I met someone who knew you, I said your name and he said a nickname for you. And your name on my tongue turned the lights on in the halls of our memory. I'd forgotten, but tonight I remember.

You were mine once, and I liked that. You'd come to me filled with pride, excitement, or fear, and talk through it all. I'd rub your back and your head and you'd fold into me, like you hadn't been held before, or at least, often enough. You told me you experience love through touch.

Which is funny, right? Because I doubted that I loved you. But when you were sick, I held your face to my belly as I ran my hands through your hair, and I wasn't afraid of catching whatever you carried. I accepted that it was too late for distance without really thinking about it. My instincts were to give you what you needed, and usually what you wanted, too. We were like that together.

I did not like the things you did, but I loved who you were.

Let me explain.

I try to be a good person. I want to help people. Sometimes people ask me for directions, and I give them the wrong ones. Not on purpose, but because the excitement of a brief connection scrambles my brain a bit. I value helping strangers, that's who I am and who I want to be. But I'm bad at it.

Do you get it? My intentions are good, but my execution is bad. There is a part of me that wants to separate the goal from the objective effect of that goal on the world (a stranger getting bad information). And for me, I generally can. There will be a possibility for redemption with a future stranger. I believe I can get better because I live in my own head, I know my whole history, and I've improved in other ways before.

But I couldn't see inside your head, love. I witnessed one bad instinct-driven action after another. You did things, and they embarrassed me, and they irritated me. And they kept me from being able to trust your decisions, and eventually, from being able to trust you to make decisions that manifested who I believed you were. Who I wanted you to be. And who I think you wanted to be, too.

As just two beings sharing space, sharing conversation, sharing connection, you were everything I wanted.

I frown, having written that. Seriously? But... I imagine an amenities-laden desert island, where practical concerns and social and societal endorsements are no longer relevant. And we pass the days exploring each other, sharing and analyzing culture together. You couldn't do anything wrong, you'd just "be." I'd pick you then.

But we don't live on an island or in a vacuum. And so, being with you made me vulnerable to the things you do or don't do, ever more wounded by the effects and implications of your actions, the more entwined our lives became. I could not continue to endorse your actions with my presence in your life.

As I miss you now, I cradle these shining memories of the love you gave me.

I made the only choice I could.