When he left on Wednesday morning, I was naked and hopeless. Naked without my best friend’s body wrapped around mine and without a hope of recovering any time soon. It’s strange to say I felt naked. I was probably the most clothed I had been in days. But being alone and clothed made me as bare as ever.

Even though it wasn’t as bad as it was saying goodbye to him last summer, and even though I knew without even the slightest fragment of doubt that I would be seeing him sooner than I expected (A LOT sooner, as it turned out), I couldn’t resist adapting to the pleasant familiarity of having him around. He was only home for five days. A weekend plus two or three, depending on what you count as the weekend. But without warning on that Tuesday afternoon, the intrusive thought of his absence spun me into a fit of confusion. Within those days, I couldn’t imagine him not being around for the following thousands of days of my life.

Once the car pulls away, there’s no such thing as imagination.

You could say it’s a cruel cycle. I’d like to think of it as more and more reason to push through the next few years and hold on to what we have with everything we’ve got.

There has never been a day that has gone by where I haven’t thought about you babe, or wished you were here. But once this is all over, we will come out of it as the strongest couple to ever walk this earth. I swear to you. People keep breaking up everywhere around me because they can’t deal with the distance that often comes when university or college destinations are not the same. For the past few weeks I have been finding out about couples (who have been dating for even longer than you and I!) that are not even willing to ATTEMPT to push through the separation.

It makes me sick.

Is love worth anything anymore? Or maybe it just wasn’t true love. They say they love each other, but do they really? Did they ever? How much can you say that you loved someone if you got rid of them as soon as an obstacle was placed in your paths?

I always thought long-distance relationships were doomed for failure. I was aware of the popular expression claiming that “distance makes the heart grow fonder” but I had never seen an example for myself or heard of this ever being the case for anyone I’d met.

And then I met you.

What we have isn’t a “long distance relationship”. How can that be the case when I’ve never felt closer to anyone in my entire life? You are closer to me than the person standing beside me in a crowded elevator. You are closer to me than the person sitting next to me in a lecture hall of over five hundred students. You are closer to me than even the clothes on my back. Do you know how that can be? You are always in my heart, in a place where nothing and no one can ever reach. I take you with me everywhere I go. This isn’t a long distance relationship: this is the shortest distance one could measure.

Actually, I suppose it is immeasurable. You can’t measure the closeness of something to yourself when it is a part of you.

Other people need to be able to reach out and touch to know the other is near, but not us. I don’t have to reach, I don’t have to touch. I just have to close my eyes and there you are. Do you remember the song you sang to me before you left for the first time over a year ago? I know you do. And to this day, it still makes me cry.

“Letters from the Sky”, Civil Twilight.

I would write out all of the lyrics for you, but I know the song is probably playing through your mind as you read this now. So I’ll just let it run.

You told me it was my song and you assured me that you would be coming back for me, just as the lyrics say. We always thought it was funny how the song mentions hearing “planes overhead” and you want to be a pilot.

Last year, I knew deep down that I would be seeing you soon but it just felt so far away. Now, after this past year, I have come to realize that it’s never as far away as it feels. I would have never guessed that only a week after the Labour Day weekend you would be back on my doorstep once again.

You are always so full of surprises my love! Showing up in my bedroom at almost one in the morning on a school night in December before the Christmas break (Christmas itself meant nothing to me. All I could think about was spending three weeks with you!), surprising me when I was sick in bed one Friday afternoon in April, calling me at work in late July to tell me that you would be arriving in eight hours and I should start getting ready…

HAVE I EVER HAD A REAL REASON TO BE DEPRESSED?

The only sadness that can be justified is for the time that I didn’t have you around, those sixteen and a half years during which I had no idea what it was like to have this kind of closeness with another living being.

But before I go any further, I would just like to say thank you for this past weekend, for yet another wonderful surprise. Even though I only saw you three times this summer, after last weekend I cannot say I have a single regret.

We did everything we set out to do in the shortest time possible! We cooked meals together, we watched countless movies without really watching them, we went to Avondale for ice cream, we survived three nights in a tent, we swam in freezing cold lakes, we conquered Behemoth and a bunch of other scary rides at Canada’s Wonderland and I actually got to drive you around for once!

You are the only person in this world that can convince me to willingly face my greatest fears and accomplish things I never thought I would ever accomplish. You are my pat on the back when I need encouragement, my cheerleader when I need support, my confidant when I have burning secrets to share, my shoulder when I’ve had a bad day, my best friend whenever I’ve needed a friend and my lover whenever I’ve needed love. With you by my side, I am invincible.

So where am I going with all of this?

I know this is supposed to be your job, and I know you’ve asked me hundreds of times before, but consider this to be a formal proposal: will you marry me? Will you be my best friend until the end of time? Will you allow me to love you more than anyone has ever loved you?

I don’t really have anything to give you right now, and I suppose this is breaking tradition just a little bit but I hope I’m not stealing your thunder. I’ve never heard of a proposal being carried out in this way, so I’m not all too sure of how it works. I know your response will be a tad delayed until you read this. And it probably won’t come as much of a surprise to you, but I mean it this time.

I really, really do.

And before I go, I just want you to know that I’d loved to be clothed with you again sometime soon. Then perhaps soon after that, there will be no more soon.