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thiswasinevitableid · 3 years ago

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62. you set off the fire alarm and I have a test tomorrow, and I might strangle you

Sternclay, sfw, please!

Why do fire alarms only go off in March? The one time Stern set one off (he fell asleep studying and the dinner he was reheating started smoking) it was in that endless stretch of time where the snow is no longer festive but will keep falling for at least two more months.

More importantly, who is responsible for interrupting his carefully planned out six hours of sleep before his midterm at eight this morning?

He stands in the freezing cold with the building’s other three occupants; the single man who looks like he stars in lumberjack porn and the girlfriends who live on the ground floor.

“Sorry” The other man mumbles, “I was making doughnuts and the oil I was using got too hot without me noticing.”

Stern runs a hand through his hair and keeps his voice low, “Why were you cooking with hot oil at three in the morning?”

“When I can’t sleep, I bake.”

“Can I suggest a less flammable hobby in the future?”

“Hey man, it was an accident. And it’s not my fault they stuck the fire alarm too high up for me to get to it before it called the fire department.”

“Too high? You’re taller than I am and I can reach mine.”

“My ceilings are higher and it was tucked between the cabinets and the roof.”

“Oh yeah, ours is in a super-weird place too.” Aubrey, one of the ground-floor neighbors, pats the offenders arm, “it’s okay Barclay, it’s just a little smoke.”

“That may be the case for you three, but I have an exam that’s worth thirty percent of my grade in six hours and I need my goddamn sleep.”

“Yeesh, man, chill out. They’re already waving us back in.” Aubrey points to the door of the three story house.

“I timed everything to optimize my sleep schedule so it actually is a big deal.”

Barclay glowers at him, “Look, I said sorry. But maybe get used to the fact the world doesn’t run on your schedule, mr. control freak, and fucking get over it.”

Stern keeps a smile flat as he bites out, “go to hell” and heads upstairs to salvage what’s left of his schedule.

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The crash from downstairs comes at nine p.m; he has a huge day at his internship tomorrow, but Stern doesn’t hear any sounds after it, and he is not about to let a neighbor die on his watch.

“Barclay? Are you okay?” He puts his ear to the door, the heater drowning out all ambient noise.

“Nope, not really, agh, fuck, the doors locked, lemme try to stand-”

“Stay put.” He runs upstairs, grabs his wallet, and uses his debit card to trick the lock, “Shit, what happened?”

Barclay is clutching his forehead, blood between his fingers, and his ankle is swelling. “I got really dizzy, caught my foot on the couch and then my forehead on the table on the way down. Ow, fuck, it better not be broken” he growls as Stern kneels to look at his foot, “I’ve got a shift in six hours.”

“I can’t tell. You should get to a hospital; if it’s injured and you try to work on it, you might have an even worse fall.”

“Fuck, I’m not even sure I can afford the ambulance, let alone the fucking E.R.”

He knows Dani and Aubrey are out, “Any family in town, or a boyfriend?”

“No, if there I woulda called them.” He snaps, then tries for a slow inhale, “sorry, it just, it hurts-”

“I can take you in my car, that’ll be one less worry.” Stern helps Barclay up, gets him to his sedan, then tells him to hold tight while he gets something for his head. He ends up grabbing the first clean fabris he finds, which is how Barclay ends up in the E.R while holding a “Roswell, NM” tank-top to his forehead.

“Sorry to ruin your, uh, souvenir?” He mumbles as they wait for the doctor.

“It’s for a good cause. Besides, I know how to get bloodstains out of fabric.”

“That...that makes you sound like a serial killer.”

“If I were a serial killer I would wear things that could stain.” Stern winces, “sorry, I read too many true crime books.”

“I just don’t have the stomach for them. I like fictional mysteries but real ones?” he shivers, “makes me think an axe murderer is gonna break into my place. I mean, you did it with a credit card.”

“If you’d had the chain thrown it might have been another story. “

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Barclay shifts in the plastic seat, “you, uh, you don’t have to hang around. Know you got a rigid schedule.”

Joseph runs a hand through his hair, “I’m sorry for being so annoyed last week when you set off the alarm. I’m not always great at handling changes.”

“To be fair, doughnuts probably weren’t the best stress baking choice.”

“Did they turn out?”

“Nah. I’ll have to try ‘em another time. Did, uh, did your test go okay?”

“Yes. I, um, I got a perfect score.”

Barclay laughs, the sound like warm honey, and Stern blushes at looking so deeply nerdy in front of someone with a smile like that.

“Mr. Cobb? We’re ready to see you.”

The bearded man gives an slightly awkward wave as he follows the nurse through the double doors. Stern returns the gesture, pulls up the chess app on his phone, and settles in to wait until his neighbor is done.

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Barclay comes out his nap the scrchh of a brush on tile. His first thought is that he’s so late for work he’s unavoidably fucked. His second one is who the fuck is in his bathroom?

His ankle twinges, jogging his memory; he got back from the hospital at 11:30, no stitches needed on his head but bedrest required for his ankle. He’d been contemplating how to convince his manager to let him shift from the warehouse to somewhere he could sit. Joseph raised an eyebrow and asked for his phone while telling him to go get into bed. All Barclay overheard was a polite, steely voice mentioning the labor laws in Dane County and how it’d be a shame if someone were to arrange an OSHA spot check. The last thing he recalls before falling asleep was Joseph telling him he had the next day off.

That doesn’t explain the cleaning sounds, though.

“Oh, you’re up.” Joseph pokes his head in from the hall. His hair is coming loose from his usual slicked-down style and he’s in a V-neck and sweatpants instead of the suit Barclay sees him in most days, “I hope I didn’t wake you; since you gave me the spare key I thought I’d check on you when I got back from my internship and leave you some take-out from the Thai place around the corner--you said the green curry was your favorite--but then I thought I should wait until you got up to see if you needed anything, so I, um, I cleaned your tub while I waited for you to wake up.”

Barclay isn’t sure what part of that is the most baffling. Or the most touching.

“Why the tub?” He eases his legs over so he’s sitting on the edge of the bed.

“It’s satisfying. And I, um, I clean when I’m stressed.” He wipes his hands on the rag in his front pocket, “I was worried about you, and my internship was murder today. They’re mounting a case against one of the biggest employers in the state and everyone’s on edge.”

“Heh, kinda makes me glad I work at WalMart.” Barclay takes the crutch Joseph offers him and hobbles into the kitchen, “oh, uh, if you want to try some cake, there’s leftover cinnamon spice cake in the fridge.”

