then, forward thinking, there is so much that I want to do with her; places I want to go and see, things I want to do and experiences I want to share. I want to go skiing/snowboarding on real snow, see real mountains. I want to feel the sand of foreign beaches between my toes, and the soft rains of the tropics on our face as we kiss. I want to see her beautiful face bathed in the electric neon of Chiba and Shibuya, Tokyo. I want to wander across grassy hills and peer out across stunning vistas, holding her hand every step of the way.

I am aware that this exercise is swiftly becoming an wordy diatribe veering most verbose onto subjects that many would choke on in the same manner that I gag when presented with a solid lump of mature, sweating bree, and some would suggest it just as cheesy (not least of all Morgan herself). Perhaps those people would be right, maybe I am being cheesy, but the flavour of the text doesn't make it any less true, open or honest. I am writing at pace here, thinking words and tapping away at the little bluetooth silicone keyboard that's stitched into my iPad case without heed or thought beyond the words themselves. I'm not stopping to think of what I'm writing, I'm just channeling the thoughts in my head down to my fingertips, and there translating those same thoughts to keystrokes, unfiltered and uncensored. It's raw, and that can be disconcerting, but I know that when I read this all again later, that the emotions I am feeling now will have been captured here in the words, not through artistic flare (Ha!) but with the nakedness of the process involved. These words are that emotion given form, raw and uncut. 

Like a diamond, cutting and working with the raw gem may make something more beautiful and pleasing to the eye, but in doing so it loses the honesty of what it was. You can look at a cut diamond and the hole in the ground where it came from and the two are as utterly separate and distant as anything in this world could be, it's hard to reconcile the two things together as one. Here, I know that when I look back I see it as it is now, that these words encapsulate what I felt, and that I will feel it again through these words. Of course, I'm also hoping (yet also strangely secure in knowing) that when I look back, I will still be feeling these emotions. I'm not going anywhere, and I hope that neither is she.