Dance away with me

3rd May, 2025

It's difficult to hold onto hope when you're living in a skull full of voices pointing out all the evidence that things are hopeless.

I've written a lot about feeling like such a contradiction of people. I am all at once the crying child in my chest, and the wolves howling and tearing at my ribcage, and the weary but steadfast flame holding them back beyond a ring of light.

To be in conflict with yourself like that is the worst kind of battle. It's draining, a pyrrhic victory no matter what you do, no matter which side wins.

But it is not hopeless.

Last night was one of the best nights I've experienced in a while. My girlfriend asked me out on a date.

In traditional contexts, this doesn't seem like a big deal. We are dating; therefore we go out on dates.

But it's different when you are tired. Making plans is difficult for the pair of us at the best of times, and life has been wearing us down in many ways over the last few months. Seemingly small, ordinary things become monumental.

Which is why I cannot put into words the burning joy I felt upon waking up to this message yesterday morning:

"hey do you wanna go out for dinner tonight? just us two, i don't have any strong suggestions but we can figure something out~"¹

Of course I said yes, by which I mean I sent a string of ridiculous emojis and yelled in her dms for a while about it.

The rest of the day itself was uneventful, so please imagine a montage of me playing Pokemon for roughly the next 6 hours. I know, it's a boring montage. Sorry.

💚 💚 💚

I'm not gonna go into too many details about the date either, because it was ours. But to avoid it entirely would defeat the purpose of this entry, so here's some highlights:

We went to a pretend-fancy pizza restaurant and got a pizza and an entire pretend-fancy bottle of wine, which was something neither of us had done before and a wonderfully, amusingly traditional straight couple activity, given that we were a pair of lesbians wearing dog collars. It was good pizza and surprisingly decent wine.

We walked through the city after this, arm in arm and extraordinarily tipsy (we weren't allowed to leave with the wine, so we drank all of it). We encountered a guy singing karaoke. There was some kind of university pub crawl going on that night, so there were still quite a few crowds around despite the time, and as the previous small group dispersed I put my arms around my girlfriend's shoulders and asked her to dance with me.

She did.

The karaoke guy accepted our request for "whatever vaguely romantic song you like, please", and we danced. We weren't very good. We were drunk. But she was (and is) gorgeous, and I was happy, and it was the most glorious moment to look around us and realise that a handful of other couples walking past had joined in, all probably equally drunk and almost as uncoordinated.

I've danced in public before, once or ten times. But this was the first time with her, in public or otherwise.

A lot of that night is a hazy, comfortable blur to me, but that moment I will not ever forget, I think.

The rest of the night I will mostly skip through. We walked some more, talked a lot, sat in the street together, cried a bit as you do when you're drunk, kissed, and just... enjoyed the night, in a way I haven't for a little while. Eventually we got an uber home. We lay together in bed for a while, talking about music. We stayed up until 5am doing things that I shall not even hint at, as they would cause the immediate and irrecoverable collapse of the entire Catholic church for their pure sinfulness if ever recorded on paper.²

And then we went to sleep.

💚 💚 💚

The point, dear reader, is that it is not hopeless. I hope it's obvious why all of the above is relevant to that fact.

This entry is a love letter, and an affirmation, and a promise.

It is addressed to myself. It is a memory for me to come back and revisit when I am afraid.

It's for her as well, of course, and anyone else who may be here reading it. But mostly for me.

It is not hopeless, even if I have to live believing that it is sometimes. The fact that I am living, able to believe that, is an inherent contradiction. I am here. She is here. So it is not hopeless.

The fire will not go out. The child and the wolves alike will find peace and gentle sleep.

We'll go on more dates. Slowly, we may have the chance to build a home among the storm together.

I have so many more spider facts I want to tell her. <3

Goodnight, everyone. I love you.