There’s nothing I like better than falling for a stranger.
I’m very good at it. It’s easy to be open with someone you will probably never meet again, and I can find something to love in almost anyone for a little while. But wandering through all of our mutual strangeness, this immediately took a turn I don’t go down with people I don’t think I can trust.
And despite the facade you maintain, I think you’re one of the better men I’ve ever met – regardless of the interesting point we met for both of us in our markedly jaded and guarded way.
I see the way we’ve both danced around who we are now and who we’ve always been under chipped layers of heartache. I’ve felt us circling each other and the space we inhabit like wolves assessing the other, challenging the other to make the first move.
But you and I are not wolves. We’ve both been hurt a lot in ways so similar it unnerves me. (Besides, I don’t think either of us is afraid of making the first move.)
And as I start to see you, I see how wrong my first impressions were. How much tenderness comes easily to you. How you keep fear at bay with action.
I see your edges, and you stay at them so long and so well, it makes me wonder why I’ve been so afraid to.
But I can’t help but wonder how long you have until those edges begin to fray. And I wonder what happened to bring you here and how long you can keep running.
Then again, I had to go 5000 miles away to have an old phrase I used to roll my eyes at thrown in my face, “Wherever you go, there you are.” Go figure. It’s easier to keep running than face the fallout. At least at first.
But eventually, falling apart is all that’s left, and as much as the cracking open feels impossibly hard, it’s the only way to find anything like a center that is tolerable for people like us.
But hey, I could be wrong.
Even if I am, this time spent at the edges couldn’t have been better timed. You are exactly what I didn’t know I needed – a dare and a challenge worth getting tangled up in.
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Dusti Arab, Fractional CMO
And the founder of the reinvention co, a marketing consultancy specializing in working with personality-driven companies with small teams.
Intense, fun, and relentlessly practical, Dusti understands the lives of small business owners are deeply intertwined with their businesses, and if their marketing is going to be sustainable, it can't get in the way of why they do what they do. (And honestly? It should be fun so they actually want to do it.)
She is the host of Referral Worthy, a podcast for small business owners ready to go from "best kept secret" to the go-to name in their niche.