I wanted to keep him there to hold me up, to rely on, to remind that there were places we found in other people that were safer than any walls could keep us.

Maybe we love people forever. Maybe some relationships were derailed by time and circumstance, but somewhere in the background there was a place where that love still existed, where you were still those two people in that time.

Hope can have sharp edges as it leaves you.

Sometimes the beginnings of relationships are the hardest. People always say the beginning is the easiest, but two people trying to let their guards down and be open to intimacy can be hard too.

I think when we love people we offer them the opportunity to break the barriers that prevent them from finding the love they deserve.

I felt his pain as my own and I wanted to touch him, feel him, reach inside his fractured heart and pull out all of the love he buried inside. I wanted to kiss every inch of his skin. I wanted to feel his brokenness against mine, like if we held each other hard enough something within each of us would finally heal.

All I wanted was to merge with the same person who had broken me, thinking that he was the only one who could fill in all the little crevices making me feel whole again.

The other thing about falling in love: the harder you fell, the easier it was to get hurt. Maybe that’s why it was called falling in love; at some point there was a crash at the bottom that could shatter someone into a million pieces.

As I observed him sitting there, a heavy look in his eyes, I longed to reach behind that barrier and pull out the warm, sensitive, passionate man I knew was trapped inside. There was nothing worse than feeling someone’s potential.