A long day

Please note, it's been a long day today and I'm more than pretty sure that everything will look better in the morning.

I don't know how to start this post.  Do I start with what prompted it?  Do I start with how I felt?  With what reality looks like at the end of it?  With what I want reality to look like?

Today's reality is that I can smell my friend's aftershave on my hair after he hugged me and it's causing me to feel almost homesick.

At this moment I want someone to call my own so much it almost hurts.  I want to know that I can get in from the office at 7.15pm and that someone will be there to cuddle me.  I want someone who'll keep me safe when I'm feeling vulnerable.  I want to be able to be able to look after someone else when they're feeling vulnerable.  I want someone who can follow my tangents and ramblings and keep up with them and anticipate them.  I want in-jokes and laughter and made-up words and silliness and to follow someone else's tangents to the point that words and sentences are all mixed up and are tumbling over each other and that no one else can keep up. I want my hair to smell of their aftershave and to be able to smile because it's marked me as theirs, in the same way that a tan-line under a ring indelibly marks me as theirs.

I want all of the security of being in a long term relationship without the pain and scaredness and heartache and freedom of letting down the barriers that I've built up.  I know that's not going to happen.  I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I've got to learn to put God first before He'll let me anywhere near a relationship that would be any good for me. I know that, as Paul says in one of his letters, it is better to be single so that you can devote your whole life to God rather than having to share time between God and your family.  I definitely know that, if that is God's long-term plan for me, I'll go along with it without too much grumbling.