“I think I will, thank you.” He bends into the fridge and wow has his ass always been that nice, “can I grab you a drink from in here?”

“One of those pre-bottled Kahlua things in the door; have ‘em for a friend but one sounds good right now.” He watches Joseph open it for him, setting it down before he pulls out Barclay’s chair for him. Normally, the kind of fussing and light ordering around Joseph has directed at him makes him bristle. This last day, it just made him feel safe and cared about.

He could get used to this.

----------------------

“Good lord, we’ve even got a flood warning.” Joseph sets down his phone as rain attempts to pummel the house to dust, “Some days I wish we lived closer to one of the lakes but this is not one of them. Should we check to see if Dani and Aubrey need any emergency supplies for if we have to shelter here? I always keep more than I need.”

“Nah, Dani’s got a strong self-sufficiency streak; got her a bucket emergency kit for Christmas last year.” Barclay pops the cork on the Pinot Grigio they got for dinner, “and I don’t think they forgot your semi-drunk promise that if they ever had to run from a flood they had full permission to break open your front door to be safe on the third floor.”

“I meant it, drunk or no.” Joseph takes down the plates and portions out the carbonara; he’s been trying to cook when he has time, both because he likes it and because it gives him and Barclay something to talk about. Not that they need the help.

Things changed after the trip to the E.R; Barclay would bring Joseph fresh cookies or pie. Joseph would offer Barclay rides when their schedules overlapped. Barclay introduced him to his favorite trivia night spot. Joseph took some of his cookies to a worker-owned bakery where a former co-student worked, which led to Barclay getting a new job.

Now they see each other almost every day, whether that’s watching movies on Barclay’s cramped couch or joining Dani and Aubrey for board game night.

He’s pleased with how the pasta turned out, even more so with the fact that when their legs bump together beneath the table, Barclay doesn’t pull away.

They’re on the couch, chatting about the recurring themes in ghost movies, when the storm starts in earnest. The sky is so dark it may as well be nine at night, the lighting and thunder performing a cacophonous two-man show across it. The closer the thunder gets, the more Barclay tenses.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah” a thunderclap makes him jump, “I know it’s silly but I fucking hate thunderstorms, I have since I was a kid.” He chuckles, “my mom would always end up making a pillow fort for me to hide in.”

“We could do that now.” He offers, tapping his foot against Barclay’s own.

“Know this might be hard to believe, but I wasn’t always six-two.” The other man teases.

“Don’t count me out just yet. Wait here.”

It takes some precarity and most of his thumb-tacks, but soon he’s waving Barclay to come join him.

“Holy shit” Barclay laughs as he sees the bed and part of the floor in Joseph’s tiny bedroom are curtained in blankets, “do you ever half-ass stuff?”

“No one can ever prove I haven’t.”

“Uh huh.” Barclay climbs into the fort, “that’s Joseph speak for ‘no.’”

Joseph plugs in his UFO lights and follows him in, “I’ve failed plenty of times.”

“Not on this. Man, this is gr-” A thunderclap makes him jump, nearly knocking one blanket down, “uh, maybe if I…” He lays on the bed, Joseph deciding it’s the least awkward option to join him in that position.

“You really didn’t have to do this.” The green of the lights add a charming tint to Barclay’s eyes.

“I wanted to.”

His friend looks away, keeps his gaze on his feet as he murmurs, “How come you’re always so nice to me?”

“Because we’re friends.”

“It’s, uh, it’s not because you want something from me?”

“Of course not. Barclay,” he touches the cooks arm, “anything you’re thinking is a favor with an ulterior motive....well, it isn’t. It’s something I did to look out for you.”

“What if I, uh, I didn’t think it was favor hunting and was, uh, a different word that started with “F’?”

This time, when the thunder sounds, Barclay nestles closer to him.

“Oh, Barclay” he drapes a protective arm over his waists, “I didn’t mean it to be. At least, most of the time. There were, um, sometimes when I was more flirtatious than I’d have been if it were anybody else.”

“Do you...want to flirt more?” Barclay mumbles into his shoulder.

Joseph tips Barclay’s chin with his hand, brings their lips together as lightning flashes through the window. When he pulls back, Barclay’s eyes are wide. He kisses him once more just to see if he can make them entirely pupil, then whispers, “I hope we can do more than just flirt.”

“Joseph” strong arms slip below and across him, “fuck, babe, if it’s not flooded tomorrow, promise you’ll let me take you out tomorrow?”

“I’d like nothing better, big guy. In the meantime..” he rolls so Barclay is atop him, “I have some thoughts on how to keep your mind off the storm.”

#sternclay #agent stern/ barclay #meet ugly #taz amnesty

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piprocrastinator · 5 years ago

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Let’s Chat

Hello and Welcome to my corner.

Today I’d like to talk to you all about the wonders that it 2Moons. It is a Thai show based on the Thai novel by the same name created by Chiffon_Cake.

In this episode which will be Part 1 am going to discuss season 1. Which seems like a fairly good spot to start.

So let's get going. woohoo.

Warning this contains spoilers for 2Moons Season 1!

Season one cast is

Phana - Godt

I think he did a good job portraying a sassy smart boy who likes basketball and secretly loves Wayo. He gives a very good bitchy stoic face and the difference between his and Bas body proportions made them look really cute together on-screen. I think off-screen their chemistry is ... shaky, which is fine because they did good on screen and that’s really what their job was but you know cute offscreen stuff would be good. That isn’t to say that GodtBas didn’t fed the masses, because they did. They understood how to serve some cute couple stuff but like you could feel that it was like their job and stuff *flaps hands in explanation*. I like Godt off screen better he seemed less tense than on-screen.

Wayo - Bas

Man this boy can be cute when he wants to be with his cute little cheeks, ugh! I think the way he portrayed this version of Wayo was good, he did the spacey look well while still being able to hold onto the camera which is difficult to do. He was also good at pouting, it was really cute. Overall I think he is a better model than an actor.

NEXT!~

I really had to contain myself because boy BOY~! do I love enjoy this couple. from the whole cast they’re my favorite. Although they are not my favorite BL on screen couple nor are they my favorite off-screen but they're still cute and within the bounds of this cast, their the best.

Kit - Copter

Let’s just start off with the dimples. THE DIMPLES!! If you haven’t seen the dimples you should. His pouting, annoyed Kit was good. He did have some moments where I wish he would have been more emotive towards the character, like he seemed flat sometimes but overall no bad. Mainly I can’t get over the dimples, I have soft spot for them...

