Your hands touch me in the softest of ways. Every kiss, every hair stroke or every back rub leaves me feeling consumed in you. Your body makes me feel safe. Your chest is where I lay my head as your fingers continuously wipe away tears, your voice the ever-deep ocean that pulls me further into you as you tell me you love me.

The panic attacks consume me, late nights and too much pressure take their toll on my stability, my hands push you away, but yours stay steady, stay soft. Your hands have always been sweet, someone else’s haven’t.

My response to your words, to your new life away from me, is always that of a brutal one. I can’t seem to tell you the truth. That I miss you, I need you and I want you to stay. The quick-fire jabs, insults and dismissive comments flow from me, I let my second nature of defense take over.

My heart breaks as I see your face fall and we drift round in the cycle of negative pain, and it consumes me. The space that was filled with you I’ve let be taken over by the hurt I feel, and the new constant need to protect you from me.

People have hurt you, before, so many times. Every story you tell I watch you shrug it off, it’s never you crying at the end of them, but me. The first months of falling in love I understood the importance of you, the sadness I felt when you left, the heart stopping pressure when you pulled me into you, I have just seemed to have lost sight of it. My sight it would appear is clouded, the dark cloud pushes its way into my days, my nightmares, my insecurities and turns me into the monsters I feared from my past.

You gave me a ring. The most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen. Every day it sits proudly on my ring finger as a promise. The promise that one day we will have everything, everything those three am conversations described, all those nights ago.

Before I broke us, before I hurt you, before I let my demons win. Now it’s a promise to myself. The promise that I will fix what I have done, I will spend my days loving you with all I have, to ensure those demons never hurt you again.

I can’t drop my defenses, I keep trying and I know it’s not enough. I watch you try and try to understand me, to be part of me completely and every time you are left crestfallen, the feeling of confusion left within you. I don’t do this to hurt you, I want to protect you from myself, I love you too much to watch my past, my demons, my emotions break me from the inside out.

My demons paddle in the waters yours could drown in. To let mine play with yours, would be the death of us both.

I have never met anyone stronger, more fierce, protective, loving and loyal. You always did deserve so much better. But you see I am selfish. I am selfish with the love I take and the people I take it from. I want all of your love, and I want nothing more than to give it all back to you, day in and day out until we die.

I will let you in, slowly, every day until there is nowhere else for you to go. I will beat the demons that frolic in my head and I will tell you the truth every day.

I miss you, I love you and I can never lose you.