I understand feeling as small and as insignificant as humanly possible. How it can actually ache in places you didn’t even know you had inside you. And it doesn’t matter how many haircuts you get, how many gyms you join, how many glasses of wine you drink with your girlfriends. You still go to bed every night going over every detail and wondering what you did wrong and how you misunderstood. And how in the hell for that brief moment you could be that happy. And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he’ll see the light and show up at your door.

When it was done and I went to sleep, I lay awake and listened to the clock on your nightstand and the wind outside and understood that I was really home, that in bed with you was home, and something that had been getting close in the dark was suddenly gone. It could not stay. It had been banished. It knew how to come back, I was sure of that, but it could not stay and I could really go to sleep. My heart cracked with gratitude. I think it was the first gratitude I’ve ever really known. I lay there beside you and the tears rolled down the sides of my face and onto the pillow. I loved you then and I love you now and I have loved you every second in between. I don’t care if you understand me. Understanding is vastly overrated, but nobody ever gets enough safety. I’ve never forgotten how safe I felt with that thing gone out of the darkness.