#7. Thoughts In The Wake of 2016, 12/31/15.
by @jenncoke
I miss you, I want to see you. But not because it’s “couple season” – not because it’s cold and gloomy and city lights explode with hands conjoined. You are worth more than the missed holidays, more than the occasions spent without us being in the company of one another: Hallowe'en, my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, probably your birthday, too, as well as Valentine’s, and our anniversary.
On these specially marked days, I feel a certain emptiness as you, my beloved other half, is not present with me, yet that which is not emptiness, for you still fill my heart plenty. In these times, I feel envy as lovers are so obviously visible everywhere, yet that which is not envy, for they are not you. I may suffer from your absence but I don’t suffer from jealousy. See, I love you, this one man who cannot compare to the likes of any other, this one man who strangely loves me back, this one man who’s mine and to whom I’m his.
You are so very special to me and you mean a lot to me. I love you, I lurve you, I lava you, ILY (code), I <3 U (symbols), je t'aime, saranghae (Korean) – I want to say it a gazillion times and it wouldn’t be enough, and yet I don’t want to say it because it’s only an ensemble of words, an expression that is just too common, overused, cliché and weak, whose (level of) meaning doesn’t remain constant. Perhaps I could keep coining new ones, but then again I don’t want to be simply, mindlessly uttering or writing them like so, as if out of habit.
I want this so-called “love” to be conveyed in such a way that – a tap on the shoulder, a homemade dinner and handcrafted gifts, a random drive, a silent gaze, a goodbye hug and a goodnight kiss, my sleep-mumbling in your ear and your snoring on my nape, and the sharing of clothes – would melt our heart and let us fall a little deeper, therein meaning exponentially more than a mere, verbal, three-worded clause, “I love you.” That’s the kind of love I want us to be… partaking in.
Today, eight months later, (although I am still thirteen hours ahead, still 8,070 miles East, and still not in your arms…) at the last stroke of the small hand, we both wave and bid farewell to 2015 and welcome and gaze at 2016.
I’m thankful that love found us, I’m glad that we followed, and I’m happy that our relationship remains in the present.
May the new year be full of goodness!