Pillow Talk

Sometimes it is easy to forget that the universe is always unfolding as it should.

It is always difficult to see the point or the poignance of a specific experience until you see how its context influences your life.

Okay. That was a little too daydreamy.

What I really mean is; it's hard to see why life is so difficult. Why we have to experience hurt and loss and turmoil. Until we see, often later on, just how much that experience has taught us about ourselves, and how it ensures we find true happiness in the future.

It's probably important to note that Joel and myself are still together and still very happy together. This is the first time ever I feel that I am with someone with whom I not only have a shared outlook but also an unspoken loving understanding.

Unfortunately, when something in your life is going well, too well it's hard not to question how you qualify for its existence.

Why do I deserve to be happy?

It might seem a little "emo kid" but if I'm honest, that is the truth.

After all I am not a perfect person. I make mistakes. I have hurt people. I feel guilty for it.

Naturally, at times when life presents me with something so wonderful I can't help but feel a little bit like I don't deserve it.

And worse I can't help shake the feeling that it is presenting me with something I want just long enough for me to get attached to it, only to rip it away and hurt me.

That would be fair wouldn't it?

That would make us even.

At night sometimes, 'spooned' in by Joel, I just lie there awake in the dark. Feeling the warmth of his body on my back.

I can remember what it felt like to have nobody there. Truthfully that's the kind of thing that kept me awake at night way back then. It wasn't the closet. It was the mattress. That empty second pillow.

It tormented me.

Because no matter how well I learned to play the straight game. No matter how many girls I flirted with at uni or parties I went to; at the end of the night it was going to be me and that empty space.

Again.

Even with Jake; who I was in a relationship of equal length with (by this point anyway) that pillow could still get to me. The curse of the long distance was that I never had long enough to get used to his body heat before it was back to me and the pillow once more.

Joel and I live together and that pillow has not been able to get to me for just over a year and a half now. But it's still there.

Joel pins it down.

Just like every other insecurity and fear and nuance of my persona that suggests I don't deserve to be happy. I can't keep it. I won't ever be enough.

I don't think it's likely I will ever be able to communicate to Joel just how much he has saved me. From giving up. From turning cold.

I find myself understanding, grateful even, for the torment of that pillow for all those years. If it only meant I had left space to be joined.

I love this man. He loves me.

I probably don't deserve it.

But I know I earned it.


Sam In Real Life