I always said I couldn’t love someone new.

The idea of meeting someone I know nothing about, who knows nothing about me, seems like asking for disappointment and heartbreak. How could I trust that someone was actually who they portrayed themselves to be at this point? I’ve held strong to those who have walked with me through the mess that my life has been for the last 4 years, and that’s it.

No new friends.

But I already knew him. He had already been in my life. I had seen him at some low moments and he had watched me crumble at mine. He sat in the backseat one night over a year ago, in front of my ex’s parents house, as I revealed my deepest shame to him. I knew he was the one person who would understand what it was like to create your own misery, even when you desperately wanted something different. He was my friend. I trusted him. But everytime we would become closer as friends, the chaos in our own lives would distance us. I kept reaching out to him, desperate to have him see himself the way I saw him, all the while rejecting the voice in my ear that told me I was making a fool of myself. My ex would ridicule me, laughing at how stupid I was to think of him as “family”, that he didn’t care about me and never did. I sat with him the night I went to the hospital and tried to tell him how much his presence in my life meant to me. He watched me as I was tormented that week of the Miami fair. He told me it was the first time he realized that I was actually a good person and not the POS I was made out to be. He listened to me as I cried that week. He defended me, he believed me.

I remember sitting in the car as I applied makeup to his skin so his job wouldn’t see the black eye he had gotten the day before and thinking, “this person is so precious to me”.

We did face masks together, had dinners with my family, spent countless nights out or just riding around, separated but still together. Something about him, his hurt, his heart, I was never been able to move on from.

I’ve said before that I struggle knowing when it’s time to let go. And in true form, I have never been able to shake the memories he left in my head. I’ve never been able to convince myself that he was not that empathetic, non judgemental, smart as fuck person I spent so much time with. I couldn’t convince myself the things he said, he didn’t mean.

I can see all of it so clearly still. Watching him sleep in the backseat all those late nights, listening to him explain why I couldn’t get past the third day, carrying loads of laundry to the laundromat when my son was suffering, leaving work to pick him up on the side of the road, giving him the notebook and Christmas cactus before he went to the hospital, sitting in my car as I sat parked in the lot right before his house, gripping the steering wheel so hard it hurt my palms and screaming in anger and grief, knowing what was about to happen to him all over again. I remember sitting in the pews the day of the funeral, tears flowing down my face, staring at the back of his head, thinking, “please don’t take him too”.

I kept trying. There was no evidence that anything I said mattered to him. I would send him paragraphs, telling him that I was there for him. That he didn’t have to struggle alone, that the world needed someone like him, someone who was kind, and intelligent, and good – that I didn’t want to him to die. And even though I wouldn’t hear anything back, I still couldn’t let go.

Then, at the beginning of the year, I saw him, standing outside of the gas station alone. My daughter was in the passenger seat. She had watched me worry and care for him so much the last year.

“You gotta get out and talk to him”. 

I threw open the door and ran and wrapped my arms around him. I looked up into the face of someone who was hurting so badly, his eyes rimmed with purple and his skin turned a shade of greenish-grey. I told him I was sober. I told him that I loved him and that I was here for him. That I would continue to be there for him. When I got back into the car, my daughter and I both sobbed. 

“That might be the last time we ever see him alive.”

He texted me three days later. He told me he was almost 30 hours in. I raced to him and dropped off everything I could think of that he would need. 

And from there? He’s allowed me to support him like I’ve always wanted to, and in turn he has supported me. He’s listened to me, become closer to my family, been kissed by my mother, cooked with me, walked with me, met my best friend, held me, healed parts of me that I couldn’t heal on my own. He showed me the beach. He has assured me everytime I have been scared and spiraling, he’s proven he is capable of handling my insecurities; without making me feel so broken, and become someone I can’t see my life without. He has earned my trust.

I loved him before, but it’s different now. He wasn’t someone new, but I guess I kind of am.  

I was five months sober yesterday. And while I’m scared of what these feelings in me will cause my future ones to be, I’m also excited. I’m happy. 

He makes me feel safe. Every day I spend with him, only makes me love him more.

I don’t think I could have loved someone new. But maybe not because I was too afraid. Maybe not because it seemed like it would be a waste of time.

Maybe I felt that way because that part of my heart was already reserved for someone who’s face I could never forget. 

“I was all in from the start.”