The first time you kissed me, you put your hands around my throat, soft yet raw and rough at the same time. It was everything I needed, even though I didn’t know it at the time. That was the night that everything about me changed.
The way those deep blue eyes looked into me ripped me open and tore me apart. Everything that had gone untouched until I met you came out to play for keeps. It was dangerous to let it happen. I knew it. Deep inside of me, I knew there was no way you felt it too. You couldn’t have. But me? You were the thing I didn’t know I’d been waiting for.
Every moment I spent with you made everything about me stronger, somehow more beautiful. It’s not realistic, this way I went deeper than I should have. Normal people don’t feel such an intense connection with another human being when they meet them for the first time. I know it felt crazy. You must have thought I’d lost my mind to be so into you so quickly.
And, as soon as it started, it burnt down to the ground, at least for a little while. You broke my heart a little when you pushed me away, but you eventually came back to me. This time, it was different. Exciting and terrifying, in a way, but different.
This time, you let me in and showed me all the gritty parts of you, at least some of them. You finally let me love you, but very little about it felt good because I had to fight tooth and nail for every little scrap of love I got. I know why. Of course, I know why. Both of us, for a time, were so fucked up on drugs that it couldn’t have worked. But I loved you, didn’t I? I could never turn my back on you. It was inevitable that we would crash and burn somehow, but I wasn’t going to be the architect of that event.
But, when everything went down, I suddenly knew too much about where you’d been and what you’d done to betray me. My heart was so broken then that I didn’t know how I was going to survive you. I still don’t know, but that story isn’t over yet, is it?
It’s been nine years since then, and I let my life get a little worse with each year that went by. The first year or two, I thought I was okay. I was convinced I’d been abused, manipulated, and lied to, but I was okay because I knew you couldn’t hurt me anymore. I wouldn’t let you do that.
However, something in me snapped, and I went dead inside. Maybe it was that it took me that long to realize it would never be okay to love you again. My body started breaking down when that happened.
The night terrors.
The depression.
The insomnia.
The weight gain.
The physical pain.
Every time I couldn’t touch you, I lost another little piece of me. But don’t get it twisted. I’m not blaming it on anyone but myself. Though you may have hurt me, I hurt myself so much more by not letting myself consciously feel the pain of losing you. You were still there; I just didn’t know it. I let myself get stuck in this cycle of loving you and hating you at the same time. There was no way I could hate you—because I loved you. And there was no way I could love you—because I thought I was supposed to hate you.
Then something else happened—something I never thought would ever be a reality. You came back into my life last month, and everything came right back to the surface. Suddenly, I craved another person’s lips again. I needed to touch you, to hold onto you, to get ripped apart by you again.
I kept thinking, This can’t be real, in the hours and minutes leading up to the moment I saw you again. There was no way you still wanted me the same way I still wanted you. But you walked in my front door and kissed me the moment we saw each other. You looked at me like no time had passed. I listened to you talking about how you’d changed your life, and I was just blown over by you again.
Even as I write this, I still can’t believe it’s real. It sounds manufactured almost because it was like I just woke up one day, and there was all the feeling back I ever had for you.
But it wasn’t just that I got to feel that depth of love for you again. No, it was something more. And that something more was me.
All those pieces of myself I tossed aside when we split? They came dancing back into my life. I felt beautiful again. Meaningful. Alive. Wide the fuck awake. I felt like I could hold that woman who felt so lost without you and tell her it was all going to be okay.
That she could come out.
That she could live again.
That she could love again.
That she could smile again.
That she could feel again.
That she didn’t have to hide anymore.
That she didn’t have to cry anymore.
That she didn’t have to hurt anymore.
I’m not this crazy. It’s not that I think you can fix me or complete me or be my everything. The girl I was before would have jumped there. But you certainly lit a path and gave me permission to accept the terror, the uncertainty, the risk, and the scary parts of letting you into my life again. And that girl isn’t the same one who loved you before. Seeing you forced me to see that I wasn’t broken. That I did, in fact, still have the ability to be human. To be everything I was before. But better.
I write about our reconnection because it’s only a piece of the ways in which I’ve grown. And it’s not about sex, despite the title; you know that already. It’s about who I’m learning to become to accept a life that isn’t shattered, dying, or falling apart. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but you opened my eyes to the possibility of loving myself as much as I love you.
There will be more stories about you because of how deeply your soul marked me from the beginning. But I hope you’ll see that the most meaningful ones don’t always make us feel comfortable.
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