"I don't want to hurt you."

That's the only thing that I can't get out of my head as of late. I can hear it in my mind like he's standing here saying it over and over again. I can feel the pain and the overwhelming emotion pumping through my body, down my legs and my arms. It's like something grabs hold of my heart and squeezes tight enough for it to have to work triple overtime, but loose enough that the ache is terribly present. It grabs me at the most random and inopportune moments. I replay it over and over and over - on the couch, in the dark; talking about everything under the moon. The sometimes silences were comfortable because that's just the way it was with us. I looked up at him because I feel him staring. Something was wrong at that very second, something palpable changed. I looked at him and he pulled me up into one of his best hugs. He pulled back, kissed my forehead and pulled me back in. "I don't want to hurt you." I couldn't help but cry at that moment. I couldn't help but sit up and pull away from him and just let the tears fall. No sobs, no emotion; just completely blank and numb with tears falling. Why did he have to fuck it up? Because that's what he does and that's who he is - and the sad thing? I knew that. I always knew that. At that moment is when I knew it would all crumble. Everything we had, which wasn't really anything, but we both knew that we had everything within the other. Unconditional love for each other during our darkest most fucked up times. His divorce, my really bad cut-off from John; we were each other's life boat. He kept me sane when I started back into a place that I really didn't want to go to again. He knew that place and he knew I was headed there because he always just. fucking. knew. No matter what he. always. knew. He knew me better than I knew myself and I him. I know that telling it now it sounds like some really fucked up, unrealistic, cheesy bullshit romance novel; but it's all true. He was literally that other half that made me feel whole in a completely platonic way. I never felt about anybody the way I felt with him. From the very first day meeting him I knew. Four days, a week, a month later - inseperable. I was closer to him than anyone in my whole fucking life. These trust issues I have that keep me locked inside myself because of John? They didn't exist. He called me out on my walls I had built. The one day I finally broke down he joked the next day - "Yeah. You forgot to lock the back door. I'm definitely in now." Those were the very best 16 months of my life. The absolute, very best. The 3 years with John would never live up to those 16 months with Patrick and I didn't even love them the same way. I never loved John unconditionally; I didn't even know what loving someone unconditionally felt like until Patrick came along...


...and more often than not I just wish I still felt that.