Ming - Kimmon

I think he is my favorite actor our of the cast. He did a good job portraying a pouty, confident and happy Ming. He made the character seem realistic, I guess. He seemed to take over the scenes when he was on-screen.

Beam - Tee

Ok what i’m about to say might hurt some feelings so i’m going to preface, this is my opinion! not meant to hurt any feelings buuuuuuut I am not a fan of him like at all. As far as his acting goes I mean, I think as an actor he is very flat... like flaaaaaatter than my chest flat (haha bad joke by bad <.< lol) but really there was nothing to him, he was there....

Forth - Tae

My opinion on him is pretty... small because he honestly he didn’t have that much screen time, more than Beam (Tee) but like really not that much at all. or maybe they had the same.. either way it wasn’t much at all. He was ok.... *sighs* I really wish I had more to say about him too but um... yeah...

I feel bad judging Tee and Tae for their performances as Forth and Beam because they really didn’t have any representation int he show for this season and that’s not their fault that’s just sonf of how the books are, that first book is like PHANAWAYO!! and it doesn’t leave much room for the others and that sucks for them because this season was all they got but I mea they did what they could with what they got.

(They will all be in an upcoming drama called Hotel Stars the Series i’m super excited to see more KimCop! oh be still my bating heart I hope they have lots go cute moments ><)

Also!! excluding Godt how is no in monk training last I heard, the other five boys are in a group called SBFIVE and they’re cute in it.

NOW! Onto the main event! The Show.

2Moons is centered around Wayo and Phana. Wayo being a love struck kid who turns into a love struck college boy man? going to the same school as his crush! Like I know, right? How lucky can he be?! (Well not that lucky because he knew which school Pha was going too and applied for it but still) and it gets better, his crush actually likes him back! Double whammy! But life can’t be that easy because at first they don’t really get along which sucks for Wayo because he has this creepy shrine of Pha and thinks about him all the time in a stalker yet not stalker way. Pha doesn’t really recognize him at first either so it’s like they’re starting new again, like meeting for the first time a second time...?

Pha is the leader of the ‘Wild Doctor Gang’ (which is just him, Beam and Kit). Pha decides to hid his feelings until he sees Wayo again when he was in high school. At first he doesn’t want to love you because ‘he’s guy and I'm a guy’ and you know how it goes but then he decides I guess towards the end that - surprise! - he has feeling and everyone knew but let him ignore it because.. friendship? Anyways, at first he like picking on Wayo and calls him Shorty and it’s cute, I guess *shrugs noncommittally*. But then one day during the Moons rehearsal he’s all like “damn who that cutie with the glasses?” and Beam and Kit are like “that’s Wayo, bitch”. (ok that’s not exactly how it goes but you get the picture.) Pha realizes that his love is close enough that he can now chase him without the previous hesitation. And the chase is on.

The first season is all about them learning each other again the then in the end they get together and exchange bracelets which, you know, is also cute.

The side story is that Forth is kind of trying to hit on Wayo at the same time as Pha and that just makes Pha jealous so they have this littler rivalry going on. Beam is just kind of there, he really doesn’t have much going on throughout this besides some random one liners that honestly don’t meant o much to this part of the series. Poor Beam, he really doesn’t get much time in this season :/ Forth gets more as he is a love rival. But honestly its not enough. but realistically this season is all Pha and Wayo and I honestly find their story kind of lake luster. It’s so..... sooooo.... ugh, like there isn’t anything new to it. Wayo is really spacey and like weird and kind of stalker-is and Pha is maybe independent but like he turns into mush around Wayo and not in the ‘awww’ way but in the ‘get yourself together boy’ way.

I do enjoy the small bit of Mingkit that they showed int he series though!

Ming is trying to hit on Kit because who knows why at this point, maybe he has a liking for when people push him away. Kit is really sassy and pushes Ming away like every chance he gets except some how Ming tricks Kit into going out to eat with him when Kits car won’t start one night after the gym and then again when he wins the Moon competition and both scenes are cute as Kit tries to look at Ming and Ming tried his best to capture the heart of the grumpy KitKatTM.

I think overall considering the cast, script and directing I give it a ... 4 out of 10.

Which sees really low, I know, but let me explain.

1 - The cast is alright, Tee and Tae didn’t get much time but from what I did see i’m not a huge fan. Godt and Bas with their lead roles did alright, but the chemistry just wasn’t what it need to be to show the amount of love they supposedly had for each other, (like in the books it’s a lot..) but they didn’t do horrible it just could have been better. Kimmon and Coptor I think did the best job with he chemistry out of the three couples but you don’t really get to see them toooo much so it’s almost a moot point. There was potential and I think had this show gotten another season we may have been able to see way more of it.

2 - I like the script did alright, it gave some time for the audience to get to know Phana and Wayo slowly, which helps in growing with the characters, gaining attachment.

3 - There are some weird directional choices (That I think might just be a Thai thing because I’ve noticed in some other shows as well.

4 - Also the weird silences. (there isn’t so much in this show but I think that it’s a common directors choice throughout the Thai shows.) I’m not a fan of weird silences of weird pauses in speech it takes you out of the scene because you’re like ‘I see there line here but your pause makes me think you forgot it’ or ‘why didn’t you reshot this scene so that the conversation flowed like a conversation and not someone reading from a script’.

Overall 4 - Potential was there.

Still would recommend though.

#2 moons the series #phawayo #forthbeam #mingkit #seriescritic #2moons #copter #kimmon varodom #godt #bas #sbfive

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stephhannes · 6 years ago

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if you love something, give it away

it all boils down to one quotable phrase: if you love something, give it away

i’ve been writing about nathan since i was 13, and this has been the hardest piece i’ve tried to write. as soon as nathan died, i knew that i wanted to have something special to publish on our anniversary. originally, that was a book of essays- i made a little headway on that, but grief made it hard to actually accomplish anything of substance. it took a lot just to try to get out one blog post a month. but now that i think about an entire book of essays- i think maybe that wouldn’t have been the right move.

here’s the thing: nathan and i have had a long and dramatic history, and when we started actually dating, i put a lot of our past stories in a vault. i threw out journals, i deleted old blog posts, i got rid of a lot of the bad stuff because it was unhealthy to hold onto it, to carry it into our relationship. we (obviously) both grew up a lot since we met when we were 11. thinking about all of the years of chasing each other and being terrible to each other was so detrimental to my mental health, and after (a decent amount of) therapy and just growing up in general, i got over it. there’s enough drama just in the month leading up to us getting together, that there’s really no need to focus on all of the drama from high school.

