Memories

Thank you.  Thank you for the past year and a half.  I don't know if that makes sense to anyone else or if I even understand it myself, but I know it's true.  Remember what it was like then?  At the beginning.  The misery.  The angst.  The confusion.  The need to be next to someone who understood.  Everything was free and open and simple then.  There was only one thing we couldn't talk about then.  And it hardly ever came up anyway, so it was as though it wasn't there.

Maybe I'm being presumptuous or arrogant in writing it this way.  But it's how I interpreted what happened, and it's still the way I understand that portion of my life.  So that's exactly how I'm going to write it.  I was in a rough place then.  I guess we both were.  I needed someone to listen to and someone who would take my unstable mind and tolerate it, make an effort to understand it.  Now that I think about it, maybe you didn't.  Maybe you didn't hear a word I said then except the questions I asked about your life.  But I felt listened to, and that was what I needed.

You always talked more than I did.  And I felt useful then.  Because being there, listening to you, and letting you know another human being cared seemed to help.  As I got to know you better, I fell in love with you.  You understood me.  You made sense to me.  When you hurt, I hurt.  Being the troubled, angsty individual I was (and still am), I fell in love with anyone I could understand that well.  Which was you.

I needed someone to listen to.  And you needed someone to listen.  However it was we ended up talking about her that first night on the bench behind the water, I'm glad we did.  That led us to where we are today and through all the trials and tribulations we had to face to get here.

There were times I was afraid this wouldn't work.  Times when I felt we were too close.  Because even though we started this with no true secrets, it seems that we grew to the point where it was too easy to hurt one another.  There have been days and weeks when I've been too terrified to speak because I couldn't control the hurt it might cause, even if it wasn't intended to.  But days like today reassure me that it's okay.  That we can still talk about anything.

I can't begin to express how much that means to me.