The Long Thaw

Remember when you wrote that song for me? The first week we fell in love. You wrote that I was the silver lining in your sky. Face to face, my legs wrapped around your hips—I in your computer chair and you off the side of your bed—you’d look into my eyes as if for inspiration before penning the next line. Beautiful green eyes stared back at me, as enchanting as they were pleasured. I wondered if it was a façade. Past it, you struggled coming up with words, perhaps more pressured than creative; that’s how I would’ve felt. But you were a song writer and musician, and I realized all you really had to do was write exactly what you saw in front of you. If it wasn’t love, it wasn’t love.

But I was your first bay romance, and we were hooked on each other.

I must admit, I started off with reservations. In fact, it formed our first argument. “You want to express that you care about me as a person, but what you’re really expressing is that you only care to hang out with me as long as I understand this is a fling and can only Ever be a fling,” you accused. That wasn’t it. I explained that our core beliefs didn’t match up—which mattered a lot to me—I was only supposed to be there for the next week and, in the end, I didn’t want to lead you on. I was proactive with a man I barely knew. I was tenacious towards your peace of mind. Eventually, you assured me that you understood. “Look, I just want to spend as much time with you as I can before you leave,” you said.

And I believed you. Maybe you were shooting your shot. Maybe you expected as little to come from it as I did, but at the time, it was all the security I needed. I ran with your words—my, did I discover your silver tongue later—grasping at a chance I’d never allowed myself to take before. That summer, I let myself loose as a whirlwind!

Everything you bestowed on me I reciprocated in abundance. We were practically strangers, but you took me wherever I wanted to go and farther—the beautiful seaside cliff where we watched the sun set and talked about everything from past experience to existentialism; across your favorite bridge to a city I’d been waiting to visit; shopping for socks at the shoe store, and sneaking into an iaido dojo to uncover the masters practicing their art. You had given me free reign and I wasn’t letting an inch of it go to waste! And you yourself—you approached me the way you approached everything. Consumingly. You burned through me with a slow, savory burn like melting iron. You burned through me like I was nothing. And somehow, you made sure I liked it. By the end of the week, we were the furthest thing from strangers. We were lovers.

“My coworkers noticed the spring in my step, even before we’d hung out,” you confessed, “They kept asking why I was so happy. Just knowing you were in the city made me happy.” Of course, I loved being the reason. I could imagine the change in people’s perception of you. For a man who had been through so much, and continued to feel the gloom of his situation, it was invigorating to know that I could be such a light. You were invigorating, and you always have been.

The week passed and my plans changed. The warm sun chilled, its rays turning to useless beams of false hope that did nothing but make the ice sparkle. The snow attempted to coat the world’s impurities in white.

Being the mavericks we were, our replacement of the intimate warmth of sunlight with that of one another was insubordinately natural. Bundled in our snow pants and winter jackets, we nestled together on our snowy bank afront that frozen lake. I wanted your arms around me every moment we were alive now. The coffee had been my idea, the blanket and view, yours. The water was so solid thick that adults ran across it or tore it up with ice skates, but failed to fall in. “We’re like this lake, you and I,” you murmured, just a touch of wit in your voice, “strong and unbreakable.” Then, you kissed me, and I lost myself in your lips.

Really, I would give anything to go back to that moment and sit with you forever. There are days that that yearning eats at me. But it couldn’t last, and that moment was my first cue that you didn’t see what I saw, because the sudden friction that arose between us afterwards meant we had nothing but the long thaw ahead.

In the back of my mind, I had anticipated the day stability called me home to a job and rent-free housing. It was supposed to be the day of our clean break, when our lack of commitment beckoned our sweet kiss goodbye, away from the shallow waters of unaligned values and unsettled prospects that would’ve solidified our marriage otherwise. A departure’d been my condition, my guard dog. Instead, you sought to bury him, and our jolly farewell turned into my day of reckoning because of the tears I couldn’t stem as my plane left the ground.

It wasn’t the steady living alone that pushed me away from you. Every foundational bias that made us who we are was incomparable. Our conversations were profound, but often unresolved. Yet, you rendered it all inconsequential. We couldn’t deny what we had and for you, that meant we had to be together. But for me, it burned, like the fire you’ve always been.

So, our love became our battleground.

Over the next few months, we went from cherishing every moment together to fighting every day, and our little square phones became a ball and chain for the both of us. My hesitations only frustrated you. Your curly red locks—in the right light, a horizon flame to fall in love with—only added to the manifestation of your blazing temper over a video chat.

Why wasn’t our love enough? You wanted to know. We’d fallen so hard for each other and still it wasn’t enough. So, I tried to explain it to you. In wanting to change us from whatever we’d been to a serious relationship, it was one thing to disregard our major differences for the sake of finding love and another to give them time to play out liberally. But you couldn’t accept that, because neither of us were really willing to become similar or explore the possibility, and if that was the stumbling block, it meant we wouldn’t be able to be together. For weeks we argued, yelled, insulted, hurt. I cut and uncut you out of my life so many times I lost count. And still, we’re caught in this cycle.

I had been reckless with my heart, but I never imagined it meant I’d be reckless with yours. You believe that love is a feeling your heart should chase after. I believe that love is an investment—in a family, in our futures, in uplifting one another in truth every day as individuals, in each other. But you and I had never agreed on what the truth is, and we hadn’t invested in mending the gaps between those perspectives. I thought we would, so I stayed. We wanted it to be one another so badly.

So, we struggled, neither of us able to make way to move forward or let go. There was too much hope between us that it would lead back to our love. Too much dissonance. We sat together on that ice, trying to build it, trying to break it, going back and forth, back and forth. I believe that’s what people call toxic. Or maybe some call it love? No matter how much friction we generated, there was always another layer below us, supporting us, but cold as winter.

I think my biggest regret and lesson I’ve learned is that I should’ve given our relationship the respect it deserved as a relationship. Even given the concerns floating through my brain, I should’ve committed to my decision. If I saw fit to break the ice later, I should’ve done so in one fell swoop. Instead, it only seemed to grow stronger.

One day, I took a stick of dynamite to it. Not on purpose, nor was it an acceptable thing to do to anybody. And still, there was ice between us.

The ice was thick beneath us.