Perfect Moments Don't Require Perfect Conditions
Where in my relationships am I waiting for someone else to reach first?
On the body
There's a specific physical feeling I get when I want to reach out to someone but am quietly hoping they'll do it first. It lives in the back corners of my jaw — a tightness, almost tingly, like the muscles there are bracing for something. And my throat does this thing where it closes slightly, where sound feels like it would be impossible to escape even if I wanted it to. It's not quite anxiety. It's more like anticipation with nowhere to go.
What's interesting is that I feel it just as strongly for the hard conversations — the ones where my brain is already running models on how the other person might react, what they might say, whether it will go badly — as I do for something as simple as hitting send on a photo from our Saturday afternoon. The jaw tightens the same way. The throat closes the same way. My nervous system apparently cannot distinguish between I need to tell you something difficult and look at this thing my daughter did.
And then the guilt spiral starts. It's been a while. Too long, actually. So long that acknowledging the gap feels almost as uncomfortable as the original silence — so I don't acknowledge it, which means I still haven't sent the message, which means more time passes, which means the gap gets wider, which means reaching across it feels even harder than it did before.
The Overhead Tricep Stretch is a reach behind yourself — arm overhead, elbow bent, hand dropped between your shoulder blades, lengthening through the back of the arm toward a place you can't quite see. That's exactly what it feels like to extend toward someone when you've been waiting too long. You can't fully see where it's going. You reach anyway.
On the almost
This last week I almost didn't text some friends to tell them I was going to be in town.
Not because I didn't want to see them. Because I'd convinced myself it was a busy time of year for them, and I didn't want them to feel bad if they couldn't make it work. I told myself I was protecting them from the guilt of saying no. I told myself it would be easier for everyone if I just didn't bring it up.
What actually happened: we met for coffee and a park playdate on the last morning of my trip. Two hours. I got to meet a three-and-a-half-year-old I'd never met before — the child of someone I love, who has been growing and existing in the world this whole time while I was quietly deciding not to take up space in their schedule.
The wildest part is that I almost talked myself out of it because it could only be two hours and those friends that I love had other commitments that seemed more important to me than me. As if two hours with people you love is a consolation prize. In reality I would have settled sprinting across a terminal for a layover hug from them because we were somehow in the same space at the same time.
We do this, I think — convince ourselves that we should only reach out when we can offer the perfect conditions. The right amount of time, the right occasion, the right version of ourselves showing up. And in waiting for perfect, we sometimes don't show up at all.
On the clean house
On another day this trip I spent the afternoon with one of my closest friends — the kind of friend where the hours disappear and you're always slightly surprised when it's suddenly time to leave. On the way back to her house she said, almost as an aside: "Oh by the way, I didn't clean my house so don't judge me."
I didn't notice much. I genuinely wouldn't have noticed much even if she hadn't said anything. Because the house wasn't why I was there.
But I understood the impulse completely. The apologizing in advance for the imperfect conditions. The preemptive disclaimer that you are aware of the gap between what you're offering and what you think someone deserves to receive. I do it too — with my house, with my schedule, with the two hours I almost decided wasn't enough time to be worth the text.
We are so practiced at deciding on behalf of other people what will and won't be worth their time. We curate the invitation before we even extend it. We shrink the reach before it's even left our hand.
And the thing about this week — about coffee in the park with a three-year-old I'd never met, about an afternoon in a house that didn't need to be cleaned for me — is that none of the imperfect conditions mattered. The jaw tightness before sending the text, the apology about the house, the two-hour window that felt too small — none of it registered on the other side. What registered was the showing up. Just the showing up.
The question is still open. I'll be sitting with it all week.
Where are you waiting for the conditions to be perfect before you reach?
Plant your feet. Open toward the light. This is how we grow.
This trip everyone got a longer hug — held past the point where it would normally end, and then a little longer than that. A few people laughed in that way that means the happy feeling arrived faster than their composure could keep up with. I recognized it because I was doing it too.