More Than I Can Say

I don’t know why I am writing this post. Why I started writing it in the first place. I guess I thought I could explain it. That I could contain it. That I could grab a hold of it in words like I did with Mr Crushing and Mr Emo, and give you some sort of relationship inspired blather to amuse yourselves with. I thought it would be easy and fun, and I could sit here all perceptive and distant like I usually do. But how do you explain something so convoluted and immense? How can I tell you something that I can’t even express? Who even wants to hear about something so subjective? Yet I couldn’t let it go. When I stopped blogging on the 24^th of April, it was because of this. Because of this post and what it deals with. It took me almost a year to get down something that I was happy with, and I know that I’m not even close capturing it.

Love.

When I said that I was missing the “material and appreciation of scholarly expression, the comfort and resonance of unconditional and true friendship, and the mad, personal and cathartic ravings of a diary” and that “the all things I would have normally expressed in those situations, I had somehow commandeered and deemed appropriate only for the blog (to the degree that) I had almost forgot where, in the past, other people had gained that rapport” – I meant that I was missing a true friend. I meant that it had been so long I had forgotten what they were for. What they could do for you; how amazing and rewarding that all is. And that I finally found one.

Truth is, I don’t even know what to call him. All of the other specific people on this blog have a name, not a real one, but a tag, Mr Emo, Mr Crushing, Mr Inch-Mile, Mr Perfectly-Alright. But I can’t put a name to him. I toyed with Mr Unlikely, because it expressed my disbelief at my luck and the probability of our situation – but that was too limiting. I tried referring to him as ‘my man’, a play on the amount of times the word ‘man’ appears in his lyrics, and the fact that he is a man whilst I am technically a girl (even though sometimes I am more of a woman and he is more of a boy) – but that felt too ghetto. I used ‘partner’ a bit, but it seemed too cold. I almost used ‘lover’, as inspired by the pottery teacher who said it was a pity that I wasn’t catching a later train, because if I waited around for a bit I could meet his ‘lover’ (surprisingly it was a woman). I even tried, more recently, simply ‘Him’ – an even bigger quip, making reference to his significance and ubiquity in my life, and ever so slightly his interest in religion, by way of referring to him as one does God (with initial capital letter).
But all of these substitutes somehow don’t cut it. To me he couldn’t be anything else. To give you an extensive quote from Stephen Fry; which may unfortunately set the tone of this post to a rather aptly grandiose one, but Fry expresses the absolute verbose exuberance of being in love with an idea, better than anyone I have ever encountered.
“Suppose his name was somehow wrong? Suppose it was an average name like Richard or Simon or Mark or Robert or Nigel? That would be so dull. Suppose he were a Neil or a Kenneth or a Geoffrey, how could I bear that? ... Then again he might have an obvious name, the sort of name that would make people giggle and think him a tart. He might be a Rupert or a Julian or a Crispin or a Tim or, Lord save us, a Miles, Giles or Piers. I thought of names that I could tolerate. Ben would be about all right, as would Charles or Thomas or James or William. Jonathan? Hm ... Jonathan would be just about within the bounds. Nathan might be pushing it a bit though. Daniel and Samuel I could cope with and Peter, Christopher and George, but Paul was right out. Francis was not to be entertained for a second and Frederick was just too silly for words. Roderick, Alexander or Hugh might pass, if he was Scottish. Donald would be uninteresting, Hamish would be pushing it too far and Ian simply horrid. David? That would be acceptable, I decided. David I could live with. … (M)aybe his parents had had a rush of blood to the head and chosen Hilary or Vivian or Evelyn? Maybe there was some rich uncle to please and he had found himself baptized Everett, Warwick, Hadleigh or Poynton? Then there were the Grahams and Normans and Rodneys. Impossible. … Even if he were Dennis or Terry or Neville or Keith, somehow those names would rise above the commonplace. He could probably even do something to Gavin.
(But) Matthew. Of course it was Matthew, I knew that. What else could it have been? Ridiculous to have speculated on the possibility of any other name. Matthew. It had always been Matthew.” And in the same way, for me, it has always been Damien.

