Tell you about him, why sure?!

One of the major holes in this piece of work that has captured most of my life's traumatic and love-related events is my most recent 8-month relationship with a man who we can call... Cotton.

He is a Virginia farm boy turned smart guy getting his PhD. We met on a social media app... yes, the gay sort where people hook-up but also meet interesting people that they might like to take on a date.

We talked online quite a bit for the first part of last school year, he was exploring his world as a gay man and came out to almost everyone he knew while we were dating. Something that I admired and was a little jealous of... as I still am closeted to many people "back home" - hence all the pseudonyms, and other various baggage. But anyway, eventually we decided to have lunch at Canopy Roads, a little breakfast/lunch place in town that we both knew and liked.

Cotton was nervous, visibly, I thought he was checking the door to make sure that no one he knew saw us together. I had dressed well on purpose... I wanted to make a good impression. (A few months into the relationship he confessed he was nervous and the reason for his nervousness being that he thought I was very handsome). He barely ate, we talked a lot and had a great lunch that we both enjoyed and said we'd meet again.

We continued to talk, went to Masa right before winter break and that's when I invited him over to take a nap with me. Honestly, there wasn't a ton of napping that happened. But we didn't do anything super scandalous either.

I thought he was one of those guys... the one's most people are afraid of because dating them means the possible end of adventuring in the world of men... a real long-term keeper. And I was scared. We did a few things throughout the winter once school resumed but I tried to keep my distance... until I finally decided that I was lying to myself - I really did like him and want to be with him, I was letting fear make my decisions for me. (I life trend I am trying to break).

I took him to the beach with Hillz and Eesh, and the weekend was pretty fantastic.

In April, Cotton had a wedding to go to in Daytona and he invited me. I asked if there was anything that I should bring along... and misunderstanding the question he replied condoms and lube... The source of many jokes throughout the next few days. April 14 in the wee hours of the morning, I asked him to be mine and he said yes. I had waited all this time to have sex with him... because he was a keeper, as I said, I didn't want to mess it up by getting too physical too fast.... and now, it was on! He went to the wedding and I stayed at our awesome hotel that he had splurged to get for us. This just happened to be the same night that someone that I had once held quite dear died in a car accident near Cincinnati. Cotton returned from the wedding and we talked about all the days events that we had experienced separately. He was extremely supportive and kind through that night and through the whole grieving process of my friend.

Shortly after making it official he went to DC for the summer to work , we talked daily, and I never for a second could have been any happier. We both took several trips back and forth to see each other, and each time we saw each other was ... magic. I didn't ever want to be apart from him.

His birthday was coming up and I planned a surprise dinner and Champagne toast for him here in town on his visit closest to his actually birth date. We celebrated the month of his birth with lots of trips and gifts, etc. I gave him a ring that was a miniature of the ring I wore myself - something that connected us.

Finally the summer ended and he came home to Tallahassee and something had changed. As much as he didn't love his job in DC he would rather be doing that than being tied to school. With this change in his life came a change in our relationship - things were different and I didn't really understand why - for me, the thing that we shared between us was one of, if not the, best thing(s) I had going for me.

 We spent a long-weekend in Daytona again, but this time the mood was a little different. For some reason, though it was a trip just for us, there didn't seem to be a lot of interacting going on between the two of us. I brought it up toward the end of the trip and we said it was something that we'd try harder to work on.

For my birthday I took time off from work and we went to St. George, it was lovely, just being at the beach but again, something loomed over Cotton - something wasn't right.

In October, we had went to Puerto Rico and The Food and Wine Festival at Disney World. Puerto Rico was truly lovely and very enjoyable, we tried much harder to be engaged with each other this trip and I think it went well... some tenuous moments.. but overall good. Food and Wine, however was not as much of a success. We had gone down to meet friends with Momma, friends of hers who have become friends of mine, and in a bit of drunken conversation Cotton said something that hit closer to home than anything he'd ever said. The situation and the quotation doesn't bear repeating but in a moment of confusion he didn't realize what he said and what it would mean to me.

From October until December we've had ups and downs, more ups for me than downs. I came out (mostly) of the funk that I was in with work and school and life in general while he went deeper into his. We arrived at a point yesterday where he felt the need to be on his own, that he was no longer wholly devoted to our relationship and life together and - for now, at least - we are separated.

I hope that there will be more posts devoted to Cotton, other than the previous one "Il pleure.." - Something makes me feel that our journey together isn't over, but perhaps on hiatus. The one thing that tries to squash that hope is one thing that he said yesterday "we just aren't a perfect match" - I'm trying to figure out how to live life without totally closing the door of possibility for something more than friendship during what promises to be a tumultuous recovery period for me.

In the end of it all, it would seem that time will drag me forward and that we are on some designated path. I pray that I will be open to this path and wherever it leads, and in my heart I hope that it includes Cotton.