The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/relationships)
“I am all of the parts of love,” she said. “Those parts will be there, whether or not you know me. I am the heartbreak, the rush of falling, the work of maintaining. Hurting does not mean I have turned my back on you, child.”
There are a dozen more like this, fractured moments when I realized that other people thought about themselves in a way I didn’t. They noticed things that happened to their bodies and, more terribly, could explain why their emotions were reacting in certain ways or how they had changed over time. I was young when I realized that there was an entire set of internal data that, by circumstance or nature, I struggled to notice and could not fathom how to read.
“Am I hurting you?” he asks, tapping the base of his glass against the bar for emphasis. “Have I ever been a part of anything that wasn’t good for you, in the long run?” He waits, watching the answer on my face, and nods. “Then what’s the problem?”
Alan D.D. recounts a legend of a womanizing man meeting a stranger outside a cathedral in Caracas, and reflects on his own past relationships and difficulties with trust.
Weekend Editor Eric O. Scott considers the terms we use to identify ourselves and how oppression can coexist with terms of personal liberation.