Don’t Tell Tori

“Do you think I’ve gotten fatter?”

“No, Tori. Actually, I think you’ve lost weight.”

“Are you sure? I’ve been growing a double chin. Am I growing a double chin?”

“No, Tori. You look beautiful like always.”

“You’re lying. I have a gut, see?” Tori lifted up her shirt, revealing her stomach, and began poking at it with her index finger. Each time her finger met the skin of her stomach, she made a boop noise.

“That doesn’t mean you’re fat. You’re still absolutely gorgeous.”

“You’re still lying. Do you think my nose is big?”

I wish she would see herself the way that I do. I constantly catch myself studying every detail of her face whenever we lay down to watch a movie, or any other activity that requires my attention. I find myself watching the way she furrows her brows when she’s focused on something. I find myself tracing the M shape of her lips with my gaze. I find myself carefully running my fingers through the waves of her hair, closely examining the different colors hidden beneath the strands of dark brown from excessive amounts of hair dye from her earlier years. I find myself falling in love. I have no doubt that she feels the same way, because I catch her looking at me the same way.

My memory is terrible. Sometimes, I’ll forget things she told me the week before, and end up asking the same question two or three times. Yet, I’ll never forget the way her foot shakes uncontrollably whenever she’s upset, or the way her voice becomes eerily soft and pleasant whenever she’s tired. I won’t forget that her favorite color is orange. I won’t forget that her first love was a guy named Adam, or that she cries every time people sing Happy Birthday to her. I won’t forget these things because these are the things that make her who she is.

Nothing in this world is perfect. Before I met her, there was no filter between my brain and my mouth. I never thought about what I said before I said it, letting words pour out in an incomprehensible jumble. Tori can go from completely fine to furious in an instant, so I’ve been forced to exercise caution with my words. This has actually proved to be extremely helpful to me socially, and academically. However, whenever I do say something to upset her, there’s no stopping it. No amount of apologies or kisses can stop her fury. She doesn’t strike me or call me names, she simply sits there and stares at nothing, furrowing her brow, focusing on ignoring my existence for as long as possible. During these times, I feel trapped, as if there’s nothing I can do to fix us, like I’m being forced to sit there and watch our relationship crumble to the ground. I worry that one day, I’ll accidentally push her over the edge and it’ll be over. But then she switches her gaze over to mine and a smile spreads across her face, and everything is wonderful again. Loving Tori means loving her imperfections.

Loving Tori also means loving her family. Specifically, her mother. Her mother is unstable, unpredictable. The first time I visited her house, Tori whispered to me. “Make sure you say hello and goodbye to my mom every time you leave, my last boyfriend didn’t and she didn’t like him.” One day, I forgot to say goodbye to her mother. As I walked through the doorway, I heard BYE HUNTER from behind me, echoing throughout the apartment building’s hallways. I quickly turned around and frantically said “B-Bye Nicole!” Her mother then went on a rant about how I must be pretty ballsy to disrespect her in her own house, how she was going to message my parents on Facebook and tell them about my “illicit activities,” etc, etc. The next day, her mother was right as rain. This turned out to be a common occurrence that would continue to happen for as long as Tori and I were together. If Tori can handle her mother for 17 years, I can handle her too.

Being with Tori has not only taught me to love another person, but it has also taught me to love myself. For the past nine years I have been unhappy in my own skin. I used to look in the mirror and see nothing more than wasted potential: a flabby, ugly, awkward, stupid waste of breathe. I began to notice the way Tori looked at me. She looked at me with acceptance and love. She genuinely didn’t care about what I looked like or about the little stupid things I did and said. I realized that pleasing everybody is impossible, that I shouldn’t be what others wanted me to be, that I should be who I wanted to be. I should stop worrying about looking fat or whether or not my hair falls perfectly in front of my left eye. Instead, I should start focusing on living life and being happy, and that’s exactly what I’ve done.

I wish she would see herself the way that I do: the best thing to ever happen to me.