While I’ve always been very appreciative of what we did have, sometimes I wonder about what we never had the chance to do.

Sure, I bared my soul. I surrendered. I gave her the songs I don’t share with just anyone. I told her how profoundly important, wonderful, and remarkable she was to me. I let her in like no one else before.

But there were parts of myself I never gave up.

It wasn’t because we hadn’t reached that level of trust. It was a way for me to protect myself. To feel as though she didn’t have all of me, so I wouldn’t be left as open and vulnerable when the end finally came.

I regret it now. Not because I think it would have changed anything¹, but because I wonder what it would have been like for someone to know me completely. To feel vulnerable and safe, all at once. Even knowing I’d be heartbroken eventually, it would have been worth it to share what I’ve always saved.

I’ve been keeping all my girlfriends at arms length to protect myself. I can’t go through life holding things back anymore, constantly worried someone’s going to hurt me. That’s always a risk, no matter how stable a relationship is.

I have to put myself out there. I have to make the first step, even if it means feeling uncomfortable, because the more you share, the more comfortable you become, the more you share, and so on.

I can only go forward now, as a wiser person, a stronger soul, a better lover.

I suppose I’m feeling nostalgic, or missing her, as is my wont when the seasons change.

1. Cause it wouldn’t have. [↑]

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“Try to hold you in bed you shrug away instead oh I don’t know why.” I found this song during a recent transition, and it’s stayed with me since. It fits so many moods — contentment, sadness, lonliness, morning, mourning, and moulting.

In a way, I’m forcing myself grow and improve, and this scares me. In the book my therapist recommended, it explains “Change requires willingness to experience pain”, and I’m going through this exactly. I’m constantly stepping out of my comfort zone, and at this point, it’s much more trepidation than excitement. It’d be so much easier to fall into old mental habits, as unhealthy as they are.

On mornings like this, I sit in my living room with the curtains open. It makes me self-conscious to be sitting there with houses across the street getting a clear view of me in my PJs and mussed up hair. But it reminds me that someone else is out there. That the world is full of life, and vibrancy, and people just like me.

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The first spot was a curve on her cheek near the corner of her lips. It would only appear when she was smiling a certain way.

I have this picture of her reclining on the chaise with her head thrown back on the pillow in laughter. It’s horribly composed, and I can hear her telling me how weird she thinks she looks in the picture, but it captured the expression perfectly.

The smile wasn’t particularly alluring. It was goofy even. But that’s what I loved about it. She was this angel, this siren, this muse to the world, and I was the only one who could see her like this; cheeks pulled back, giggling uncontrollably, burying her head in the pillow from self-consciousness whenever I pointed out the spot and tried to kiss it. I was the only one for whom she let her guard down, even if only for a passing moment. It was so adorable and intimate at the same time.

Usually, when people ask me why it was so special, I say “When it worked, it worked really well”.

What I really mean to say is,

“It was the way her kisses would travel down my spine. The way she wore her hair differently every time I saw her. The way her cheeks would round so endearingly when she truly laughed. The way she could look beautiful wearing dresses, or jeans, or my old pajamas. The way the tantalizing golden down traveled along her lower back. The way her body felt against mine when I pulled her close.

It was because she brought me green tea bubble bath when I was home sick for three days with strep throat. Cause she loved trying new things, like taro dumplings, and ha gow and sui mai and tofu flower, and bubble tea. Cause she would buy me bengal spice tea, and hand creams, and soaps, and flowers for no reason in particular.

It was because she liked taking photos of me too. Cause she would remember the things I wanted when mentioning them in passing so she could look them up and buy them for me later. Cause she truly appreciated the gifts that I gave her. Cause she spent so long preparing for my birthday last year, even though she knows I don’t celebrate it. Cause she helped me seek therapy for my anxiety issues. Cause she came with me to concerts when I didn’t want to go alone. Cause she loved The Mars Volta and Shane Watt as much as I do.

It was the way she could create so many beautiful things with her hands, using paint or chalk or toner or lead or metal or chocolate. The way she supported me and my photography. The way we would take turns choosing movies and watched them together, even though our tastes were so different. The way she got along with my friends and loved my cat.

In her, I had found the person I was looking for my whole life, and she held me captive every moment we were together.”

But I never do.

There were patches of skin on her body that would build, and turn white, and flake.

She was always self-conscious of those areas, to the point of tears, but I called them my kissing map, as each patch would lead my lips to the next. In the dark, the spots revealed themselves in their texture, like delicate wounds. How different they tasted, how strange that skin felt against my own.

I would always kiss those spots, in hopes that my lips would convince her that she had nothing to be self-conscious about around me. To ease, and share their burden.