i’ve spent a lot of time thinking about if we would have ended up together if we had met in a different timeline. we were incredibly similar in the sense that our morals and general beliefs aligned, but the way that we interacted with the world and processed events and saw things were so incredibly different. our relationship was a dream, but was it so great because we were genuinely inherently compatible? or were we so compatible because we had grown up together?

but maybe that’s just how it works.

we stuck to each other because in abilene, we were the same. we were both too smart for our own good, we were both kind of arrogant about that fact. we were the only people who were like that so of course we gravitated toward each other. but if we had met in austin, or in new york somewhere down the line when we weren’t kids- would we have ended up together?

on the other hand, even though we initially were brought together by circumstance, we still spent time apart. i left abilene for college, we both dated other people, we both went through our respective garbage human undergrad phases- and we still came back to each other after all of that.

that was always the beauty of our relationship. we always came home. we always came back to each other.

i said goodbye to him so many times. junior year of high school, we kissed for the first time and we both read the situation completely differently. after that first kiss he was like “i’ve always wanted to do that,” and i was like “yeah, i know.” not trying to be dismissive, i was just so in shock and didn’t know how to use words. i left that day thinking “oh holy shit we’re finally going to be together, dope!” and he read it as “oh she’s definitely not interested.” we never discussed it, he just started dating someone else a couple of weeks later, and that was when i told myself i was never going to talk to him again. at that point, i’d spent a couple of years on the backburner in his life. it was this weird place because we were so insanely close- we were absolutely in love with each other, but he was always in another relationship. that was my last straw. i didn’t make a big deal out of it, i just quietly cut him out of my life. and surprisingly, i was thriving.

and then at the end of junior year, something terrible happened in his life. and i remember having a small moral dilemma of “i know that he needs me but also i told myself i’d never talk to him again and that’s actually been going pretty well for me,” but me, being the good friend that i am, took one for the team and texted him. “hey, i know we haven’t been the best of friends lately, but i love you and i’m here for you if you need anything.” to which he replied, “oh my god. you’re the one person i’ve wanted to talk to today. it’s my fault things have been bad between us. i’m so sorry.”

we saw each other a few times after that, but he dropped out of high school and went to college a year early after that event so for the most part- we lost touch.

my sophomore year of college, back in 2015, we reconnected. i texted him out of the blue after telling one of my friends all about our history and feeling inspired, was like “hey i miss you” and that weekend he came to austin to see me. and that weekend was so special. leading up to that point, we actually really hadn’t spent much time alone together. in high school i think we saw each other outside of class approximately three times, i visited his dorm once when he was in college, but other than that this was really our first time spending quality time together. i lived right near campus, which was a hell that weekend, because it was round-up, which meant the drunk frat stars were out in full force, but i showed him around campus, took him to my favorite thai place (where he ordered something that was so spicy it had the word ‘cry’ in the name) and fell asleep next to him for the first time. it was perfect.

and then after that weekend we didn’t talk again for eight months.

i saw him again when i was in abilene for thanksgiving. this was the first time i’d seen him since my dad died and i remember going to his apartment, drinking a bottle of moscato and just sobbing like a weirdo for 30 minutes at one point.

january 2016 was the first time i spent the night at his apartment, and then as patterns have shown, we didn’t talk for a few months after that.

spring break 2016 was when we became inseparable again. we were constantly texting, especially when he came to new york to commit to columbia. we were functionally in a relationship but without the actual commitment, which is the thing that i wanted. i was still trying to keep my distance emotionally at this point, partially because i knew that he was about to move and partially because by now, i’d found out that he had a girlfriend and i wasn’t about to play the “i’m in love with stephanie but i’m also going to have a girlfriend and put stephanie on the backburner sometimes” game again. i couldn’t do it.

and then i caught feelings and things got a lot more complicated.

by this point, nathan had already been like “blah blah blah i’m so in love with you” “blah blah blah you make me really happy” and for awhile i was just like “ok that’s cool my dude, but i’m not getting involved again” until i caved and was like “yeah shit, i’m in love with you again too.” i remember about a week before that convo, i was sitting in his room literally watching him fill out the columbia couples’ housing form for him and someone that was not me. i was falling right back into our same bullshit. in the middle of april 2016, he came to see me again, for the second time, in austin. he was sick that weekend so we mostly hung out around the house. and that weekend was great because i loved spending time with him, but i was also in the middle of a huge existential crisis. i knew that i deserved better than someone that saw me as second best. i deserved all of someone’s attention. as soon as he left, i texted him and said something that started the worst fight we’ve ever gotten into: “i’m sorry. i can’t do this anymore. we can’t keep doing this.” he texted me pretty shortly after that to ask what i meant, “like what about it? every time i get more than ten feet away from you you decide you don’t want me anymore.”

i elaborated to say, “i deserve more than someone i get to see once every few months. every time you leave it’s just another reminder that you’re not really mine and it’s not fair. i love you so god damn much and it’s so hard to have this weird quasi relationship.”

and at this point, i could tell he was hurt, he responded with, “you should have just told me to go home the second i showed up. you better be fucking sure this is what you want.” i wanted to backtrack and take back what i had said, but i knew that i had to keep my feet planted on this decision.

however, i did eventually say, “at least it finally felt like you chose me for once.”

and he responded with something that sounded nice in the moment, “of course i did, it’s more than that, i’ve always been at a point of destroying everything for you. every step i take with you makes it harder to leave. i did pick you, i love you. i picked you even though i knew it had to end and it would make things harder.”

but that wasn’t the point i was trying to make. technically, what he said was true, in that moment, he chose me, but he wasn’t ultimately choosing me, so i said, “you say that, but it’s not really true. i have always been and will probably continue to always be a second choice. that’s not really picking me.”

this is his response i think about the most, “i can’t do this. at least not until i’ve had time to think before i say anything. you better know that i care about you because i would never let anybody else make me feel like this. i don’t know if i want to cry or throw up. honest to god, you fucking broke me today. i wanted to be yours and you’ll never see it as more than being some side piece. if i wanted to be in abilene, i would have been there. i wanted to be in austin so i could be yours.”