We met in our very first cinema tutorial, I noticed him the first time he spoke. He was commanding of attention and had/has great hair. Sadly I must admit I didn’t pay much mind to him until we met again, twice, outside our English tutorial. This time I noticed his shoes. He was wearing shiny tan winklepickers. They quite took me by surprise. Somehow he began to enter my consciousness and I began to expect him to be there. Once or twice, during my horror introduction to university, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, which may account for what was later deemed my endearingly sulky manner. And with a tinge of embarrassment I remember thinking once, “Oh, not him again” as I saw him stride down the corridor towards me. By our third or fourth conversation I had begun to know something about him. I still remember him as this bewitchingly other entity with this hair and this dress sense and this sureness born of experience. At our fourth or fifth tutorial our bookish feminist tutor suggested that we all go for drinks together after the tutorial as it was the last one before Easter. No-one really took her seriously, though I have a vague perhaps imagined memory of him and me sharing a look. We’d been having a particularly good and long conversation before the tute and consciously or unconsciously I think I had begun to show up earlier before class. We left the room together, took the stairs together, and as we got outside he asked me if I wanted to go for a drink at the uni bar. I said “Yes, but I’m not sure they’ll let me in, I’m only 17.” Now, he denies this, but I swear, when I said this, a look of shock and bewilderment stole over his face and he promptly started walking in the wrong direction. I later learned that he thought I was around 25, and that the silver ring in the shape of a bow I wear on my index finger he believed to be an engagement ring. It made me smile to hear this misapprehension had disheartened him.
Once we got to the bar, he ordered a beer and I ordered nothing. He thought I didn’t drink, until somehow it came up and I confessed I took my morning coffee with a good glug of Baileys. At the time it was perfectly shocking and curious, but after the event it was hinted at that I was ‘trying to be cool’. He’s always been too good at picking up on that. I’m never a poser, I never lie – but I do say things at certain times for acceptance. He never makes me feel too bad about it, but he lets me know that he knows. He’s done it all before, it doesn’t wash with him, he’s not 17 and I know I’ll never be cool.
I remember thinking the whole time, from the moment we stepped into the place, is this a date? This isn’t a date. He’s just a nice man. It’s just my loose mind. What if it is a date? Do I fancy him? Does he fancy me? He’s just a friendly guy. It’s just my dirty mind.
I remember that we talked for a long time. About everything, fluidly and affably. I spent a guilty large portion of this time not listening as intently as I could to what he was saying, but instead gazing at his full lips and wondering what it would be like to kiss them – all the while chastising myself for treating an honest man like an object.
When he mentioned his idea of trying eyeliner I was titillated, pulling out my make-up bag and showing him. The temptation to touch his face was ever-present. We talked about my accent; his mother is British and even having grown up with it he was convinced that I must be too. He was confounded and I was somehow flattered when I told him I had lived here all my life. We talked about clothes and coats and buying them. I couldn’t get over how interested he was in me. He kept asking me all these pertinent questions, listening to my response and then asking me more. I was amazed. I was in heaven. He said I fascinated him. He fascinated me more.
We didn’t want to stop talking. I didn’t want to stop talking. But the conversation had to end, and at about 8 I said I had to go home because my grandmother was expecting me there. I wondered what would have happened if I had stayed there as long as I was welcome. I did get a chance to find that out strangely enough, when we were unhindered we ended up talking on Facebook until 4 in the morning.
After that first evening I nervously wondered whether he would want to continue to get to know me. I felt like a typical girl in the ‘will he call me?’ mindset. I thought I might send him an email. And as I opened up my uni email to send him one, lo and behold he had already sent me one earlier that day. The video of ‘Agadoo’ by Black Lace which we had discussed. More emails we sent; long ones about nature and people’s attitudes to vegetarianism. He was intelligent and attentive and absorbing.

The following week was the start of the two week Easter break. I went to my mothers, and in an impassioned move I clumsily shared my phone number in an email. There began a series of texts and pictures about any and all things every minute of the day. We were heavy and fast friends. We talked about everything, we took pictures of our houses and ourselves and our pets. We talked on the phone for hours at night. We have an absolutely voracious mental rapport. It was intensely gratifying. Finally someone on my level. I couldn’t talk fast enough. I couldn’t show him enough. I wanted him to know me, I wanted to know about him, I wanted to share the material of my life with him.

