Will you always hold me? Will you always tickle my back while humming softly?

“...I ask him and he says yes of course I will always be here for you, I will always be here for you. But then I say sorry for the hundredth time that day and ask if I am bothering him or being needy and he says the same thing he said the other ninety nine times, he says no no I promised I would tell you if you were bothering me and I am so glad to be a person you can rely on. I think to myself that he is the only thing that I can rely on but I don’t want to scare him with my shit or sound creepy or tell him how much my sanity depends on his constant presence in my life so instead I say sorry again and just as I do he lets out a deep breath and it gets me high. It smells like peaches from a can. Then a moment later the scent of his breath is gone and I snap back to this terrible moment and the fear that wears me down and makes it impossible to sleep or to fully relax except when he is here. He breathes in again, and he takes a second and removes his hand from my back to get an itch on his nose and I think oh fuck that means he is going to leave and realize how ready he was for life without. 

But he doesn’t leave. He stays. He shifts his leg and rests his head on top of mine and sort of enfolds himself around me. And we just sit there. Sitting with me in his arms. I realize I am cold, and I’ve wrapped my own arms around myself in protection. My arms are cold too though. But he feels soft and warm. Warm. And he smells nice. His fingers are a slow peach colored buzz as they move slowly up and down my arms. This is my worship, my piety. My reverence for his details. My salvation in his arms. Then, I know he loves me. He tells me silently. His arms tell me, and his fingers tell me. That cologne, that damned cologne, that fucking cologne I love so much tells me, and the sound from his chest of his slow breathing tells me. He just holds me, I am moored. My berth in his arms. My head goes quiet for a moment. He anchors me. For once I don’t worry about filling the silence. Communion in the unspoken. For a second I don’t need to worry about being a burden to him. The darkness parts, the storms flee. For a second, I don’t need to worry about what I will do without him, because I am not without him. For a second, Galilee is calm. Still though, I fucking hate Oregon...”

This was one of my last journal entries before he left, and it pretty much sums up how I feel about “family.” Not the foundational, biological family we are born into, but the family we make for ourselves when we realize how solitary the world can feel and we just want to be held. The family that you choose, and that chooses you, and that doesn’t leave, but stays and holds you because they know you like to be held like how a fish “likes” water.

Two months have passed since he last held me like that. Since I last got my fix. Now he’s gone, off in the pacific northwest doing something important for the world. To be fair, what I’m doing right now is just as important: sitting braless in bed at 3pm, hair and teeth unbrushed, surrounded by piles of dirty clothes, watching Bones for the third time this year. This is called healing, or self care, or rotting away, or depression, or symptoms of withdrawal, or rock bottom. God I hope this is rock bottom.

If only I'd known before, what this would do to me. If I had seen, or heard (or smelled), myself right now, maybe I would’ve kept from developing an unhealthy attachment to him, or any attachment at all. Because it wasn’t always like this. 

No, once upon a time he and I were just another set of strangers, like most the world. Believe it or not, most people on earth don’t know each other. And most of them are doing perfectly fine not knowing everybody else. But every once in a while, some idiot woman (me) goes to a chicken restaurant despite being a vegetarian, sees a boy with a rather large head and thinks “hey that boy with a giant head over there, I wonder how he feels about Denis Villenueve’s masterpiece film Sicario?” Then the two of them talk and realize they both love violent movies about cartels and the idiot woman (again, me) thinks hey maybe this knowing other people thing is pretty good. That was my first mistake, being vegetarian. My second mistake was getting to know him.

Because if I hadn’t spent five minutes asking a boy about the most “boy” movie of all time, then we would have never exchanged phone numbers. And I would have never started inviting him over to watch movies, and we would have never become friends (I know, the horror!).  What ensued was the worst 3 years of my life, spending nearly every day with someone that made me feel loved and valued and important and cared for and alive. 

Still sitting in my bed, my mind wanders through these years we spent together. I think about all the horrible memories – laughing at his De Niro impression till I cry (I can still see him scrunch up his face and go, “you talkin’ to me?”), eating home-cooked meals from his Samoan culture (sapasui and cocoa rice were especially gross the 50 times I made him cook it for me), sharing cans of peaches at two in the morning (that was his idea of a healthy treat, even though he’d drink all the sugary syrup too), and all the road trips we took together (he was always the best car DJ, and taught me you can never listen to enough Pitbull). Terrible times indeed. 

