What I Mean To Say

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.

It was the way I would fall in love with her over and over again every day.

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.

10 comments

  1. Everytime you write these touch­ing entries, I always won­der who it is and how come it did­n’t work out. I know that is not for you to share, but I do love read­ing your thoughts and know­ing how in touch you are with your feel­ings and even if you don’t say it, you write it, and it’s still so beau­ti­ful.

    • Thanks, Soph. Sometimes, writ­ing these things is the only way I can sort out my feel­ings, or get it out of my sys­tem. I’m glad oth­ers are able to share, relate, and appre­ci­ate them, even if the per­son they were meant for can’t.

  2. Beautiful entry, Jeff. It res­onates on so many lev­els.

    • Thanks, Jason. I had no idea that my words were so uni­ver­sal.

  3. For me, your words describe sim­i­lar and famil­iar moments in my own past. I think we dis­cussed this before — I’m pret­ty sure we’re attract­ed to sim­i­lar types of women.

    Have you seen 500 Days of Summer? Your entry reminds me of a scene in which the pro­tag­o­nist is describ­ing every­thing he loves about a girl.

    • Hah, I don’t remem­ber dis­cussing that our tastes in women are the same, only our per­son­al­i­ties. But that makes TOTAL SENSE. It’s the same as not tru­ly know­ing some­one until you fight them, but the oppo­site for us; we don’t tru­ly know some­one until we love them or they love us.

      I haven’t seen that movie, but I’m going to down­load it this week­end. There have been many things I’ve done or said, that I lat­er found out was in a roman­tic movie. I don’t know what to make of it.

  4. You’re right — I think I just auto­mat­i­cal­ly assumed it giv­en every­thing else we have in com­mon.

    You could prob­a­bly write a pret­ty com­pelling screen­play out of things you’ve done or said. :)

    • I already have some­thing in the works. Shhhhhhh. ;)

  5. Ahh. One day I wish my hus­band could some­how put into words how he feels about me, that will make me sigh and pine for him again just as fresh­ly as I did when we first start­ed dat­ing.

    This is an intense… intense.. I can’t put it into words right now myself.

    Thank you.

    • You know what, I also wish my sig­nif­i­cant oth­er would one day write stuff like this about me.

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