To acknowledge that she was flawed, as we all are on earth, but I still loved and accepted her, despite it all.

On our last day together she brought me a bouquet of tulips and carnations, and a Joe Hisaishi CD — a childhood memory of mine she ordered from Japan. I had mentioned it in passing on one of our walks as the only album I’ve been unable to find for download or purchase, and there it was, in my hands.

We watched Before Sunrise, and afterward, we laid next to each other on the couch, silent, unsure of what to say, because there was no comfort to be had. Soon, I was kissing the tears from her face, over and over again.

She asked what she was going to do without me. How long it was going to be before we saw each other again. Whether a simple phone call was allowed. I could say nothing, because I understood the necessity of it all.

So she said she was being reduced to an observer, and I grew cold and distant. It was the first time I had considered my own feelings, when I had felt reduced to much more than that, and she wasn’t making it any easier. With her lips on my neck and her hand through my hair, she comforted me in turn, and our passion took hold of us one last time.

Before she left, I hugged her, felt her tears grow cold on my shoulder, and kissed her once more on the cheek. Thank you, she said.

My heart has been filled with a calm sadness ever since. A struggle between the pain of being away from her, and knowing that it’s for the best. That we would be stronger, and more stable when it was all over.

In the days since, I’ve remembered the things I wanted to say to her before she left my back porch, running to car without looking back before the emotion could overwhelm her. Things that didn’t come to my head because I was too focused on keeping myself together.

Don’t stop creating. Take care of yourself. I love you.

My introduction to French toast with cinnamon and vanilla and fresh fruit. When I was young, my mom would make French Toast, but it was plain eggs and bread.

It’s not what you’re thinking though. The bottle of Crown Royal is filled with real maple syrup. Not whiskey((Coincidentally enough though, both liquids are Canadian icons.)).

God, it’s nice to have someone cook for you in your own home.

Sometimes, she reaches down and grabs a handful of my derrière. I laugh a nervous laugh, and she chides me.

It’s a reflex. None of my girlfriends have been so zealous in their pinching, or reveled in such an act. My laugh is one of surprise, and a good one at that.

This is what upsets her. But how should I react otherwise? I hardly consider this thin-framed body, a frail comparison to the physical conventions of a man, as being sexual or attractive.

Otherwise, she’d see me as the rest of the world sees me.

I’ve never been one for pure nakedness. I love to see clothing on a body. It says so much more about personality and mood, and that’s so much more attractive than plain physicality. Not to mention how well it can emphasize the curves on a woman’s body.

Some of my underwear has sharks or skiers on them. I wonder what that says about me.

Sometimes, as I’m falling asleep, I think of her.

She’s lying on my stomach again, listening to my heart beat, hands tucked neatly under my body. Or she’s spooning me, her arm resting on the crook of my waist, with a finger drawing distracting circular lines on my chest.

Sometimes we’re in the tall grass, surrounded by colours of life with the warmth of the sun above us. A regression to a time when all I had to think about was the colour of popsicle I would have when I got home from camp. How unfair that our innocence is taken from us when we need it most.

And I lie there in bed, waiting for sleep to take me as the images lead me on.

My body telling me to let go, my mind struggling to keep her next to me a moment longer.

I tell her she’s beautiful. Over and over again. As often as I can.

But she shakes her head, and says I only think so because I love her.

It’s true. But would I love her any less if she didn’t have those soft, innocent eyes? If she didn’t wear her hair up, or down, or curly, or straight, or different every time I saw her? If her body didn’t curve so distractingly when she lets herself fall into me?

It makes me wonder if anyone sees the same thing that I do.

To me, her beauty is obvious, not subtle in any way.

So I tell her, over and over again.

Sometimes I think she’ll start to believe me if I say it enough.

And until I stop breathing, my lungs will take her for granted.

She is the light, I am the prism.

She is the words, I am the voice.

She is the viola string, I am the vibration.

She is the bud, I am the bloom.

She is the life, I am the living.

She is the heart, I am the pulse.

She is the medium, I am the message.

She is the water, I am the waves.

In the dark, our bodies fit like puzzle pieces — face in neck, crest in valley, curve in curve. I’m completely vulnerable when she lets me love her like this. She brings my guard down.

It’s the way she makes me happy without trying. The way I’m filled with tenderness every time I feel the warmth of her skin against mine. The way her existence gives me hope for the rest of the world.

If I chose to fall back on old habits and kept my distance to protect myself, I wouldn’t know this ineffable feeling. I may get hurt, but it’s worth every moment I can be next to her.

Maybe she’s right, and I’ll feel differently by the time it’s necessary. Until then, there’s no use in fighting it.

My heart never gave me a choice.