Right.

You were not catastrophic. You did not walk in and change everything. You did not take my breath away or touch my heart or blow my mind or do whatever those things are when you meet someone and suddenly decide that they are unlike anybody you have ever met. You did not captivate my dreams or my desires and you certainly did not make me weak at the knees when the first hello fell through your lips.

No, instead you were just there. And I like that, because, actually, you were always there. Instead of an elaborate clamour of wonder and enchantment and the feeling that ‘nothing could get better than him’, you slowly meandered yourself into a daily normality. You were simple. You were constant. You were far from comfortable.
What I like even more is the fact that you were not a cliché. You were the sheer beauty of seeing a friend as something much purer. You were not dramatic or fabled or hyperbolised. You were not someone from a party I had to try so desperately to please. You were not someone who had to pretend to make me realise your beauty. You were simple, yet so intrinsically complicated.

You were the queerest complication of someone so unobtainable yet someone who was always in reach. You were so cryptic and complex yet refreshingly simple. You were captivating and repelling. You were dreams and you were disasters. You were intensively interesting and downright annoying.

You were human. You were real. You weren’t something which stepped off a television screen.
You were just you.
You were just right.

Vulnerable.

“You will fall in love with your friends. Deep, passionate love. You will create a second family with them, a kind of tribe that makes you feel less vulnerable. Sometimes our families can’t love us all the time. Sometimes we’re born into families who don’t know how to love us properly. They do as much as they can but the rest is up to our friends. They can love you all the time, without judgment. At least the good ones can.”

-Ryan O’Connell

Away.

I’m going away. Far away. Yet it’s so soon.

Maybe it’s not the distance, or the time, or the separate continent which scares me. Maybe it’s not the bare essentials, or the small group of people or the many dangers it may bring. Maybe it’s not even the faces of people who live a much humbler life than myself.

Maybe it’s the uncertainty.
Maybe it’s the fact that this is not just a sun-drenched visit to a warmer climate, but an experience that will mould and shape me. It’s the fact that I will come back and see the world in a different way; that after I have seen what is out there, I cannot go back; it can’t be the same.

Or maybe it’s the separation.
Perhaps not because of the feeling of being homesick, but the sickness of being completely unattached and separate from everyone I love for a month. Because although travelling is thrilling and beautiful and exciting and that I will have the time of my life, I won’t know how you are. I won’t know whether your day has been okay. I won’t know whether you are lonely or happy or excited or worried. I won’t know where you are or what kind of exciting things you are up to.
Because this trip means knowing that life goes on whilst I’m away, but believing that everything will still be there when I return. And that whilst I am gone, everything will be okay.

Because this is the first time that I have truly been able to make that leap. This is the first time that I have ever been so far from everything that I’m used to and everyone that I know. It’s the first time that I haven’t been in control and not felt secure. But equally, this is the first time I will truly be free. This is the first time where I can finally be away from anything that once held me down. For a month, I live and breathe in a different atmosphere in a world which is so far from the one I know.

Because when I step on that plane, I leave everything behind. And though the coming weeks may be filled with uncertainty and ambiguity, it may just possibly be the most sure of myself that I have ever been.

In your atmosphere.

I want to know you more, because knowing you has been one of the most beautiful things I have encountered. Because you’re different.

Every day I see people with scowl ridden faces and cloudy eyes and a two-dimensional disposition and wonder where the golden spark of spirit has fled. But not you. You still have that spark. Your strings are not broken and your mind is free.
You know how to swim upstream in a world that wants success over sensibility. You are not bound. You are more than paychecks and grades and the idea of living for the future and forgetting the present.
You don’t find the use in a hard edge or knowing all the answers. You are not narcissistic, nor egotistic nor vainglorious. You are so much more than straight edges and easy answers. Rather than skimming the surface, you take that plunge; you delve further.

You terrify me. Because meeting someone as honest and open as you means I can no longer be comfortable; I can no longer rely on small talk and easy answers and Sunday lunches. When placed in your eyes, I can no longer accept half-truths. I can’t settle. I can’t choose comfort over being content and that shocks me. Because you make me reassess my true worth: you won’t let me stop when there is so far to go.