It’s funny how you can know so much about a person – but never really learn the most basic things. I still to this day don’t know what his favourite colour is. And for a while I went on nothing but assumptions as to his age. To look at him, if you had asked me to make a specific guess, I would have told you he was 26. The average uni student seemed to think he was perhaps 19. But I sensed that both these estimates were wrong. Through conversations with him, and some surreptitious use of the internet, I found that his band formed in about 1987. If he was quite young when they started, and young but aware of music places him pretty much smack-bang on 15, I concluded he must have been born in 1972. I remember the phone conversation where I told him this. I eased it out, “then you – must, have been born in… nineteen… seventy, two?”. He was 36. I had been 10 years off the mark. And he was 19 years older than me.

I remember how it threw me, that confirmation. Everything between us had been great; the age difference had never once surfaced of its own accord. But now here it was, the gaping void of nineteen years. Never mind that “unbridgeable 5 year distance” between my high school teachers and I; this was more than my entire life. I can’t even recapture or describe that feeling of… incomprehension. You cannot possibly sympathise with someone’s years. Experience is the one thing to be held above everything. The young cannot fathom what it entails, let alone compensate for it. So I felt like I had to make excuses. And I did. Lengthy ones via email about my history and my upbringing and why I liked more mature friends. I was sorely worried that my age meant I wasn’t keeping up with him intellectually. I felt like a fraud. It was one thing to pretend I was 29 in a crowd of teens that didn’t take me seriously to begin with; it’s completely something else to pull that off with someone who takes you seriously and is older than you – as I discovered on the blog. I felt like at any minute he’d be coming out with my mother’s lines: “How could you know, you’ve never experienced it”, “You haven’t lived long enough to gain this perspective” “In 10 years time this will all make sense to you.” I felt so powerless towards my age. But at the same time I was a staunch defender of the validity of its experience. All I ever wanted was to be taken seriously as a person. It never once occurred to me that he knew how old I was practically from when we first met – and that he had already accepted me for who I was.

We danced a curious dance those few weeks, laced with denied innuendo and feigned refusal. I believed the best of him and the worst of me. He felt he couldn’t have me because of my age. I felt he didn’t want me because of my age. I had no idea how one even began to seduce a 36 year old man (for the record, it’s exactly the same way one seduces a 16 year old boy), and I felt it was inappropriate to even be considering it. That misgiving seized me and I couldn’t even tell if my intentions were welcome, clear or reciprocated. I was torn. I wanted him but I had no idea he if wanted me. Eventually, after what seemed like a series of my ever increasingly embarrassing faux-pas double-entendres, I told myself that no, he wasn’t interested in me that way. I resolved to diligently ignore anything my mind construed as suggestive from either party.

