the cliche.

[note from daniel on the bathroom mirror]

I'm blow-drying my hair, staring at the bathroom mirror, looking at my freshly-scrubbed but tired face.  I'm running late, as I am most mornings.  Most days he's still warmly snuggled in bed when I'm up and about, still enjoying the remaining days of his limited "freedom".  But today he was feeling particularly productive, and he was up with me, making coffee.  "Can you please choose something for me to wear today?" I shout.  He comes into the bathroom a few minutes later carrying one of my many black dresses and holds it against me, still on the hanger, assessing whether he likes it or not.  I laugh.  "No, not that one - that dress barely covers my ass; I can't wear it to work."  He takes it away and comes back a few minutes later with a different (and appropriate) black dress.  "I like it," he says, so I put it on, then quickly run a few comb strokes through my damp hair.  He hugs me from behind.  "You're pretty," he says.  I smile.  I can't wait until the day is over and I can return home to him.

In those gentle moments, I forget precisely why I am so tired, why I was running late yet again.  Because the mornings are extra brutal and painful when, for the previous week, night after night I've been up to the wee hours of the morning working on an assignment that's new, challenging, perplexing, but exceedingly frustrating because there's no manageable way to do it all in the time period allotted.  So I sacrifice sleep, energy, coordination, all the while consoling myself by believing that it's just temporary.  And while I am often reminded of how tough my life can be in certain moments, he always counteracts all the negativity by reminding me of how lovely it is, as well.  


I no longer wake up in the mornings muttering expletives; instead, I roll over, tap his arm, and place myself in that comfortable nook I've grown accustomed to for a few minutes before it's time to really get up.  I no longer return home to an empty and vacant apartment; instead, I return home to a lit apartment that's full of (usually fatty) scents from whatever he has cooked during the day.  Though I am still perfectly content with entertaining myself with only the silence of my thoughts, still perfectly fine with being my own best friend, I've realized that by opting for that solitary life, I rarely laughed, rarely smiled, and while not lonely, it felt a bit. . . unfulfilling.  I can't really identify my favorite thing about him because I don't think that it is a trait or a characteristic to which I can readily point; it's that he has changed me by just existing.  And whether he initially set out to do so or not, I owe him very much for proving to me that I am more than just a cliche.