Election Night

I had felt this way for some time, but nothing about it registered until we were waiting for our table at my favorite restaurant in the city and one that I suspected you probably (I learned later, definitely) hated. It was small and filled with democrats and grad students clinking glasses, chanting 4 more years louder with each round. Your hand would tighten on my knee each time someone would knock into me or jab you with an elbow. With every smile, I felt my lips loosening your clenched jaw.

As far as I was concerned, we could have been the only two people at that bar. We stole kisses from one another like we were alone on my couch. And I felt every word you said, every story you shared pulled me further to you. I sunk into your soft voice and closed my eyes, burying my head against your shoulder. To this day, I can still feel your happiness as we sat looking through pictures. 

I tell people I don't cry. I am a lot of things: tough, independent, driven. I'm stubborn, determined even known to be cold at times, but emotional? I'd say no. Most people would tell you confidently that I could hold my own in a crowd, on a stage - under the heat of distress my convictions have carried me. But you, you saw what others haven't.

It was my tears in the middle of the night that jolted you awake and back to the reality you tried to push us from. You found my sadness among the insecurities that leave me awake. You searched my darkness and promised to soothe the anxieties I successfully kept hidden for 25 years. You pulled each one out into the light and set free. 

I have since cried in front of complete strangers. Falling apart in the arms of people I've never met, hoping that I will look up and see you reaching down to tell me I'm beautiful.  

I lay in the bed you built blocks for to stop from moving as I toss and turn. In the depth of my subconscious I still believe I will feel you when I reach behind me. I often look for you in the darkest time of night, when the silence is so heavy I can feel it against my chest. I am brought back to your bedroom, where the weeping willows once swayed along side us while it rained. You are lonesome for me too, I feel it. 

To see your darkness now scares me. It pulls me apart from the inside and seeps out, in a way no emotion has ever escaped me. I still believe in the goodness I felt when our hands found each other between bar stools and locked knees. Even now, as the wolves you threw me back to close in, I hold steady. The warmth of your heart still resonates within me and I am confident that its you who will save me. 

It was a Tuesday night in November when I realized that it was love that was I feeling- that I had been in love with you since the very beginning.