The first day back after the Easter break was his birthday. I’ll never forget seeing his face after only just forming a conception of his being, and then communicating with a disembodied voice and words for two weeks. I was utterly spun out by seeing him. I think this is when he began to look beautiful to me. I must have stared at him a lot on that day, although I did explain myself. I was pretty scattered that day, first day back after holidays. I left my wallet on top of the Cinema Studies lockers opposite the office after hunting out my student card. I didn’t realise till half way through the last lecture of the day. The moment it finished I dragged him out of there with me to the office and the lost property, feeling the curdled prickly edges of a panic attack creeping in. I took deep breaths. I tried not to ruin his birthday. He was concerned, sympathetic; but we were supposed to be going to have fun tonight. I gave up on my wallet. We walked out to the car park and I saw his car for the first time, a sleek black sedan, whose unlikeliness I appreciate simply for the fact of his owning a whole car, and he appreciates for his owning of a car like that. He drove down the highway and I didn’t even give a thought to not trusting his driving; I felt safe, and excited. We made our way further and further from the uni, looking for a restaurant as we went, the night becoming more involved the further we went. We kept going, creeping towards the city and its potential. We arrived at his flat and went upstairs, I recognised his smell and its comfortable messiness, instruments and vacuum cleaners in the middle of the room. CDs and books lining the walls. I put my bag on the same spare dining chair that I put in on to this day. I remember the presumptuous and risqué contract of leaving my stuff at his place, implying that I’d be back there to collect it. I remember the back streets and the exhilaration of walking through the city at night with him, to somewhere I had never been before. All the details so sharp and yet meaningless next to him. This from the girl who loves Melbourne with an awe and a gratitude worthy of a showtune – he is the man who can eclipse the excitement and the beauty of an entire city with the touch of his hand in mine. We have walked down William St in the middle of the day, our little city adventure on the weekend, trying to get a dose of it because we both live here now, and I’ve been unable to take a wisp of it in. There he was, walking beside me, holding my hand, and I was lost.
We spent ages picking out a restaurant, what with my vegetarianism and his sensitivity to all things acid, we were certainly fussy customers. It is important to me that I remember what he was wearing on our first proper date, I know it’s a silly thing, but like many couples, I kind of hold it up as a testament to our relationship – that and the fact he thought his black shirt with giant Rolling Stones Mick Jagger lips logo on the front would cause a scene in the dignified restaurant. I remember my rookie delight at being 17 and unquestioningly served wine to the table. We had a good meal and shared a desert and as the night got on, a thought that had teased me suddenly spoke from his lips: would it perhaps be more convenient, and would I like to stay the night? I said yes, even though I knew I couldn’t. I made a tipsy call to the answering machine explaining to my grandmother where I was, while Damien giggled in the background about my shoddy lying manner.
We sat on the couch, we looked at his photo albums. He touched me on the leg as he did so and I was delighted by his warm manner, I didn’t fail to amaze me that someone had finally broken through my ‘unhuggable’ exterior and was being affectionate towards me. I wanted to touch him more. We sat on the couch and watched music videos with the full sides of our thighs pressed together. The whole evening my mind was probing away into the future, trying to perceive all the different angles, all the ways things could happen. From the moment we got into his car, I knew we would end up in the city; but I didn’t. From the moment he suggested I leave my bag in his apartment, I knew we’d end up back there; but I didn’t. From the moment he suggested I stay the night, I knew we’d end up in bed together; but I didn’t. I ached to kiss him in that bed, but I didn’t. He wasn’t interested in me like that I told myself. I could understand that. I believed it so strongly, to the point of the ridiculous. So even when we were in the same bed, my blank mind had failed to register that this was where I would be sleeping, caught up in some mention of a Lilo; even when he had his hands all over me, sensuously touching my body; the amorous potential of those actions were being rigorously and ridiculously denied. I still thought of him as almost sisterly, very affectionate, but innocent. Until my rationale lost and my whole body screamed “Oh god, please kiss me,” when he was half an inch from my face – and he did. And I kissed him back. And we talked, and we kissed some more, and then we fell asleep.

I was in love with him within the week. We told each other so by the end of it.

It was later revealed that on that first evening, while I had been staring at his lips wondering what it would be like to kiss him there, he had spent a deal of time looking at my neck and wondering the same thing. Every day was an ocean back then. I can’t tell you how much information we shared. How much was written, how much was said. I have pages upon pages of emails and Facebook chats. As much I remember, I wish I could remember more. We got through a whole year of uni together, we went on holiday twice, we had Christmas and New Years, that night we stayed up on the pier, and countless steamy dark nights in the back of his car. But in a good way it’s a lot to remember. He sent me this song, I no longer recall the specifics of the cause, but I found it again tonight and it really brought all of that back to me. “More Than This” by Roxy Music.



Often I think that he and I are fated, and it scares me how completely. In the unshared works of this blog from many years ago, I describe someone called Jed. Jed came to me in a series of dreams, dismissed as the influence of too much TV and wishful thinking. But only recently did I realise, long outside of the realm of self-fulfilling-prophecy – how chillingly accurate a description of Damien they paint. It’s weird and scary and amazing and he’s never going to take my dreams seriously or believe that I didn’t make them up, but I swear to god that it’s true and it means something. A quote, from one of the original posts, written on the 1^st of March 2007:
“I was sitting at the dining table, my mother’s house as it was at the time of the dream. And He (Jed) was across the table from me. Looking at me, face in full view. And he announced that he wanted to get his hair cut. It was long and black and just touching his shoulders. He feared that if he cut it too short it might go curly.
Then I was in the hallway of the house with him in front of me, he was easily half a head taller than me. I could see the coloured pieces in his hair that he wanted to get rid of.
I reached up and separated out the first piece out of his hair from above his left ear, one streak half the thickness of a pencil. I said something about how if he got his hair cut to a certain length then most of the coloured bits would be gone. Then knowing that he had another on the other side I went to reach for that. I was immediately aware of how close our faces were. I thought I could so easily kiss him right now, but it didn’t seem like I may. He smirked and smiled like he knew what I was thinking, bent his head down to mine and kissed me on the lips ever so softly. And then it was like I suddenly remembered, like I put aside who I was going to be and what I would think when I woke up, and adopted this future, and the context of this moment. I didn’t have to pretend that I wasn’t attracted to him, like he was some pathetic crush. He was mine and he loved me. I let go of his hair and put my arms around his neck, hugging him.”

