This Time Last Year I Couldn't Sleep Beside You

(Intended date of Publication: April 18, 2015, but life took over)

So I traveled to get to you, it was late and we are both tired.  What made me smile was the fact that you waited for me.
I lay on bed next to you for the first time, and I am fully awake. I am too aware of your breathing and the every beat of your heart.
At the crack of dawn, you hands found me. The right hand on my shoulders, enveloping me and trying to coax slumber to arrive, while your left hand was on my hair, petting me like a cat. I am a picture of contentment.
In less than 24 hours the next day I tasted your lips on mine. Your lips is a fountain I wanted to drown myself into.
I miss you today. I miss you most days actually, but today I will be saying it out loud, and so my dear let me write about you

     “There’s only one thing worse than wanting someone, and that’s needing someone. It’s when you batter and bruise and break yourself just so that you can mold yourself into being theirs. All the while tricking yourself into believing that it’s still good and wholesome and for the best, because this is what you WANT. Compromise is good and healthy, but too much compromise and you end up betraying yourself just so you can have them.

     And the most painful part is knowing that a few months ago, when you first met them, when everything was unblemished and naturally perfect, there was no concealing the bad. There was no bad. No one had hurt the other. The question is, how many times do you forgive under the name of love?If I saw another person in my shoes, I’d tell them to walk away, to respect themselves, to make their mother proud. But perhaps I wouldn’t know the full story if I was an outsider looking in. An outsider wouldn’t know how painfully and impossibly in love with you I am. An outsider wouldn’t know that I find it impossible to let go of any good that’s ever happened in my life, impossible to end chapters in my life. And if the chapters are ended forcefully, I’ll torture my mind by living through every single happy moment again and again and again and again.

     I can still smell the washing powder on your jumper the first time I kissed you. I remember how hot it was in summer when we lived beside the river on a diet of red wine and pot. When we first got to know each other, sat on our bench listening to old soul into the early hours of the morning. Everything buzzed slightly, as if charged with electricity. The air tasted of excitement. I’d never done this before. I was seventeen, you nineteen. I lost my virginity to you. The first time we made love, we listened to John Martyn on repeat, in the darkness, on my single, rickety child’s bed. Afterwards you told me I was about to have the best cig of my life. I told you I’d had better.I like being yours. Although even then I am doubtful. I feel inadequate, which I hate. It leads me to think I’ve changed. I would have spat in the face of anyone who felt inferior in some way to another person, told them they were a miracle just for being them, and if no one liked the look of them then they just shouldn’t look.

     Because I know we are all superb creatures.So why do I feel constantly…lacking? Not interesting enough, not clever enough, no way NEAR beautiful enough for you, blah blah blah. It makes me angry. How can my mind possibly be so conflicted? I know that exterior beauty is a sham endorsed by capitalism and advocated by stupid people. But I also hate myself. It hurts, feels as though my brain might tear in half. I love you. I want you. I want to be yours. But I resent that. No one should want that after what you put me through. After hearing what you said. I’m scared. Scared of just how much I’m willing to sacrifice to be with you, would I know when to stop? And most of all I’m scared that if you ever saw this you’d leave me, again. I can’t do it, when you leave me. I’m ashamed of that fact. But when you leave me, I die.”