My whole life I wore the difficulty of my relationships like a badge of honor. Somehow it was a point of pride that I made it so long with someone, that we'd weathered the storms -- and that those storms were hurricanes and sharknados and 3rd world country earth quakes and not just like... some light fucking rain.

I had decided that it was just a basic quality of me that relationships would be hard. Sure, I could be passionate and sharp, but I was also moody and stubborn. I had my fair share of early life trauma, shitty parents I no longer spoke to, and a standard issue 10 ft emotional wall up between my emotions and any romantic prospect in a 50 mile radius.

And then one day, I was sitting in my tiny, unventilated closet office in the bowels of this gorgeous property that I'd probably never be able to actually afford even should my status and income go up by double -- and I saw a gap in my schedule.

By the next Tuesday I was stumbling through the most dirty, depressing airport I'd ever flow into with a week's worth of clothes and very little else other than the promise of a couch in the city and some time away from the snow. I remember stepping up to the carousel for my bag and wondering out loud why I didn't just go to Florida or Cabo like everyone else. The hell am I doing here.

But when I found him waiting for me, it just all somehow clicked into place.

For a week life was just... easy. We shared his small space happily and simply, from the moment I stepped over the threshold, not once feeling like a stranger or even a visitor.

Affection came easily and without question. Strangers remarked daily that we looked happy. We spent the days on our own, and each night surrounded with friends and laughter.

I drank without desperation. I ate without overindulging. I didn't find myself heavily filtering the things I chose to talk about. I felt comfortable saying what came to mind, and the joy of a well timed zinger that just lands without you thinking.

The night before I leave we pick up a friend of mine and wander to that weekend's meet-up. We smoke a cigarette and I wonder if the best part of this week, the best part of me is that I come with an expiration date.

I cry as I walk through the security check point, and I drink myself through the 5 hour flight home.

I spend weeks and months trying to let the feelings go. To enjoy what was and not romanticize a moment. Not attribute the happiness I felt to a person when it was probably more the place and time -- the circumstance, that stuck me.

But now that I'm home the simple ease I'd felt is gone, and life just feels... hard, and jarring, and endlessly tedious. I'm more erratic, I'm miserable. And then like that it's been a year, and some months and everything is different but that one thing is the same. If you asked me I'd tell you it's got to be some basic obsession. That I don't know why I won't get over it, but can only hope if I continue to try, time will go ahead and heal my goddamned wounds.

There's part of me that still half heartedly hopes that, who knows that we are all probably (and at best) replaceable. But that part of me is not the one who showed up in the sleepless city this Thursday -- so many months and weeks and silence later. This time with just one day packed into a computer bag and an extra pair of shoes in the car.

And even though we both hate the city, when he held his hand to me it felt like home. And I realized that sure, I could live without him, but maybe this time when given the choice? I won't have to.