From another blog, on the 24^th of February 2007:
“I only found this scribbled recount after I’d had five dreams about Him (Jed). It really freaked me out. It proved that the image had not got distorted as time had gone on. He had always looked like that and had the same effect on me. I think I had this dream on the 28^th of June 2005. I was talking to this girl that I used to be friends with in early high school , and I said, “Where’s that guy that always hangs around?” and she said that this guy’s name was Jed and that he was only around on Thursdays. Today in my dream was (obviously!) Thursday.
It was dark. This girl and I were walking back from school and there, over the corner of this very surrealist looking footpath, was Jed. He came up to me and he looked exactly like I had always described him. We walked down the path to the left (my friend went to the right) he told me where he lived, (in real life this is too close to my house for me not to notice, but it’s just the cynic in me), then, not looking where I was going, probably because I was looking at him, I fell into a swamp. Of course, without hesitation and fully clothed, he dived in and rescued me.
I don’t know how this works but I have the distinct impression that for three of four Thursdays after this, we broke into an Egyptian History Museum and mucked about with the displays. We got caught by some guards one time, and had to hide under a set of steps. And after this he walked me home, in the daylight this time, and I put my hand on his arm and thanked him for rescuing me a few days back, and he said that it was OK; and he put his arm around me, and I reached up and kissed him (in perfect physical detail, I might add). We walked through a car park which was somehow melded with my farm paddock, we found his car, whereupon we began to kiss passionately on the bonnet, and just as the dream got interesting, it ended.”

As for that description of him, as I wrote on the 14^th of February 2007, without a word altered, or an aspect out of line with the reality of him; he shall have: “(m)essy black (or very dark coloured hair), large dark (probably occasionally eyeliner-ed) eyes, high elegant vampiristic cheek bones, slim face, graceful yet well set jaw line, large smooth shapely lips with the hint of a smirk that could melt you instantly. His voice is deep and velvety, still deep and seductive at a whisper, which he uses often. Well built shoulders with a slight muscle over them and his arms, which when upturned show large blue veins coursing down them. He’s almost dangerously thin, and about 15cm taller than me.”
“He really knows what makes you tick. I’d know I’d have to play hard to get even though I could hardly resist, he’d know that I was attracted to him but not understand why I fought it. Sensuous in a way that he would want to take off all your clothes and touch every inch of you, before or rather than having sex.”
“Communicative as all hell, passionate in every aspect. Musical. Not necessarily the same tastes as me, but as long as we could see the merit in each other’s choices, it would all be fine. Inspiring. Strong. Emotional. Impulsive. Sometimes angry. A bit of a rebel. And he’d call me beautiful (like no-one ever has), like it was the most natural thing in the world. And mean it.”

The first time he complimented me I nearly fell off my chair. It was a complete flurry of an emotional reaction. Firstly I was flattered; truly and properly, because I could tell he really meant it, and it really meant something to me that he was paying me a compliment. But what stuck me most about it was that he really believed what he said; he really saw that in me. And that hit my egotism for six. I know that doesn’t make sense, but consider this: I’ve never been under-confident, you’ll never catch me tearing up over the slightest bit of validation or scowling at my ‘fat’ reflection in the mirror. I give compliments and I make the first move. I’ve hardly ever scoffed when someone said I could do something, and most of the time I am guilty of being conceited. A compliment to me, if you will please forgive me this disgustingly honest assessment of myself, is a validation of something that I already arrogantly take for granted. But all that is underwritten with the fine print I believe all women (if not most men) come with. The Reasons Why People Can’t Mean The Good Things They Say:
They’re just my parents.
They’re just saying it to make me feel better.
They’re just saying it because I prompted them.
They’re just saying it because I have something they want.
They’re just saying it to get in my pants.
They’re drunk.
They’re saying it out of pity.
So what happens when arrogance fails and something falls through the cracks of those 7 rules? You’re forced to face the fact that it might actually be true. It cuts through all that arrogance, all the false pretence that you were capable, all that stuff that you thought you faked, and says – you’re a good person, and somebody loves you. And that can be painful.

