Being a timid perfectionist is a pain in the butt.

What's really difficult for me: Admitting that I'm bad at something.

What's really easy for me: Pretending that I just don't want to do something when, in fact, I might want to do it, but I'm be bad at it. And I don't want anyone to know.

For instance, I had really hard time agreeing to have the training wheels taken off of my bike when I was little because I didn't want to face the embarrassment of falling over sideways the first few times I tried to ride it.

I also avoid playing video games because, having never played them growing up or in college, I royally stink at them. They are about as far from intuitive for me as anything can get, and I have no concept of how to control anything. The best I got at video games was Super Mario World for my Gameboy Color. That was my flash in the pan.

I won't play them now because I am embarrassed by my utter suckiness. I don't want people to judge me. Once, I tried to play something where I had to kill zombies and I could tell that my boyfriend was getting more and more frustrated with my inability to walk, look, and shoot simultaneously, so I handed off the controller to him and let him play with his roommate. While I looked on, hugging a pillow.

I really despise being bad at things, but it is only recently that I've managed to shove pride far enough out of the way to where I'm just okay enough about being bad at something that, if I'm interested, I'll keep trying it so that I can get better. Like normal people do. It's taken me 24 years to get to where normal people were when they were 3.

Also, I'll even go ahead and do something that I THINK I'll probably be bad at, just in case I'm not actually that bad at it. Like the 5k run/obstacle course in which I partook this past weekend. Old me? Heck no. I might get stuck along the way, better not do it. New me? Heck yes. I might get through the whole thing and feel invigorated.

The fact is, I've only just really understood that there's more to be gained from being really horrible at something, but doing it, than there is to be gained from avoiding doing anything out of fear of failure. Not exactly a lightbulb moment for most people, I don't think, but it was a freakin' lightning storm to me. I'm appreciating this newfound sense of freedom. It's the physical sister of the intangible freedom you feel when you realize it's easier to be honest and whatever way makes you feel most comfortable than it is to sit around, trying to figure out what you think other people might like you to be like.

This weekend? Might go shoot a gun and miss the target a bazillion times because I do not know how to shoot guns and I am nearsighted, particularly in my right eye, but I am psyched.

Abbreviations sometimes make me crazy.

YOLO? It sounds terrible. It sounds like what they have the village idiot greeting passersby with in a low budget film about Medieval life.

Or maybe the jester. Someone, anyhow, who is typically the butt of jokes.

"YOLO, m'lady."

Maybe it's just the jester's name.

It gets even worse when people manage to shoot that one out while maintaining a straight face. It gets disturbingly prevalent in bars, right around 12:30am as the drunkenness is setting in and the common sense is taking flight. Believe me, I've been there, I know. I know that place. Where you're balancing on that tightrope of "Stop drinking now" immediately above the empty space of "But it's making this night so much fun."

But stop saying "YOLO."

My reaction to hearing people holler "YOLO" before downing a shot of SoCo and lime is very much like my reaction to seeing two people grinding on the dance floor. It's this sudden, shock of awareness that the objectively uncool things that people do, that are thought of as being cool, are not cool. It doesn't register until you happen to look at them sideways at just the right second and see them in stark reality.

Two people grinding looks really weird. I'm sure I look really weird grinding. There's no way not to look weird when there's butt wiggling occurring and the two people doing the wiggling are taking it very, very seriously. There just isn't.

Anyway, I digress. You only live once, right?

HAM is another one. Thankfully, it hasn't caught on too heavily. Probably because there is simply no way to make "HAM" sound cool.

Saying, "I'm going out HAM tonight" calls forth alternate images of being in a musty basement somewhere, hunched over an old radio, and large quantities of pork. Neither of which is particularly related to swanky nightclubs and dangerously attractive people, coupled with top shelf alcohol.

In fact, "hard as a motherfucker" couldn't sound LESS like "HAM" in terms of being relatable.

How do these things happen?

How do we tell people that the thing they think they're so cleverly abbreviating just sounds so much better when they leave it alone.

