Let them taste the bitter lost mistake of you

When you hear people talk about the magic of making love -- feeling as though through sex two people become one -- they're not talking about that at all. What people mean to say is that at some point in their myriad lives between playing pretend and the present moment, they misplaced their sense of self. Each of us has, at some point, realized the same. It's hard to remember exactly when that crucial piece of you dropped out of sight, but you remember the first time you felt the hollow. You wake up one morning, or you look around your room. Whatever you're doing, it hits you suddenly that something is gone and for all the world, you can't imagine what. It's the equivalent of looking up one day and realizing the sky is red. But more than that, the sky has always been red and somehow you just never saw it before. The entire world has changed, and it hasn't.

That's when the search begins, but you don't know where to look. There's that old picture of you and your best friend from last summer, the one you don't talk to anymore for reasons neither of you can explain to anyone else. In the picture you're smiling -- a real smile -- one you haven't seen on your own face for ages. You find yourself staring in the mirror, expectant. The smile doesn't come.

What do you do, when that happens? When the world has shifted and only you know? Turns out the answer is pretty simple. You do the same thing you've always done, the same way you've always done it. And then there's Him. He's not God, but He feels that important because when He looks at you, and your stomach buzzes like an electric shock, you smile a real smile. How could any girl do anything but chase that feeling?

You come to understand that only someone else can show you who you are. There's always that one precious moment in the midst of the act of love when you find yourself -- as if by taking off your clothes and putting on desire, your true self is realized, but only when someone else is there to find it. After sex, when you lay beside the body that's been in yours, you feel lost again. The seconds trickle past and as each one goes, a little piece of you goes too. Sex is the lie we tell to make ourselves feel less alone. It's the only time we can let ourselves feel that way without wanting to die.

We fall asleep hours after he does, because afterwards he is just a man, and look at the moon. It's a reflection of something brighter, just like us.

-Robyn Lefkowitz