And you are so wonderfully cryptic. You are both intensely complicated and equally so simple. I can never make assumptions, because you confound every expectation. Because every time I discover you more, I seem to know you less. You are so wildly and beautifully unpredictable and lovely, you cannot be labelled. You cannot be put in a box and kept in line with everyone else. You stand far apart.

You are intoxicating and sickening and wonderful and terrifying and careful and reckless.

I don’t understand you. But I want to know you.

Your eyes spell hope.

Your eyes spell hope. They speak possibility and echo the idea of difference: that I can trust the warmth of this moment.
Though I may not know how long it may last, or how deeply I may ever enter this gaze, it whispers safety. It holds my hand and tells me to rest for this moment longer, and just wait for the story to unfold.

Your smile sings of promise and new hope. Not the naïve promise of a forever, or even the air of certainty, but just enough to let me know that it will be okay. Your words hush and cool and pardon, highlighting the fact that you aren’t like them; that this time you care. That though the future is unpredictable and unlikely, it is far better to savour the precious time we share than recklessly dismiss the idea as an end before it has even begun.

The truth is, I don’t know where I am, or what is going on. But you bring the sort of stability and assurance that allows me to finally come back up for air. Though this sense of security may be limited, it is more than refreshing. Because, for the tiniest moment, I’m granted the serenity of a true friend; of someone who is ready hold the girl who is trampled and in denial.

Because you bring me those clichés I didn’t think I that was prepared to feel. Because in your eyes, everything is better: everything feels better, sounds better and feels better.
Because (truthfully) everything with you is better.

I picture you in the sun.

I picture you with that glimmer in your green-eyed smile, doing something interesting just like you always do. I picture you singing to yourself as the clouds pass over ahead, knowing that you’re going somewhere bigger and brighter and more beautiful. I picture you free: free from everything and free from everyone who held you down; everyone who told you no and tried to constrain you when they said that you’d never be able to make it.

I picture you safe from harm. I picture you safe from the nightmares and lonely nights and the feeling that you aren’t good enough. I picture you smiling and loving and knowing your true worth and beauty, and that you are not broken. I picture you knowing that you no longer have to tread timidly in the fear of another person leaving, and having the courage and pride to stride widely and capture those horizons.

I picture you knowing you who want to be. I picture you not allowing your past to decide your future, and understanding those horrible things were fundamental in getting you to where you are now. I picture you holding someone else’s hand and telling them that it will be okay, because you have already been there, and you know that if you could pull through, anyone can. And I picture you with a heart of compassion and kindness and love because although bitterness is the easiest option, it is in no way the most beneficial.

I picture you in the sun because that’s where you belong: you belong where you are at your most happiest. You belong in a place where you heart is filled with sunshine and where the cold no longer bites. Because sometimes happiness is hard to come by and I know all too well that you’re more deserving of a little bit of sunshine than anyone else that I know.

I picture you with nothing but happiness, because that’s what you deserve. Because I have never seen something as beautiful as you when you are happy.

How people get in.

Because that’s how people get in. It’s not when you’re searching through the raindrops or waiting on the corner for when they walk by. No, instead they are the ones who do the capturing. They take your heart, your soul and your mind and keep it ransom, leaving you to wonder how they ever caught grasp.

And you finally realise the beauty in the pain of waiting: that trying to squeeze mismatched pieces into incomplete holes and clutching at straws for a compromised ending was never going to fit; that the only finality can be here and now. Because before this, nothing even mattered. Everything became enlightened; everything is here, now and open.

Because people come into our lives to change. They leave marks; they etch their way through the caverns of your heart because people are irreplaceable and irreversible wonderful creatures. They shape your life; change the dynamic; and keep you from ever being able to go back. They mould you into a person that you weren’t two days ago. They give you new thoughts and dreams and desires.
They leave a kind of mark that does not fade or heal or mend.

After all, it is easier to remember a thousand words than to forget a single person.