This love which permeates our life now, sneaked up to us like a cheetah in a jungle, quiet, easy, silent, and seemingly sudden, but looking back, we realize, the grass was moving all along. There was never a word exchanged that didn't have a hint of joy, a new blanket's worth of comfort, a history all its own. Three weeks, and my life was now the opposite of what it had been for so many years.
It doesn't matter which of us said it first, as it was quickly reciprocated, and the deconstruction began. Many people believe that love begins by building things up. We both knew that chiseling away at our cemented selves was the only way to find a heart worth beating. Trauma often makes you a hardened voyeur among the living. And though separate, for our decades of cement, water, repeat, we easily felt the beat beneath the other's concrete, and came bearing the tools needed to break away the statue built around a heart that pumped only loud enough for the other to hear. All the others, wondered if we ever had one at all.
Once we allowed ourselves to be cracked open by the other and be seen in light for the first time, nothing outside of ourselves mattered anymore. We were the same. We saw so much horror inside one another, that it became beauty in our eyes, almost a looking glass, because between us, we knew the strength, courage, and loneliness it took to endure and survive and keep moving through the theatrics of life, to even get to where we are. Most would have been crushed by the methods of our survival. Where they see darkness and shadows, we see each other.
Honestly though, how does this even happen? I have asked myself a hundred times over. I have questioned my sanity once or twice. But I do that anyway. I have questioned his sanity for that matter. But, when an honest man tries to lie, everything you never knew you wanted to know comes pouring out. At first, the honesty was a given. We were strangers, what did it matter what the other one was made of? We'd never meet, we'd never get beyond a few letters. So he told me everything. It was a small part of our conversations. We had too many things to laugh about, too many things to learn, too many sparks to keep watch of so that neither of us would burn. By the time I realized he was regressing, ever so slightly, that's when I knew that everything mattered now.
He's too honest. (That's not a real thing). But being in a position of someone lying, or protecting someone from the truth, or even not knowing what the truth is in the moment, simply silences him. Our separation, the bars between, has been a gift. In those silences, I learned to say things like, "I'm sorry, it's okay whatever it is. We'll fix it. We're in this together." And in my outbursts, (one of the few ways we are quite different), he has learned to snap me back to him, the sobriety in his voice tames me, and love floods my voice until I am sure again.
We were forced to learn each other by communicating. We were given the gift most couples lose along the way. We love to talk to each other, we look forward to it every day. The voice on the other end is our peace, our truth, our goal, and our home. We don't take it for granted, we don't hang up angry. We don't allow the other to suffer alone. Many people say being lonely when you're with someone is the hardest thing to be. Personally, I think it's the saddest. Because we are alone, but I don't think we're ever lonely. We know the other is thinking of what we can do next time we talk, next time we video chat, next time we meet.
See, it comes in threes, everything. There is he, and I, and us. There is life, and love, and future. There is talking, seeing, and being. There is I love you, three words that started us, how are you, three words which sustain us, and I'm coming home, three words which bind us.
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