finally, i left off with, “can you really blame me for feeling that way though? it’s not unjustified. i love you so fucking much and that’s why this is all so hard for me to deal with. i really did feel like you were finally mine. but at the end of the day, you have someone else that’s not me. i don’t have anyone else, and every time you leave, i never know if you’ll come back to me or not.”

after that, we took some time to cool off and didn’t talk for a few days. it felt terrible. i felt constantly nauseous. it was the week before finals and i couldn’t focus on anything. i remember sitting in a private study room in the library and sobbing while trying to write essays. that weekend, i drove to abilene because i knew that we needed to resolve this in person. we had vaguely resolved the issue over text over the course of that week, but things still didn’t feel great. we had talked about trying to be friends when he moved to nyc, but i knew that wasn’t realistic. i was planning on moving to LA and at one point he asked me if my job would ever bring me to new york, and if it did then could we hang out when i was in town. and yes, it would have, but that’s not what i want. i didn’t want to see him once every few years. i wanted to see him every day. it was all or nothing.

that week was the first time that i came face to face with the concept of losing nathan in a permanent way. if we didn’t resolve this, we would have never spoken again. i was in shock when nathan died, but i honestly don’t think anything compares to the absolute pain i was in that week.

at this point, i knew a few things to be true. 1) nathan was about to move to new york. 2) i didn’t want to lose him. 3) we were definitely very much in love with each other.

so i went to abilene and left that weekend giving him an ultimatum. “if you still want to be with me in a year, i swear to god i’ll fly to new york the second i graduate.” and when i gave that ultimatum, i expected this to happen: i expected him to move to new york with his girlfriend, forget that i exist, we both move on. but i think we both knew that that’s never what would happen. to my surprise, immediately after that, he broke up with his girlfriend. that was april 28th, 2016.

on april 30th, my roommate and i went to 6th street for my birthday and i got totally obliterated. i don’t remember much from that night other than a) i ended up trying to walk home from 6th street, got lost and ended up on I-35 and then was like “ok maybe i should call a car” and b) that every single time a dude tried to hit on me i played the “i have a boyfriend” card in the most obnoxious way. the second they tried to ask me about my life i would just be like “OK SO I’M MOVING TO NEW YORK AFTER I GRADUATE because my BOYFRIEND is getting his masters from COLUMBIA.…” i also remember at one point my roommate and i were talking to a pair of friends, and the guy i was talking to was getting a little bold and said, “ok so are we all going to go back to y’alls apartment?” and i was having none of it and responded, “well, us three (me, my friend, and the guy she was into) are going back, i don’t know where you’re gonna go…” anyways, shortly after that my roommate and i got into some weird drunk fight in the middle of 6th and went our separate ways to go home (which makes no sense because we live in the same home but whatever, i digress) when i made it home at like 3am, i immediately called nathan and told him about everything that had happened that night. then i passed out. the next morning i looked through my phone and saw we had talked for like 3 hours so of course i texted him and was like “uhhhh what did we talk about for three hours” and he was like “mostly you complained but also you kept calling me your boyfriend” and i was like oh dope.

and that’s how we officially ended up together.

things were a lot easier when we were together. it felt like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders because i didn’t have to worry about how things were going to end up between us.

i remember texting one of my friends after we had gotten together to tell her i was moving to new york in a year and she was like “uhhh are you sure you wanna move in with someone so soon? especially because y’all are going to be long distance for most of that time?” and i was just like “yeah definitely, i’ve never been more sure of anything before.” there was never a question of “is this the right choice?” it was the only choice. it was the only choice that i wanted.

we waited until may 6th to tell people we were together. mostly because we wanted it to be just ours for a little bit, but also because i was going to be in abilene that day for his undergrad graduation and we wanted to be together when we did it.

+++

because nothing can truly ever be easy for us, we spent the first nine months of our relationship long distance. we got through it by daydreaming about what living together would be like, and how much we wanted to just be able to fall asleep together and like….our wedding… and stuff. when he left for new york, we both cried. it was tough. but it was going to be fine because we knew it would be the last time that we would have to say goodbye, finally.

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and technically, that was the last time that he had to say goodbye. which is probably for the best. nathan had this deep fear of losing me, so much so that he would have these nightmares of me dying where he’d wake up so incredibly upset. in the early stages of our relationship, he was so in shock that we were together, mostly because for once he wasn’t in a relationship with a garbage monster and he couldn’t fathom a stable, healthy relationship. for a little bit, he was convinced that everything was too good to be true and would inevitably end terribly. after a few months and a lot of reassurance, this stopped being an issue. nathan was dependent on me in a way that i wasn’t necessarily on him and this fact always made him so nervous. i’ve always been too independent, in a way that’s absolutely hindered my life and for the first time in nathan’s life he had someone that he could actually be vulnerable around and lean on.

i’ve talked about this before, but when we got together, i started actually taking care of myself. i started to look both ways before i crossed the street, i got more careful and mindful. and i think the reason that i did this is because it was impossible for me to imagine leaving him. the other day i was watching “after life” on netflix, and there’s this one quote that stuck with me- “i’d rather live missing him than for him to live missing me. that’s how much i love him.” every once and awhile i find myself in a train of thought, “how would nathan be adjusting if he was in my position,” and i think i know the answer to that. the answer is, not well. yes, my life is inconceivably worse since losing him, but i’ve also spent the last 24 years coping with tough shit on my own, i have the tools to move on. i’m not quite sure he would have fared as well, and thinking about him trying to do it makes my heart hurt so much. it’s a burden i’m willing to bear because i’d rather it be me than him.

re-adjusting since nathan’s died has been so hard. a couple of weeks before he died, we were driving to get cheesesteaks and on that drive, we talked about our 15 year plan. we were on the same page. we’d stay in philly for three years, (but maybe move further out into the suburbs after a year), and then consider relocating to a different office. we wanted to move around as much as possible. we would get married in the winter of 2019, the wedding would be in texas- we’d figured out who would be our groomsmen and bridesmaids. we’d get a cat first and then maybe get a dog if our schedules allowed it. we would pay off his student debt.

it was weird allowing myself to plan a future. that’s something i’ve never done before. i’ve truly been winging my life for the last 24 years.

having to rewrite that future has been hard. but i’ve been doing it. i’ve been moving forward because i have to- and there are some days where i am so hesitant to do it. there are some days where all i want to do is relive my favorite days, and i let myself have those days. there are some days where i am so desperate to feel close to him again. i read old texts, i sleep in one of his shirts that smells like him. there are some days where i’m so afraid of losing memories, of losing what we had. but it doesn’t consume my life any more in the way that it used to.

