It’s a love that knows anger so violently and deeply affronting that I could kill him, but couldn’t because I would be half empty without him. A love that knows joy so beautifully musical that you find yourself smiling at strangers on the street and leaves you wondering how one person can affect you so deeply. A love that knows despair and melancholy so morosely empty that one more high tide and you could lose yourself forever. Our early mornings that turned into afternoons that turned into late nights without even our conscience knowledge of it because of the easy, comfortable company we had found in each other. How our parents couldn’t force themselves to ask us to come home already, because it had been so long since they themselves had been in such young bliss, they couldn’t dare spoil the innocent beauty of it. It’s watching he and my mother grow close to each other simply because of the fact that I love him, my mother loves me, so therefore, she loves him. It’s cooking in the kitchen with my mother while he and my father talk business and sports. It’s watching my father begin to view him as the son he never had, helping him with his golf swing, talking about catches from that weekend’s fishing trip, and their amicable musing over the mysteries of women. It’s the way our dogs are even better friends than we are. It’s the way he loves animals nearly as much as I do. Maybe. It’s spending every free moment together, from days on the lake with our dogs, to frivolous road trips up to the Orvis in Buckhead only to purchase new leather dog collars, my giving him a glimpse into my world of barbed wire and dusty boots, and his giving me a glimpse into his of off roading, big trucks and fishing.
It’s the way I walk into the store, see the men’s section and look for something for him, before I would even consider myself. It’s the way he knows how much value I hold in a handyman, and how he built a new backyard gate for my father’s birthday. It’s the way I like to think it was secretly only to impress me, and the way he’ll brush that idea off with a sheepish grin. It’s the way my heart melts at every “mam” and “sir” he calls out to anyone that is remotely older than him. It’s the opened car doors, the way he pays for every meal, and the way I can tell he loves to spend time with me just as much I do him. It’s the way we’re best friends before we’re anything else. Its love that grew from talks about family and values, from long walks in the woods and from the way he helped me grow closer to my father, not love that grew from late night parties, expensive date nights and lovely jewelry. It’s the way he’s one of the first things on my mind when I wake up, and one of the last things before I close my eyes at night.

But it was that Sunday we decided to just be best friends again for a spell, just to see how it would go. It was the way I don’t cry. I don’t cry over getting kicked by my horse, I don’t cry when work, school, and bills pile up and money and time dip low. I don’t cry over boys. I cried over him. I didn’t cry over the loss of lips to kiss or a hand to hold. I cried over the loss of my home, the safe haven I returned to when all went wrong, or even when all was right. The person that somehow calmed my fears with his rational opinion, let me soak his shirt with tears, and play along with my most spontaneous and outrageous ideas to pass the time. The only person in my life that could make me slow down after a long, busy day and just breathe. The loss of a person that listened to my deepest fears, laughed at my most trivial jokes, and was my number one distraction from the gut wrenching pain, the demons in my world that lurk behind each and every corner, which little does he know, he keeps at bay with his lopsided grin and easy laugh. The emptiness, the rampant tears, the melancholy. But it was that moment, that Sunday night, through tear clouded eyes, we each realized just how much we loved each other, yet how we would never be able to be together.