Melt my Heart

I had the opposite of that moment I talked about the other day.  where everything felt right.  Instead, everything felt wrong.  I was walking through downtown Palo Alto which is a bizarre place.  It just seems to want so badly to not be  Palo Alto, but it is.  As a drunken man stumbled past me, I felt the seed of anxiety get planted somewhere deep in the pit of my stomach.  The opposite of awesome for me is anxious.  It is the worst emotion I can think of.
Anyways, I was almost back to my car, when a homeless man and I made eye contact.  Do you ever step on a grape when you're barefoot and halfway through you realize what you're doing, but at this point you can't help it and your doomed to have a smushed grape on your floor/foot?  Or you're driving sort of absent-mindedly and you realize the light is yellow, but you don't want to slam on your breaks so you go through, but as soon as your car has passed that threshold of the crosswalk line the light turns red and before you know it, you've broken the law?  As I made eye contact with this man, I realized I had somehow done wrong.  He looked into my eyes and he hated me.  I could have anticipated the words if I hadn't been hoping they wouldn't be said, but they came out of his mouth anyways, a loud, "F**k you."

1.  I think I look like a white trash Mom in this pic.  2.  This pic gets somewhat relevant, I promise. 

I spent Friday night babysitting, which is like paying me to eat cookies.  Literally, I was being paid to eat their food.  And watch their 3 1/2 year old little girl.  I'm not always the best with little girls, but in general little boys love me.  I just have more practice with them, I suppose. 
But we bonded, mostly over our knowledge of Disney princesses (girl was showing me up - she could differentiate between Flora Fauna and Merryweather from Sleeping Beauty) and our mutual enjoyment of dancing in the middle of living rooms to Vampire Weekend songs. 
An hour into it, she kept accidentally calling me Mama.  Which I suppose, meant she identified with me, liked my company, and saw me as an authority figure.  Two hours into it, she stopped playing, stared at me, and said, "I'm so glad to spend time with you."  It was very cute, and as one who does not spend much time in affectionate environments, it was sort of a surprise.  About three hours after she had met me, this little girl stopped again to tell me she loved me.  I hesitated for about half a second before I told her I loved her too. 


I am, in general, very stingy with giving my emotions out to others.  It takes me more than three hours to love someone, and much longer than that to tell them about it.  Negative emotions, which I am probably (wrongly) more liberal with, still take me a bit of time to develop.  I have never hated someone with one glance, which is probably a good thing, but I still think there's something to letting yourself feel.  I recently told me roommate that I had never cried over a boy.  She thought that was really weird.  Which I suppose it is.  I am more ready to give away my kisses than I am to give away my feelings. 
But in the moment, I realized that I love that little girl.  which says a lot to me about the ability of children to open hearts. 


I think I made all my points.  Gosh, I wish I were better at tying bows at the end of my posts, but I'm just going to leave you with that.