the other day i read something where a girl was talking about how she refused to move on after her husband died- her friends would describe her as “being in love with a ghost,” and as soon as i heard that, i knew that’s not who i wanted to become. that was the saddest thing i’d heard. i still love nathan, i always will, but i’m not in love with him anymore.

getting engaged means planning a life together, but the last year has been about learning how to build back my own life. i’ve had to ask myself, “what do i want?” rather than, “what do we want?” i never realized how we really did become a unit- i still find myself using “we” instead of “i” when i talk about things. i never imagined my life without nathan in it, that was always unfathomable to me, but now i’ve started to adjust to it.

there are times when i’ll ask myself “well, what would nathan want me to do in this situation?” and then i have to remind myself that it doesn’t matter what he would do, he’s dead. this is my life. on a less harsh note, i do still hold onto all of the work we did trying to make me a better functioning person. one of my biggest problems is that i love to worry about things that i can’t change, so much so that it was really taking over my life. now when i find myself getting too worked up, i take a deep breath and ask myself “is there anything i can do to fix this? do i need to be this worried about this situation?” and if the answer is no, i let it go. i used to get so anxious right before bed, which may have been one of nathan’s least favorite things about me. i would hold onto everything bothering me, and then right before it was time to go to sleep i’d start trying to unpack it, and every time nathan would catch me as i started to spiral and force me to go to sleep instead of staying up all night freaking out. when i’m doing well, i try to enforce a strict bedtime. at 9pm i close my laptop, read for two hours, try to not think about things, fall asleep by midnight. the problem is, i’m very rarely doing well enough to keep up with that. but i try, and that’s all i can do.

+++

part of moving forward is having to remind myself of the things that i used to believe in. y’know, before i got blinded by being in love. a month after nathan died, i wrote this on my blog:

How do I navigate a new relationship with someone when I know that they will never know me as well as Nathan did? I can spend all day talking about who I was in high school, I can explain with detail every moment of my collegiate years, but no one will truly know who I was during those times because they weren’t there. Eventually, I’ll stand on two feet again, but how far can those feet carry me when the concrete underneath them is fractured beyond belief? Eventually, someone will walk beside me, but is it fair to them when I know that there will never be anyone that can compare to Nathan? There are like 8 billion people in the world and I would swipe left on every single one of them because they’re not Nathan. I was in relationships before Nathan, and they all ended for more or less that same reason, I was always waiting for something better, I was always waiting for Nathan to come around. I don’t see this problem getting any easier to navigate, especially now that we had been together for a few years.

but now, with a little more distance, and a little more clarity, i’m able to go back to my critical roots. like i talked about earlier, we were a product of our circumstances. so at some point in the future, i’ll inevitably find another circumstance. there’s this tim minchin song that’s like “and look, i’m not undervaluing what we’ve got when i say that given the role chaos inevitably plays in the inherently flawed notion of fate, it’s obtuse to deduce that i’ve found my soulmate at the age of seventeen / it’s just mathematically unlikely that at a university in perth i happen to stumble upon the one girl on earth specifically designed for me.” and that’s very similar to how i feel. what nathan and i had was dope, and loving him is my favorite thing i’ve ever done, but also it’s just statistically improbable that our relationship was the end all, be all. i definitely felt like that for awhile, and there are absolutely days where i’m like “oh i can’t believe i’ve lost the best thing that will ever happen to me,” but logically, i know things will work out. i think the issue is that i’m a taurus. i’m stubborn and i’m a creature of comfort. loving nathan was easy because we’d been doing it for twelve years. our relationship was familiar because we’d been confiding in each other since we were in middle school. for awhile, i think i got too wrapped up in the notion that “i can never find someone that knows me like he did,” but i forgot that at the beginning, we knew nothing about each other. there was a square one, i just forgot what it was like because it was so long ago.

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there was a period of time when i was having an emotional crisis because i got trapped in this mindset of “moving forward for me means moving on. everyone else gets to keep him in their life, that’s normal. but i’m expected to move on, have a new partner, leave him behind.” but then i realized, that’s absolutely not true. it’s possible to balance a new relationship while also not completely severing ties from the past. i realized this because i’ve been in this position before, but on the other side of things. add it to the list of things nathan and i have in common: we both have a dead partner. the loss that he had suffered back in high school wasn’t something that he ever let go of. it was something that was deeply ingrained in who he was, and was subsequently something that was always built into the patchwork of our relationship. the things that were important to him in our relationship were colored by his past trauma and i learned how to adapt to that- i learned how to take care of the things that he emotionally needed more help with. i let him feel the things he felt and i never made him feel bad for those emotions, even when sometimes those feelings hurt me.

so when it comes to me moving on, i still don’t exactly know how my trauma is going to manifest- but what i do know is that i have high standards for how i expect my partner to take care of me. i know that it takes a lot of sacrifices and a lot of compromise and a lot of effort to be with someone that’s suffered a loss like this- but i also know that i’m not willing to compromise on someone that can’t do that.

may 4th was always a bad day for him, and i knew that. in 2016, we were both in the middle of finals when that day rolled around. when he woke up on the 3rd, he had a terrible day. in the afternoon, i asked him how his day had been and he told me how upset he was. i told him to call me that night, we stayed on the phone until 5am, until he finally fell asleep. when he woke up on the 4th, he was feeling a lot better. later that day, he told me that me staying on the phone with him so he could calm down and go to sleep was the kindest thing anyone’s ever done for him. to me, it seemed obvious. of course i would do that. it’s such a low-effort thing that i knew would mean a lot.

my version of that was the way that nathan would put up with my terrible sleeping. when i was in college, i briefly dated someone who could not hang with the way that i wake up all the time in the middle of the night. it got to a point where he asked me to either just go home or sleep on the couch if i was spending the night because i kept waking him up and he was tired of it. after that, i was always super insecure about my sleeping patterns. when nathan and i were first dating, i would profusely apologize for being so annoying at night, but he never complained about it. he just got used to it and eventually would tell me that he was totally cool with me accidentally waking him up in the middle of the night because it gave him more time to cuddle with me at night. i’d usually fall asleep as the big spoon, and then we would separate once i was asleep. then i’d wake up at some point in the middle of the night, and so would he, and he’d turn over, put his arm around me, tell me that everything was okay, and then we’d go back to sleep. the tiniest gestures always meant so much to me. i think that’s one of the things that i’ll miss the most. his attention to detail was impeccable. he was never a grand gesture type of person, and that was okay, because superficially i think everyone wants those large gestures, but realistically, it’s the smaller things that mean more. like the time before he left for christmas vacation and he texted me to tell me that he’d bought chicken and left it in the freezer so i wouldn’t have to worry about grocery shopping because he knew that i was about to have to work a bunch of 12 hour days over the holidays. or the time that i had mentioned a candle that i really like very vaguely in passing, and then two years later he gave me that same candle for my birthday. or when he’d wake me up from my depression naps at an appropriate time so i’d still be able to sleep at night.

