On you, on this love, on this fever, on distance.

I live in a perpetually fevered state. 

From the way that I walk to the way that I dance to the way that I practice yoga to the way that I engage (or disengage) others in conversation, I handle all areas of my life with a very specific intensity. I often arrive at my destinations panting, the heat from my cells radiating outward and increasing the temperature in the room ever so slightly. When I interact with people, I either make zero eye contact or lock eyes with such ferocity that it just makes all parties uncomfortable - there is no middle ground. 

I make swift, yet firm decisions about places to eat, about life choices to pursue, about people with whom I want to surround myself. I do nothing casually. Even when I write, I either completely unfold all of my truth, all of myself into my words, or I say nothing substantive, choosing to instead hide behind carefully crafted bullshit masquerading as prose. 

And when I love - god, when I love. It is consuming. I’ve always found it difficult to mask my feelings, any of my feelings, and when I love, most of all, it’s so obviously apparent. My love pours out of me, it floods my conversations; I find myself wading through it, trying not to drown in it. This love, this overwhelming, encompassing, ubiquitous love. 

It’s no secret that I’m in a long-distance, open relationship. And to be perfectly honest, on a day-to-day basis, it’s not even that difficult to maintain. We speak everyday. We live our own lives. But it’s when I see him, wake up next to him with our limbs tangled together, spend afternoons doing nothing except merely breathing in each other’s air, and unceremoniously soon after have to say goodbye - everything stops and suspends for a while. An ill-constructed dam has popped up to bar my love.

I swell, I burst. I am overtaken with a desire to seek warmth and affection, to quell this fever, to sate the urge to have my love met. 

It’s been 2 years of this distance, and I make no apologies for the attempts that I’ve made to connect with others, to fill the space that’s been left behind. Because when I think about him and I think about us, I know that this is it, this is my forever.

Whether my love leaks out of me is of little consequence. Not when there is so much of it to offer.