It's a Motherfucker

I miss laying my head on your shoulder as we blare music from our laptops. I miss pumpkin beer and falling asleep with the smallest of walls between us. For all of my loud and outrageous, you are measured and thoughtful. And when I find something so funny that it elicits minutes and minutes of laughter, you never make me feel ridiculous. I miss the way we intrinsically share words and music and the deepest portions of our souls without effort. It is a tragedy of adulthood and modern living that we move away from one another and treat geography as though it is inevitable (it is never anyone’s fault, but we are all such willing victims of inertia).

I miss, most of all, the way that sitting with you on quiet evenings feels like returning home. And somehow, after all these years, it is when you are next to me and we are still exasperated at having none of the answers that I find my heart is joyfully still. Because despite any outward differences, I know that sitting and staring at the ocean never feels like a waste of time to you. And I know when I buy exorbitantly priced cold-brew or hazelnut nectar, you understand the impulse entirely. When photos of Neda Agha-Soltan appeared or when Alan Kurdi washed up on a beach--the perfect picture of a child sleeping--I knew that your stomach turned with nausea and your heart shattered into the millions of pieces my own did.

You have seen me at my most vulnerable and weakest and have seen some of the ugliest and nastiest I am capable of conjuring. And despite all of the pain and vulnerability and desperation you witnessed over years of break-ups and deadlines and physical exhaustion and heart-wrenching sadness, you offered only quiet listening and love that did not cease despite moments where I found myself unable to see you or the things you may have needed. We have watched one another grow up and I have seen so many others drawn to this characteristic in you; you are able to exist with another and make them feel wholly seen and wholly embraced and wholly accepted and never, ever judged for their weakness, vulnerability, and fear.

The very fact that your existence should coincide with my own feels like a streak of fortune that will always be inexplicable. To be blessed with another human on this journey whose very heart echoes my own has filled my life with moments of unexpected elation and given me solace when the world feels desperately dark and cruel and tragic.

I love you to my very marrow.  And I miss you every minute that we are apart. I eagerly await quiet moments of staring with bewilderment at the vastness of the starry sky, eagerly drinking pinot noir on too-warm evenings, pondering the nature of our relationships with the world and the people around us, and struggling eternally to find our place and our balance in a world that can concurrently hold infinite beauty and gut-wrenching tragedy.

Thank God that you are here. Without you, my friend, everything would be just a shade darker. And, I am afraid, I would never find myself wholly complete without my soul’s counterpart.