I am brought out of reminiscing by the rumbling of my stomach. Oh yeah, I haven’t eaten today. What time was it? 3:30? Alright I can muster the herculean strength required to pull myself out of bed and rove across the sea of clothes on my floor to trek towards the kitchen. With Bones still playing in the background, I gather the courage and begin my 50 foot Odyssey. 

During my pilgrimage to find food, I decide to be honest with myself. The truth is that the times I spent with him were the best in my life. I really did love every moment we spent together, and I loved him. But love is supposed to be a sweet and soft thing, so why does it hurt so bad now that he’s gone? I guess it's true, what they say. Love is a drug. I’m just having withdrawals.

What we had wasn't just love though, was it? Sure, I grew to love him really fast, and I definitely do love him even now. But love just feels like too small a word for this. I mean, we relied on each other in everything. Homework troubles, getting fired, the death of my mom. He was there for all of it. And I was there for him too, through bad haircuts, car break downs, and all the horrible stuff that happened with his parents. He wasn’t just someone I loved, no. He became my person. And I became a part of him too. We were family.

Then he decided he was called to a higher purpose, teaching people about a God who would calm the storms, and comfort His people. So he left to fulfill his “divine duty.” He left, knowing I will have finished school and moved back home to Virginia when he returns. He left, and I am still here, my storm still rages. I am still here, standing in my kitchen looking at an empty pantry and feeling a healthy dose of self loathing and resentment. I resent him leaving, and I regret spending all that time with him that means nothing now that he’s gone. Does the addict love their drug? No. They crave the high, but they hate the substance that gives it. Did I ever love him, or did I just crave the feelings of security and value that his presence bestowed? I became addicted to him. He was my person, my found family, but he was also the strongest drug I ever tried.

As the focus of my search for food moves from the bare pantry to the fridge, the thoughts get darker. Why would God take him away from me, my source of strength? Did I do something that had to be punished, or is it just funny to watch my pain? What could God be trying to teach me by taking away the person who reminds me the most of Divine Love? All these Job-esque questions fade as soon as I open the fridge door. 

Our fridge looked pretty standard, replete with the leftovers denoting college students trying to save money by dragging a meal past any notion of expiration. Almond milk, shredded cheese, salsa, juice, apples. And there, in the back, hiding like the last gift of Christmas morning, was a single can of peaches. 

I reach for the can with reverence, worried it might crumble at my touch. I’m shocked – how did I not notice it before? It must have been there for at least a year. These were his favorite breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, and late night snack. My eyes well up holding this cold sacrament of his love. This little can, like manna from heaven, reminds me of how much I love him. And I smile. And I chuckle.

And I remember him. I remember more than I used to, more than I ever have before. His laugh, his sweet breath after ripping through can after can, the stomach ache that followed shortly after. I remember the pain of saying goodbye. The heartache of waking up the next morning and knowing I wouldn’t see him. The anguish of feeling like he was “moving on” from me. But I also remember the love.

So, sitting in my kitchen, eating the last can of his peaches, I come to a realization. I love him when I miss him. Maybe I love him more now that I know what it’s like to not have him around. I am grateful for my time with him, more grateful now that I’m not sure we will ever have more time like it. Maybe this is why God takes people from us, to make us feel the agony of love. The misery of family. And certainly families can be miserable. Devotion is pain. Passion is addicting. And of all the drugs, love is the strongest. Family is black tar heroin. 

Remembering and missing and yearning and longing are inherently painful. Finding his can of peaches is like ripping open an old wound, letting the blood flow freely, and looking into the deepest part of myself. I hate this pain, but I love it too. For however much it hurts to notice his absence, it makes me grateful for all the time I had with him. If it didn’t hurt then it wasn’t worth it.

What a gift it is to feel the absence of a loved one. How beautiful a pain it is to yearn after someone we know isn’t around. What powerful drugs love and family are. The dichotomy between the finitude of our relationships, and the enduring nature of our memory, are what make connecting with another person such a moving experience. So I am truly lucky to have found my family, someone I realize I’ve become addicted to. He won’t always be here to hold me, or hum while scratching my back. Nothing lasts forever. And that is a good thing, because knowing that eventually there will be a last backrub, or a last hug, or a last kiss, means that we have to value the experiences that we have with each other. So I eat my can of peaches, with added saltiness from my tears, and I’m grateful for the gift of love, the gift of family, and even the gift of loss. I eat my can of peaches, and how sweet they taste paired with longing for my Love, my Person, and my Family.