The Second Chapter

Absence- June 5, 2019

I crawled into bed tonight and it smelled like you.

I pulled my teddy bear close, as I always did when we were a part and I was missing your arms around me, closed my eyes and there you were. Your scent engulfed my senses and suddenly I found myself holding tighter to my bear and shoving my back closer to the wall to simulate the feeling of your body pressed against mine. For a moment, everything felt normal again. It felt as if you were still 3,777 miles away and I was simply snuggling up to my stuffed animals to make up for the lack of your presence. The normalcy of it all tricks my mind into believing that you're mine again and all of this was a cruel joke. I snuggle deeper into my blankets and close my eyes contentedly with the knowledge that you're still mine and I will see you soon.

But the truth is, you aren't an ocean away. You're mere feet away. Your warmth, soft snores and smell permeating the cool air around you. Though there might as well be an ocean still between us for how little contact we've made. I catch you staring a few times and look away but feel the weight of your eyes still on my back. I sneak glimpses of you in chaotic rooms, hoping that everyone will be too busy or distracted to know that my eyes always linger a little longer than they should. I see the man I love, so close, but still so unbearably far away. And that's something I never anticipated- for the physical distance to not be a problem, but the emotional to be.

And maybe that's why this is so odd. Because our relationship never lacked emotional intimacy, but rather physical. And I looked forward to this summer for that exact reason; for the first time since we started dating, we'd be able to be both physically and emotionally intimate while achieving the status of a "normal couple", no longer the token "long-distance couple", all in the space of a few months.

But instead, you've thrown that away. The promise of constant love, support, corny jokes, secret kisses and scandalous times must not appeal to you anymore. It doesn't. Because if it did, you wouldn't be doing this. Or maybe it does, in truth, knowing you, I KNOW it does. So why have you cast it aside? When did you decide that I wasn't as important as I used to be? Why were you so willing to give up the love you swore was straight out of your own personalized fairy tale? A dream come true?

I know that I know the answers- you've explained it a thousand times by now. But that's doesn't mean I've come to accept, understand OR agree with them.

Your scent just washed over me again. No wind, no movement to guide it my way, just random but also so welcome and normal I think I could cry from the routineness of it. So I clutch tighter to my teddy bear, dressed and drowning in your shirt, and throw myself back against the space on the wall where your chest and arms should be waiting for me, where we used to align perfectly, and close my eyes. And instead of closing them knowing that your mine, I close them imagining the day your scent washes over me again- and not from an overly cologne-soaked shirt of yours I kept, but because you're back, pressed against me, kissing my forehead goodnight. But until then, I'll squeeze and cry on the shoulder of my surrogate teddy bear until you realize you need me to come back because, low and behold, you miss the smell of me too.