nathan’s memory was terrible when it came to remembering anything that happened prior to the year 2013, but sometimes he surprised me. like one day, he randomly texted me to ask “hey, you were wearing a pink shirt that first time we kissed, right?” to which i responded “it was coral but yeah” and he was like “shut up. those are the same thing” i actually couldn’t believe that he remembered that tiny detail. i felt the same way when he made a playlist for me right before we started dating. it was a mix of songs that reminded him of me, but there were two in particular that i was shocked to see. when we were in high school, on one of the three times we hung out outside of school there was one time that i remember his parents driving us back home after doing whatever it was that we were doing. we were sharing his headphones, listening to his ipod. in the duration of the drive- two songs played. of course i remembered which two played because i’m a psycho that remembers the tiniest things but when i saw those songs surface on the playlist, i couldn’t believe it. he really was good at remembering the smallest things.

+++

for awhile, i felt plagued by the fact that because of this situation, a lot of things immediately became clearer to me- i know that in the future i will be a better partner to someone that’s not nathan- and that concept is sometimes upsetting to me. after nathan died, i told myself that i wouldn’t keep falling into my old habits. i would fix my issues immediately. when you get engaged, you think that you have forever with someone, and i leaned too hard into that fact. i was trying to get better about the things that i was bad about, but i was doing it at this glacial pace. partially because i thought i had the time, and also because i knew nathan had the patience to put up with it. i was terrible at communication. i would play this game where i acted like everything was fine until nathan would realize that everything was not fine and then he’d have to sit and poke at me until i shared that i was feeling some sort of human emotion. in my head, i knew exactly what i wanted from him at all times, but for some reason i had this block where i wouldn’t just ask for it. he wasn’t a mindreader, but i treated him like he was, and even though it was infinitely frustrating, he would do it. the only thing nathan ever wanted to do was make my life better, and i refused to let him do it. part of me didn’t want to seem inconveniencing or like a burden- but i know that he would have been happier if i had let him help, and i know that my life would have been better if i had let him help. the week before he died, i finally reached out in a real way and i think he was so taken aback that he didn’t know how to react. it was the most progress i’d made. if i could go back in time, the only thing i would have changed is myself- i would have just forced myself to ask for help more often.

i’m still terrible at expressing emotions, talking about how i feel, in an interpersonal situation. writing about my feelings feels like a cop-out and that’s why it’s so easy for me to sit and be honest in a blog post. when you talk to someone one-on-one, they immediately react, they try to help, the focus is all on me. that makes me uncomfortable. sitting and throwing 6,000 words into the void is easy- there’s no face i have to watch react to me when i say i want to walk into traffic half of the time.

but i’ve been trying to not make everyone read my mind.

it’s hard realizing that nathan would have given me anything i wanted- if i had just asked for it. but now, moving forward i have to make myself comfortable with asking for what i want. i have to focus on taking what i need and not apologizing for it or being afraid.

+++

it’s almost been nine months since nathan died, which means this is the longest we’ve gone without seeing each other. april 30th would have been our three year anniversary and there’s nothing i wish that i could have had more than just spending the day with him.

when we first got together, nathan said to me, “i wish that we could have already been together for a few years but i still wouldn’t change how anything worked out.” i wish that we could have had 20 more years, but instead we had two and a half really incredible years and i wouldn’t trade that for anything. i was always so touched when he prioritized me over other things in his life. my plan was to always stand off to the side while he did what he wanted to do. when he was applying to phd programs, i knew that meant we probably wouldn’t see each other much for like five years, but i was willing to do that because all i ever wanted to do was support him and make sure he was able to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish. i always spent so much time compromising on my own happiness to ensure his- because i felt like he deserved it more than i did. i’d always known academia to be the most important thing in his life, yet he constantly kept me in mind- making sure i’d be ok with living in any of the places he was applying to. and yeah, i guess that’s what you’re supposed to do but it still meant so much to me. i think it was surprising to me because i knew that this was kind of uncharacteristic for him, he loves to avoid people. any opportunity he got to be alone, he would take. i remember once, he told me that the reason he started going to the gym so much was so he could avoid his girlfriend at that time. (this is the ONLY reason that i would work out with him when he asked me to go to the gym with him, because i knew he used to use that as an avoidance thing).

when he decided to not pursue a phd, i remember how relieved he was, which was surprising to me. but he came to this point where he was just like “look, i just want to be able to spend as much time as i can with you.” when we lived in philly, he worked from 7-3 instead of 9-5 just because it shaved a good chunk of time off of his commute home, and it also meant we were able to spend more time together when he got off of work. i am so thankful for the time we got together. for the second half of our year in new york, he only had class two days a week so we got to hang out all the time. some of my favorite memories from new york involve me getting home from work at 11, us going to the halal cart and then drinking and just talking until we went to bed at like 6am.

+++

when we first got together, i felt like i was dating way out of my league. nathan’s a genius, who’s good at literally everything he does- sports, music, the whole thing. i’m a goblin with an english degree. and then one day, nathan told me that he felt like i was out his league. which was shocking to me because i’m like community theatre and he’s like broadway (if we’re sticking with a sports theme though, i guess it’s like little league and the MLB or whatever). i always thought he said it just to be nice, but after time i realized that he genuinely meant it. he’d always verbally reassure me that he thought i was one of the funniest, smartest, kindest people he knows, but i found that hard to believe because he knows a lot of brilliant people. i realized he genuinely meant it because of the way he’d ask for my opinion on things. or when he’d ask me to proofread his papers. or on the off-chance when i’d let him read something i’d written and he’d be like “oh, you have a great voice.” he’s someone that only asks for help or advice from trusted sources. if he couldn’t find an answer himself, he was great at finding the most reputable person to ask, so it was always flattering when he considered me to be the most reputable source.

