I love how different we are.
I love how I am not verbal, but you are. I find words lose their meaning once they're spoken out loud. I forget that although I can walk through a crowded bus/car/terminal and not understand what everyone else is saying, the minute I open my mouth and speak, almost everyone in my vicinity could be listening and perhaps understanding. My tongue, when unlatched, gives way to monsters and morphing creatures that are never quite right. I fear for the havoc my undisciplined words might wreak.But you, you are verbal. You speak words out loud and there is power. There is meaning and emotion in your voice that soothes not only yourself, but everyone around you. Your words travel through space and time and is felt so concretely and so meticulously that it can leave craters or mountains in its wake. You have a way of making your words understood no matter the language it is spoken in.
Sometimes I feel I can't make myself understood in any language.
I love how you have scars from fighting other people and I have scars from fighting myself and yet we both wear them proudly on our sleeves like badges of honor earned in battle.
I love how when I use the word "sige" I mean most definitely, I promise, I shall make it happen. And when you use it, you mean perhaps, I'll try, we'll see what happens.
I love how I come from such a small close-knit traditional family and you came from a huge, spunky, crazy family. I am just tickled imagining what it must have been like to grow up in such loudness.
So when I say I love us for our differences, I don't mean it in a sarcastic way. I don't mean it in a passive aggressive sense that I think you are living wrong; and you should be more like me. I don't mean it in a way to make you feel uncomfortable, or unwelcome. I don't mean to say that I dislike myself and wish I was more like you.
When I say I love us for our differences, what I really mean to say is that you enchant me. I'm fascinated by the way you live your life completely unlike me. I want to learn more about how you wash the dishes in a circle and not from left to right. I love studying how your fingers fidget with your things while you talk. I am spellbound by the pictures you paint of the world that you see because you use colors I do not even have in my palette. This is what I mean when I say that I love us for our differences.
And one more: I love us for our differences. I love us to the extent of our differences. My love of us reaches to the depths of the seas and the width of West to South and over the moon, around and back and through each rock, tree, deer, and pebble that stands between us -- just so long as we are different. You are you. I am me. We are not we. I love us for that. I love us for our platonic-ness, and our friendship. I love us for choosing to keep our distance. I love us for our differences. You challenge me every day.
