What surprised me most, after I’d seen him a few times and I was finally ready to admit I had fallen in love, after that;
Is how, if I tuned in, I knew he was taken. Taken as in, in a relationship.

In the moment however I had felt full connection.
Which at the time I had translated to availability.
Wrongly.

Now I trust my experience enough to fill in the blanks that would take months of casual conversation, before he’d feel it was appropriate to reveal them.

Seeing him also taught me my stance on this being my Virgin Years, where I was no longer available to emotionally invest in anything other than friendships something which in all probability would compute to me not having sex;
That this stance was still viable.

Despite the incredible welcoming warmth I felt, as if his words were cloaking me, shielding me, protecting me, holding me for the first time in years in the way we all want to be held, even though they said nothing of great import and their weight would have been missed by anyone witnessing;
Despite all that.
No.
I’m not going to budge.

But it changed me forever. That warm voice. To be seen in that way every time our paths crossed.
This was as close to intimacy I would come in this new era.

And if my newfound clarity in these matters is to be trusted, I’d say it has hit him harder because he is not in a position to be able to act on it without failing someone he has committed to.

“It’s not her,” I could say, in another universe.
“This is capitalism you’re feeling.”
Shortages are making codependents of us all.

Capitalism is not a big cloak, but a giant oak, as big as the world itself;
Nothing grows underneath.

Without true growth and expansion, the best we can still do is to change. 

And the butterfly has already flapped its wings.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Harteveld 2025*
Are 2200 characters, or less.
The name is inspired by the book Fretz 2025 by Johan Fretz and asterisk by the  2025 movie Thunderbolts*