cold to warm to cold...

I met him when it was cold. I was wearing a jumper brandishing an elk skull in the chilly weather of early April in Wyoming. For the weeks after I met him I would spend days tucked into layer upon layer of leggings and trousers and undershirts to keep the bitter chill of three feet of snow and wind outside of me rather than inside. My layers and I would walk the several blocks to his apartment, stomping through the glittery snow, wildly anticipating the moments I would get to look at his face, hear his voice, and see what was in store for our time together. I had missed the cold so much and adored that Wyoming had decided to love me enough to gift me so much snow within the first few months of me returning to it, that my cold months after meeting him were doubly perfect.

His apartment was always warm. He would let me in and I would strip off layer after layer whilst telling him about my day or hearing about his. We rarely went on adventures outside of his apartment in the cold weeks, instead, we snuggled in for movie nights and cracking open cold ones, sometimes just the two of us, sometimes his friends would join us. It was always an adventure and always different. Music that filled his heart the most would travel with the much-needed warm air between the yellow walls of his apartment whilst I cooked gigantic meals. We would sing off-key to all the most sad and angsty songs until I served our meals up and we would sit and watch shitty tv and learn about one another. We slowly discovered the little things that made one another giggle and cry and swell with love. We mused over the things that we had in common and play fought about our differences. 

I spent those cold weeks carving my new self out of ice, anticipating new growth as the spring shifted both outside and inside my body. I carefully monitored my mind and my heart, along with the newly budding sweetpeas outside my living room window, waiting to see what gorgeous things were going to shoot forth with the upcoming changes in the weather. What colour would they be? How gorgeous were their blooms going to come out? How long would it take for them to achieve full growth?

We then spent weeks in the sweltering heat of his downtown studio apartment. We would spend hours tangled, sweaty limb entwined with sweaty limb, refusing to let go because holding one another was so much more important than relieving ourselves of the staggering heat that had overtaken our bodies. Our only movement was our toes gently tickling the other's foot, so as to not exacerbate the already overwhelming warmth our bodies had been filled with. Every now and again, a tickle would cause a spasm that would radiate through one of our bodies from our feet and end in a gentle glance and smile between one another, knowing that was exactly where we were supposed to be at that very moment.

The melodic tunes and tear-filled lyrics of one band or another floated through the air and he would sing the words to me with every bit of conviction that he had inside of him, occasionally pretending to burst into tears, which would throw us into laughing fits lasting the entire night. 

My heart was filled with such an abundance of warmth that I had a legitimate fear that it would burst into flames at any given time, which would only be natural given the ridiculous dry heat that Wyoming chose to bestow upon us. We would dream about trips we wanted to go on together, people we wanted the other to meet, and films we desperately wanted to watch together.

and it's cold again. Not just in the air, but in my heart. It sounds so stupid to say aloud, or rather type, but it's true. In the morning I need to put on extra layers of cloth on my limbs and strength in my heart. 

 

It's been a month since he moved out and I am fascinated by the shift that my heart has made in that time, by how quickly it became icy after being filled with such a tremendous heat for so many months. I speak to him and there's a corner that still has a pocket of warm affection for him. I see his name pop up on my phone and I am instantly sent back to the sweltering summer lying on his bed between his cats, sleep still in our eyes, words still so, so gentle. But it is only a momentary warmth before I realize my insides only know how to ache with his presence. That ache that you get when you have spent too long waiting at a bus stop in the middle of January. That ache that permeates beyond your skin, freezing your muscles in place, and stopping every other function of your body. The primitive response your body has to save itself by retaining as much necessary warmth as it can.

But I fear there is very little sustainable warmth left. I fear that any warmth that might be hidden in the secret spots of my heart needs to be reserved for myself because I don't think that I can withstand this again without fixing things. I don't think that I WANT to withstand this again. Too many changes in temperature can destroy something, so I want to cultivate warmth for myself. I want to work on rebuilding that little fire in my heart until it is a roaring blaze that cannot be stifled by anything Something that I have complete control over. 

 

It was the most tremendous, gorgeous nine months of my entire life, and I cannot believe how fortunate I was to have been able to feel the things that I felt, see the things that I saw, and experience the things that I experienced. There was beauty like I have never seen and pain that will undoubtedly haunt me for the rest of my life. I will never be able to look at these past nine months as anything but tremendously valuable, but now? Now it is time for me. Time for me to keep watch of my own heart and tend to the things in it that I need to so that when the spring comes? I will get to find out how gorgeous those blooms within my heart that only I get to plant are going to come out and how long it take for them to achieve full growth. 

This heart is mine and I will make it through this cold spell by myself and for myself.