Let me tell you about the man I love

Digression from Lost and Found Connections blog's main topic which is, you know, Lost. And Lost-like stories--but I needed to say this somewhere.

Some people they just get wrong or they only capture a portion. People present themselves differently than the truly are inside. They bluster. They have low self-esteem. Maybe when they are being examined, they are under an unusual amount of stresses in their lives that makes them act differently than they normally would. Maybe those stresses are artificially created, for whatever reason. Some people try to manipulate other people like they are characters--but they aren't. They are people.

In theory, it really shouldn't matter if they get someone wrong, because it isn't real and the characters are all mixed up with each other anyway. But somehow this one does to me.

So, let me tell you about the man I am in love with, the man I can't imagine what I would do if I was without him. I've told the same stories over and over again about how we met, and how we started to date, but that really isn't important.

We were friends first, but yes, I was attracted to him. His hair. His crooked (more crooked then--oh the years of braces)! His smile. The way he shook so much when he really laughed. He would crack jokes, but he had a tender side. When someone became scary in my life, he was all business and very serious and tender. He told me no woman should have to take something like that. He told me that I should trust my gut. I remember I had a dream about him before we were together. It was one of the most powerful dreams I have ever had in my life. In the dream, I was in a big black abyss. There was nothing around me but darkness and I was standing a black floor, but somehow it was light. I was alone. For an unexplained reason, I was very, very sad, more sad than I have ever been. I curled up on the floor and cried. He came to me, in my dream, and he pulled me up and held me close and told me it was going to be okay. I've had other dreams with other men in my life representing my subconscious, but waking from that dream I thought--that image also represented my understanding of him. It wasn't just a part of my subconscious soothing me, it was presenting me with who I wanted with me when I was in the deepest despair. He would have done that for me. He has done that for me since then, many times, cradled me in his arms while I wept.

The first time we officially went on a date, it was like in the movies when time stops and you can't breathe and everything becomes blurry. We talked for hours about everything; we laughed; we danced; we held each other. Portions of the night are blurred out, but we don't do alcohol or drugs. It was just first love (and probably lust) hitting us with a major double whammy. Even then, I thought, well we'll just where it goes. And yet day by day we became closer and closer. We joked, grumbled, debated, laughed, discussed things. We developed in jokes.

The first time we kissed (and again and again and again, little kisses all over the face until we reached the mouth) was one of the best nights of my life. The first time we french kissed was later, when a romantic plan had gone awry. He was trying to take me out star-gazing (his idea, I told you he was secretly a romantic) and I got food poisoning. I threw up in the grass, and he stood with me and held my hair out of my face and rubbed my back and worried. After that we sat down and we french kissed. I thought that must have been the grossest thing in the world, him kissing me after I had just tossed my cookies, but it didn't matter to him, because he loved me.

I don't remember the first time we exchanged "I love yous" anymore. We knew it long before we said it.

I went away for college, and it was then that I realized how much a part of me he had become. We weren't able to see each other for awhile when I first went to the university. When we were reunited, when we hugged each other again I think we both were almost in tears. It was too long apart.

We've both been under a lot of external stress recently, and it has caused us to bicker more than we normally do--but every time I think of losing him, my heart breaks into a million pieces. When he's around, things are just better. I'm home. Fine, make me the villain, if you must, as long as it is all pretend--but if anyone wants to hurt him or my family, they need to stop. And if you are trying to make me the instrument of that hurt, you might want to reconsider your priorities.