sleeping is the only love

One night before sleep during the fourth year Justin and I were dating, I found a post-it note stuck to the wall against my side of the bed. It simply read "I love you!" I took it with me in the morning and used it as a bookmark for the next month or so. A small gesture, yes, but a gesture so sweet and perfect in its simplicity that I can still recall the image of black Sharpie against pale yellow four years later when most of my other memories from that time have slipped away.

In the end, when a relationship runs its course, what do we remember and what do we forget? What becomes Stories Worth Telling and what gets pushed away and hidden until finally forgotten? There's not many more specifics I can share about my five years (!) spent with Justin. I remember the way it felt when my bare feet sunk into Vancouver sand and I looked over and saw a flash of excitement cross his face and I remember thinking the west coast had never seemed more perfect until that moment.

The small details are the easiest to let fall away, yet they are the ones I'm left searching for in old journals and photos and letters. Instead, the untangling that follows the end remains the clearest in my mind. I remember the last real time I saw Justin and I remember wondering if that would be the last time I'd see him and I remember not being able to answer that question so I looked the other way instead.

The happiness is a blur, but the loss remains clear. And this is scary. This is scary because shouldn't it be the other way around and you always think it will be the other way around but it never is. What's even scarier is the fact that you know this all but you still risk it time and time again. Because you love the idea of love and you love love and you love being in love and you love those perfect moments that you manage to remember even four years later.