And lastly, he had enough confidence within himself to say it to me. A man with self-assurance. Oh Lord, give me a man with self-assurance. I was trying to work out what made his manner so different to the boys I had been with. Why he hadn’t run and hid when my smarmy advances had surfaced; and why I smirked with the same kind of sinful glee at hearing him say “I’m quite a catch in the relationship department”, as I did when the Doctor said “What did I tell you? I’m briw’yant!”. Confidence. He has the perfect balance of boldness and sureness to take me down a peg – and I know he’ll be pleased to hear that. He can take me on; from the moment we got to talking I knew he was someone on my level. He might not like dealing with it sometimes, and he probably has a right to tell me to back off when I go further than he does (and we’re both pretty extreme characters) but he can take me. We fight, and tiff and hurt sometimes, but we bear with it, we even compromise sometimes, and every time we get through something hard I never feel mad, or exploited – but I always learn something, and that’s wonderful. He listens to my endless rantings and advice, he talks to me and he stands up to me. He loves and respects me. As I do him.

There is a part of me that wants to brand him as mine. Not a part that is insecure, but one infatuated. A part of me that looks upon the terms ‘girlfriend’ and ‘boyfriend’ as flimsy and ill-fitting in this situation. Something that compels me to always be touching him in bed and hold his hand in public, invade his Facebook relationship status, hear about which friends know about me and what his parents think, and to add, when asked about him, “he’s perfect – and he’s all mine”. A kind of besotted disbelief and possessiveness. I don’t want to inflict any sort of permanence on it, I don’t want to or feel the need to have those ‘how do you feel about me?’/‘where are we going?’ kind of conversations. Admittedly, I felt for a while like I couldn’t deal with it. We are so intense. Everything that has ever been a source of difficulty or passion in my life; he is somehow connected to, he always seems to have a point of reference and an impact on those things.

He’s so wonderfully candid. That’s why I say in the song “I am jealous of your words” – I am jealous of his ability to come out and say what he likes about me. And when he does, and I say something back (and this is an opportunity to clarify something here) it isn’t because I feel that I have to say something back, or that I am struggling – in fact the opposite. When he says something like that, my mind and heart are just bursting to say something back, “God, I was just thinking that, I could say the same to you, more so!” I only wish I could think of it first. But I hardly ever do. What can I say? I forget. I’m bad at this. I’m scared.
Sometimes I get the feeling that he thinks he loves me more than I do him. He says he says it more and feels like a big girl’s blouse. Sometimes he thinks I’m mostly there for something carnal rather than intellectual and emotional. And that really smarts. Because I feel like I may well love him more than he does me, and if I ever opened my mouth and let it all out it would be too much. I sound like a man in love with a nymph. I’m overwhelmed most of the time. I get into the car and there he is, sitting in the driver’s seat tired from work, looking more perfect and fucking angelic than the last time I saw him. He gets up to turn off the light before bed, with his hair all mussed at an angle, and I fall in love with him all over again. I can’t believe I couldn’t see how beautiful he is. The hopeless romantic artist in me wants to make etchings and write poetry. But I know that the way I see him now, a vision if you will, is hormonal, has to do with my being in love with him. For if everyone saw him the way I do, I would be beating the girls off with a stick as we walked down the street. His beauty makes me feel inadequate, in the best way. I need to be humbled, and I’ll never feel vain, get too full of myself, or give up on my appearance with him. I could talk for hours on what we’re like in bed. I could stay there for days. Part of me is dying to tell you of the satisfyingly sordid details; the exaltation. But I feel that maybe less is more. We make the kind of love that is everything it was supposed to be; a sating physical and emotional union; perfectly, consistently, and anew. He still enthrals me, I love hearing his stories and sharing things with him, and that I can tell him anything. We’re so opposite and complimentary, yet connected and real – in a way I’ve never known. I like pretty much anything we do together, even if it’s the worst day of my life. I even love the things about him that aren’t perfect, the silly little imperfect human things – and I didn’t even know I could. I guess it’s because when you venerate someone when you’re in love with them, it’s good to know that they’re just like you. He’s my partner, my equal, my companion. He is the only person who makes me feel like going “Fuck it. You know what, listen to this. Hear me sing. I know you know me, but read my blog. I know you’ve seen me, but see me without my make up, in my pyjamas, with unwashed hair. I know I just met you, but look at my soul.” I love you more than I can say.

☆