I’ve neglected you, dear reader, of late. I’ve been spending the past few weeks creating Instagram stories and sifting through mutual feelings with someone complex. These things have occupied so much energy and pre-frontal cortex stimulation that I couldn’t relax into this blog to write.

The Instagram story thing sounds like bullshit. But it isn’t. I don’t know anyone who is doing what I do over there. I have to push through a message in 15 second bursts that include some combination of photos, video, words and audio in ever more complex ways. It’s more akin to how I actually think than pure writing. I don’t think in words. I think in pictures and overarching concepts and connections that I must then find words to translate such things for someone who can’t just look inside my brain. It’s a challenge. No one really ever wants to delve head first into my skull. Except maybe John Malkovich.

I am different things to different people. When you contain multitudes, rarely do you ever meet anyone who can keep up in all departments. Not a friend or a lover. If you do find the mentor who does comprehend, you nourish those relationships. I don’t have millions of people treading the path before me and leaving instructions on how to live this life. I have, instead, pieces of puzzles jammed together with my toddler fists to form something of a map that I can follow. I follow Shakespeare and Margaret Atwood and Nora Ephron and George Harrison and Whitman. I follow my teachers Celia and Kathleen. I’m indebted to them.

But no one fits the bill perfectly. Maybe because we are all dialed up in different combinations. But also because I really don’t think anyone gets what I get. Emily, I think, is the closest person to myself. Of course, Samy introduced us. He only knows remarkable women. And she and I are so similar it’s uncanny. I am so very thankful to her and for her.

I value my friendships above anything in the whole world because I know what it is like to have gone without for so long. I am committed to meet the world with gratitude.

But then there is that hole that appears to me even when all is good and tranquil. It is a man. Someone who can take the bawdiness, the frivolity, the ridiculous, the verbosity, the profundity, the neurosis, the absolute reverence and the heightened sexuality. Not only must he be able to take it. He must give in return.

Does the man exist that can deal with me? I don’t know. Maybe being too much means having to go without. No matter how many times I defy it, men still try to figure me out by sorting me into pre-existing boxes. So while I love comprehensively and fully and interdisciplinarily, men can only hold three, maybe four of those things about me in their head at a time. So bringing all of that together in a man who will not just respect me but love me and crave me and support me is a Herculean feat made for someone who is more than a mortal. Even in NYC.

Will I have to pound my fists against puzzle pieces of men to attain the golem who can satisfy all of those disparate wants and needs? Not a single man, but many? And will I ever be satisfied with playing different roles to men who will treat me like I am the sun and retreat, sunburnt and in pain? Will I always be radioactive?

If I’m searching for a hero, will he have to be a Marvel superhero? Because the answer after all these weeks of soul searching looks more and more like “yes.” Kindred can only get so close before I burn them.

At least burn parts of them out that will no longer perceive my integrity. From then on, the rest of me is retired to them, folded neatly and put in a scrapbook to be acknowledged but never touched.

I want to burn for someone. I want to be raw and naked and unflinching. Or at least get away from whatever this is that keeps whoever he is at bay. More than anything I want to be tender and a girl to someone. I think I’m ready for the next stage of growth and success. I feel that the wind is about to change. So I’m going to unfurl my sail to catch it and change course.

I will meet you halfway, destiny. You and I have a deal.