I won’t lie to you: most of my visit to Sir over the holidays was pretty hard. I was living with him and his roommate, he was working long days and I was under a lot of stress regarding school stuff. Being apart had put a strain on our intimacy, had made us sometimes feel like strangers. It had been big years for both of us and, yeah, we’d changed. Worse, there was the looming reality of Sir’s leaving the country indefinitely for his job.

It was frightening. I thought we were over. We fought, we struggled to make things feel the way they used to. I didn’t want to write about anything on here because I guess I was a little embarrassed and worried about portraying him in a negative light or inviting criticism.

Months prior, I’d gone to a vintage record store while on a trip and found this. I’d planned on giving it to him as a cute little gesture for our anniversary. But as I went through the airport, they randomly searched my backpack, and while sifting through it I could hear the crack. I’d taken such care to slip it in a spot that kept it safe, and I knew right away it was broken. 

It felt cheesy: that our D/s dynamic was struggling, our relationship was floundering, and my “To Sir With Love” had snapped the “Love” right out. Even cheesier: I couldn’t find the piece.

I’ll get into the good parts of the visit, there were certainly some. But the point is that there were the tough points. There were the points where I thought that I was walking in the wreckage of something that was already destroyed. I lost sleep worrying over it, I wondered where we’d messed up.

For our anniversary, he’d arranged for this really wonderful night right after the New Year, and now I was anxious about even making it to that. I even left town on New Year’s Day after being up till 4AM (that story’s coming, don’t worry) to spend time with a friend and just try to get clarity about the whole thing. And though I was worried about that night, that whole day I missed him. We’d had a good new years, though I knew that things were different, that we were very different people than a year before.

I got home and stopped trying to be that thing we were. I stopped attempting to recreate the old dynamic, to force every situation to meet old expectations. And then as I was packing for our night away, I found the stupid piece. I had to laugh a little, cry a little more. 

Sir came home with roses and a pizza (wish I could share that photo) and after a late lunch, we headed over. We had good sex, we drank good booze, we made good conversation. I looked across the table at him out at dinner and felt that familiar tenderness. We woke up and made love, looking out the window at the city where we’d first met, where it first all came together. 

And I knew that things were not entirely resolved, but I knew I had to fight for this, that of course these things would not just keep on because of the perfect coincidence of our meeting, that love wasn’t just a point on a timeline but a repeated action. I watched the runners and the tourists, the cars and the taxis, the city that had once felt as if it were ours but soon would be where neither of us lived anymore.