These things can run amok. I know. Because back in elementary school, "H.A.G.S." and "L.Y.L.A.S." were all the rage and there were always a few smart alecs that thought they'd run with it. I wound up with a few yearbook messages like the following, "H.A.G.S.I.H.Y.H.F.A.I.W.S.Y.N.Y."

Not kidding.

(Have a great summer. I hope you have fun and I will see you next year.)

Imagine if people start yelling "YOLOHAM!" That's the village idiot's village.

ASMMC.

This was my way of knowing.

1) You tuck sembei crackers and CDs in too-small envelopes into my bag before I leave your house.
2) You've let me usurp your place and stool of choice at the table, quietly and unprotestingly.
3) When I get upset or irritated about something, you respond calmly and patiently, giving me a chance to slow myself down and have a mature conversation.
4) A hug from you is like being pulled against my complementary puzzle piece, and I do not want to detach.
5) You like the idea of my having your sweatshirt as much as I do (and I'm not kidding when I say that that is something on my Ideal Boyfriend list).
6) As far as I know, you don't think my crackpot ideas are crackpot.
7) We can pitch tents inside, build forts out of couch cushions, sled down snowy hills on trashbag-encased cardboard, and argue about the merits of capsaicin and bergamot. We are perfect.
8) Indeed. Quite.
9) The time I snored, you thought it was cute.
10) In my eyes, you are so...whole-package, that I refused to believe it the first time around.
11) I can still make you blush.
12) When I get ranty and loud and imitate a battering ram/steamroller combo, and my face gets pink from the excitement, you humor me and never make me feel like I'm being ridiculous or talking about something unimportant.
13) You kiss the top of my head. You stroke my hair.
14) You've decided that you don't mind driving up to Connecticut, on your own, to meet my parents for the first time. I didn't even have to ask.
15) I am not afraid to tell you anything or to show you any part of myself.
16) I never feel that you keep things from me or are, in any way, afraid to be who you are.
17) When I thought I was getting sunburned you tucked your shirt around my arm and huffed at me when I wanted to eat my gelato on a bench.
18) You adopt some of the things I frequently say. You like them. You like me.
19) I poke your butt, jab my fingers in your floating ribs, and you don't like me any less for it.
20) You play the violin. It makes me want to knock you into a closet and lock us in.
21) In all seriousness, your intelligence, talent, and youness provoke decided respect on my end.
22) You own flannel. You are not a hipster. You don't wear it ironically, you wear it because it is fantastic.
23) I know that even though my leaving Pennsylvania for law school is a daunting prospect, you would never consider trying to talk me out of it.
24) I might call you cute sometimes, but you're a guy, and I absolutely adore it. And the balance you strike.
25) Star Wars.
26) Our first conversations revolved almost entirely around philosophy. Not hobbies. Not [surprisingly] food. Philosophy.
27) No one has made me feel safer than you make me feel.
28) Two years ago, you drove to Bryn Mawr from Collegeville some Sunday nights with movies and snacks to keep me company into the night, even though you had to go to work in the morning. Even though you'd only known me a month or two.
29) You really wanted me to meet your family.
30) When we're walking, sometimes you grab my hand, interlace your fingers with mine, and just keep on going. I always want to stop and look at you, because the effortless gesture never fails to make me feel electricity.
31) I catch you looking at me....when I'm drifting in and out of sleep, when I'm reading. You never forget that I'm there.
32) I have never been so sure of anyone in my entire life.

Words.

Sometime's the words don't work. The discomfort is real though. The wanting runs far deeper than lust coiled in loins. The wanting rushes through the soul, holding it captive. Making it beat against the confines of the human body, its corporeal prison. A kestrel with clipped wings. No one gets the basics of love correct. True love, true love makes you aware of the kestrel beating in your breast, makes you catch the scent of open air, shining skies, and blush-scented breeze. You are forever caught between ground and moon, painfully aware of your position in perfect, poignant, blessed purgatory. If you are so lucky as to be loved in return, you feel the spray of rapids, hear the thunder of waterfalls (or are they heartbeats?), fly towards infinity without a map or navigation. You join hands, you leap, you plunge, you cascade over those falls, and you never look back.