i think another thing that always took me aback was when i’d meet someone from his life and they’d be like “oh i’ve heard so much about you!” or when people would mention these incredibly kind things he’d say about me when i wasn’t in the room. it’s because i knew that he wasn’t someone who shared a lot with others, so knowing that he chose to genuinely share how he felt about me with other people meant a lot.

anyone that knows nathan knows that he loves to argue. he mostly loves it because he knows that he’s right and will just talk circles around anyone- but i never gave him the opportunity to talk circles around me. he was a great bullshitter, but i could always see right through it, which meant one of his greatest arguing tactics was null and void. i eventually learned that there were things i was knowledgeable about that he knew nothing about, and i definitely would try to skew debates toward those things because i loved to watch him squirm. i think he loved the challenge, and that’s why we had so much fun debating. he was so accustomed to being right that i reveled in when he was wrong. i also reveled in the opportunities i had to teach him things- for some reason, he had no common sense, so i’d spend time explaining things like “how to send mail,” and “why you can’t use dish soap to wash clothes.” sometimes he would be genuinely surprised when he’d learn how much i knew about certain topics, or when he’d make a reference and i knew exactly what he was talking about.

perhaps the most satisfying and/or frustrating example of a time when i was right but he refused to accept it was when we were planning our wedding. when we were having the first discussion about it after getting engaged, i brought up the fact that i didn’t necessarily care about having an actual wedding. neither of us are religious and there’s not any traditions that i’m particularly drawn to- in all honesty, a lot of wedding traditions kinda gross me out. also, i really hate being the center of attention and that’s the definition of a wedding. the only part that was vaguely important to me was our vows- but once again, i hate being the center of attention so my plan was to write a long letter that i would give to him before the wedding, and then have a less extensive speech to give in front of everyone. so when it came to what my ideal wedding looked like, i suggested we just elope. my issue wasn’t with having people there, i was totally down to invite our close family to a casual courthouse situation wherever we were living for the actual getting married part. and then a few months down the line having a reception in texas to celebrate with all of our friends and family. like, realistically we couldn’t afford a wedding, and it also wasn’t something incredibly important to me. but he refused to listen to my suggestion. people always talk about a bridezilla, but i was totally chill when it came to wedding planning- he was the one with all the opinions. he was like “no, we have to have a real wedding. i can name like 200 people off the top of my head that we’d have to invite.” so i was like….okay dude i’ll see what i can do. i started putting together spreadsheets with venues and prices and dates and every time i presented the data to him he’d be like “we can’t afford that!!!! what is this??? also i hate the hill country and we have to have the wedding in abilene” and i was just like YEAH I TOLD YOU. it’s almost like i knew what i was talking about the entire time. i suggested trying to pare down the guestlist but he was dead set on having every person he’d ever met in his life there so i tried to accommodate that. eventually i was so frustrated with him shooting down all of my options that we were at a stand-still for wedding planning. and then one day, in the lamp aisle of target he turned to me and said, “you know, i’ve been talking to some of my friends about wedding stuff and a lot of them are saying they wish they’d just eloped instead of doing a full wedding. would you maybe want to do that? we could just use the money we would have spent on a wedding for a honeymoon” WOW THANK YOU for just regurgitating my original idea, i’ll let you pretend that you came up with this if it means we’ve come to an agreement.

we were both so surprised that we never really actually fought. but we very rarely had conflicts, and when we did we were really good at navigating it. i can only remember one time once we had started dating where i was genuinely upset with him and it was the only time where i really lost my temper in an argument- mostly because he was absolutely in the wrong but refused to admit it. but even then, by the next morning, he apologized and we had resolved the issue. other than that, the closest we got to fighting was the time that i was on the phone with my mom and was yelling at her because she was stressing me out so much and then the next day our neighbor stopped nathan in the hall to ask if he was okay because he “heard you and your girl arguing” and nathan was just like “oh no we’re good, she was just on the phone with her mom” loving him was definitely a choice sometimes, but even when it was tough, it was always worth it.

all of this is to say that being with him made me a better person. the way that he believed in me made it more possible for me to believe in me. the way he prioritized me made me feel like i deserved to be a priority. the way that he challenged me made me less afraid to speak my mind and more willing to stand my ground. we left things in a really good place, and that’s been one of the greatest gifts to me. it’s hard having to leave a relationship at its peak, but it’s also comforting having no regrets.

+++

i see him everywhere, in the weirdest places. sometimes when i look at myself in the mirror, i think of him. when i went to work i would do my makeup one of three ways: no makeup on a bad day, filled in eyebrows and mascara on most days, and full glam on important days, and without fail, he’d always stop to tell me that i looked nice on the days when i’d do the eyebrows and mascara. it’s a very specific way that i would look, and when i see myself looking like that, i think of how much he loved when i looked like that. every time i see cilantro, or pickles, or spearmint gum all i can think of is how much he hated those things. when i see a cute gif of an animal, i think of the little sound he’d always make right before he turned his computer screen to show me whatever cute animal he’d seen on the internet. when i’m in my bedroom and i laugh too loudly at something, i think about all the times when he’d be working in the living room and i would laugh from another room and he would text me to tell me that i have a cute laugh. when i go to the grocery store, or the liquor store i remember the dumb way he’d refer to both of those places (the chicken store, the vodka store). when i see froot loops, i think of eating breakfast in his abilene apartment when he was in the middle of moving out. or like, sometimes when i’m particularly sweaty, i think about how he used to describe me as having a “moist personality” right before he died, i bought a pajama set from walmart that i was obsessed with and his reaction was “oh, so this is the new outfit i’m going to see you wear for eight days straight” and now every time i wear the pajama shirt as a real shirt in public, that’s all i can think about.

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it’s hard to accept that things are over, but i know that i served my purpose. we accomplished so much in those two years. i watched nathan grow into himself and regain a lot of the confidence he had lost since high school. i watched him go from being a high-school drop out to getting his masters from columbia. i watched him get excited about his future. i’ve been so invested in his happiness for the last thirteen years, and seeing him find that happiness has meant so much to me. at the end of the day, i think the point of marriage is to have someone there when you die, and being able to be there for him when he died was an honor and a privilege. here’s what i learned from our relationship: i know that i am the luckiest person in the world to have been chosen by him. being with nathan has made me a better person. because of everything we’ve been through, i know that i have all of the tools- the confidence, the stability, the coping mechanisms- to move forward. even though i lost nathan, i gained a sense of community with everyone from his life that’s now become a bigger part of mine and that’s pretty dope.

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