I just kept hoping, I just kept hoping
The way would become clear
I spent all this time tryna play nice and
Fight my way here

See, I’ve been having me a real hard time
But it feels so nice to know I’m gonna be alright

I watched Fleabag and the final scene made me remember the last time I heard someone tell me they love me. I wish I had reconsidered then. Catie really meant it, I know, and I was just there, not realizing how far she has come to meet me halfway. How broken I was and how she helped me put myself back together. What an amazing time it was, how gentle and caring she was. How far we have come. I miss her, and I wish she was here again. I’d love to cry in her arms.

An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other. (Adrienne Rich)

The best part of having been with you is that I may one day wake up, having dreamed of being with you again. I miss your mussels, you made them so well. And I miss the smell of your hair in the morning. I miss the everyday.

It’s hard hearing that you found someone. I wish you had found me. It feels as if I let you go. I didn’t tell you how much I loved you. I just let you slip through my fingers. I didn’t tell you how much you meant to me, how much I had missed you. I didn’t beg and I didn’t scream, I just let you slip through and now I wish I had, I wish I had told you and I wish I had screamed, I wish I was back there telling you how awful it is to let you go, how painful and how empty it makes me feel. And how hollow, how dark.

In my dream you smiled, knowingly, mischievously, kindly, at me, while I was trying to chat up other women. I felt ashamed but I also felt the warmth of your heart, that you meant well and that you wanted the best for me. I later talked to you and it made me happy.

It was magnificent to see you. You wore the same outfit you did when I last saw you in London in that hot summer (oh, how I remember the first day, us going to the side of that pond to lie down). Four short days of making love to you. Then you leaving, at the airport, talking at the counter, me taking a picture of you. I still have that photo. You wore a Levi’s jacket and a red scarf and you had dark round hair, a beautiful long black skirt and those white sneakers you always wore. How amazing you were. And you were there with me in my dream, dressed just like that. I miss you.

You know, we don’t get to have this often. It doesn’t happen every year. I was reading Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, and remembered that losing someone we love is like loosing someone to death. One must bereave the person. But I haven’t lost you. We never said goodbye because we lost our love. We said goodbye because we had to. I don’t want to feel grief.

Just two hours in the evening, making her come while looking straight into her eyes. I feel like I haven’t been this close to anyone for so long. Yet she insists on keeping distance. I already miss her, and I know she’ll be away and will be missed more. I wonder what I’m supposed to do. I love waking up next to her. I love hugging on the couch. I love cooking together. I feel at ease around her and with her around, I’m so much more balanced in my normal life. I once almost wrote to her, “BTW, you know what I realised? You make me happy to look forward to time on my own , too. Strange, but true.”

As always, afraid of the dark, afraid of the light, just here alone again. I know it wasn’t a dream, but it seems so far away. Patience is really hard and I am afraid to ask too much of her time. It think of her often. A few nights ago, I wanted to hold her hand when I went to sleep. It was both wonderful to think and painful not to be able to do it.

In my dream, invited someone over, and I wasn’t sure if was H. It was weird, as if I was so lost in all the people that I could somehow invite the wrong person. I even kissed her before realising it wasn’t H. What a weird dream. Am I meant to mess things up like that? I am so conscious how I messed it up last time, with A. Being with others. Or letting others get in the way. I’m not doing that now. I need to focus and I want to have that time with her only.

Sweet, gentle caressing. Slow, tender lovemaking. It was beautiful to hold her in my arms. She has an amazing place, full of memories and careful attention to detail. I felt so privileged just to be invited, to see. I loved how she prepared, gin tonic and all. It was beautiful to ask her to let go, and seeing her let go. A moment that will remain for long. So lush, so tender. I don’t want anyone else.

A brief moment of kindness, a long held contact through the eyes, a few moments of laughter. You are beautiful and I want to get to know you. I don’t think you realised the flower, I don’t think you noticed. Maybe you just thought it was an accident. Maybe you think of me sometimes.

I went to a club, and I remembered the club we went to together, how I treated you, how you didn’t talk about, how I biked home alone that night. I remembered being unsure, but you were still there. I miss all those days I could spend with you. They were so special. I remember waking up next to you, playing, making love, enjoying our bodies, our selves. Lately I have been thinking that in the old days, I would always say that I don’t regret anything, that everything was good the way it turned out in the end. I no longer think that. Have I changed? Have the world spinned around too much for me to be able to say that? Has it entangled itself and me with it to the point where I want to go back to where it all started? But there is no going back. I never thought about that before, wanting to go back. But now I really want to. Time really is a terrible master. It just goes on, terribly, uncontrollably, marches on and we cannot stop or turn it. It ticks around and I’m bound by it, a hostage to it.

I am sometimes unsure why I’m here, why I keep doing all of this, it feels like some charade, some elaborate disguise of my own emptiness, that it all ought to end. I am tired, I want to go home. I just want it to end.