I’ve never been entirely sure what she saw in me —
I mean that seriously, not as false modesty —
when we met I was not in the best configuration,
not the worst I’d been but not the highlight reel.
She’ll tell you, when pressed, that she saw something —
the potential shape, the direction-of-travel outline —
and I believe her, she’s not the type to say it
if she didn’t mean it in some literal sense.
What she saw in me was something I was heading toward —
she came in at a point before I’d gotten there,
she loved the man I was still in the process of becoming
and stayed to watch the becoming happen.
What she saw in me I couldn’t see myself —
that’s the thing about being seen by the right person:
they have a view you don’t have access to,
an angle on yourself that only they can occupy.
I’ve asked her, on the honest nights, what it was specifically —
the conversation always goes the same general direction.
She says she saw someone who was paying attention.
She says most people she’d met weren’t really paying attention —
to the world, to the people in front of them, to themselves —
and I was paying attention, which she found unusual enough
to stop and look at twice, which is how this started.
Paying attention. That’s what she led with.
I’ve thought about that a lot since — what it means,
what it says about the field she was working with
that attention was unusual enough to distinguish me.
And I think about whether I’d have stayed attentive
without her, whether attention is native or whether
someone has to see it in you and call it
for you to maintain it, protect it, grow it.
I try to pay attention in the ways she noticed —
to the world, to the people in it, to her specifically.
Paying attention to her is the project of my adult life —
the ongoing, updating, perpetual-student project.
She changes, the project updates, I take new readings —
and the attention she saw in me at the beginning
has been directed at her more than anything else
for eleven years, which seems like the right use of it.
What did I see in her, she asked me once —
fair question, the conversation goes both ways.
And I said: someone who was completely herself,
no performance, no hedge, no exit strategy in place.
Someone who was already arrived in herself
while I was still in transit, still becoming —
and watching someone who’s already there
is the most useful thing for a person still in transit.
So she saw the direction-of-travel and loved that.
I saw the already-arrived and wanted to get there.
And both of us, looking at each other across the room,
saw something we needed that the other could provide.
That’s not the romantic telling — the romantic telling
would have us seeing each other fully at first sight —
but this is the true telling, and the true telling is better:
two people choosing each other for the right specific reasons.