The man on the third floor 

I think I fell in love with a man who’s Lebanese mother learned Armenian upon meeting his Armenian father at twenty years old. A man who first piqued my interest because of the fact that he spoke Arabic, French, Armenian, Spanish and English— one more language than me! It’d be a disservice to my (nonexistent) children if I didn’t give this guy a chance. 

It sounds so silly to say “I fell in love” because our paths only crossed for a few weeks, but I’ll excuse it on the premise that it was my first real puppy love. I owed myself that experience!

It also sounds silly because I wanted to leave within the first 30 minutes of our first date… hard to imagine after we ended up seeing each other four times that very week. 

It’s been three years since the thick of that fling and the thought of said man still consumes me more than I like to admit. I think of Sundays on the sofa, cozying up next to the bookcase that spanned the whole length of the living room, filled with books that he brought with him when he moved from Dubai. On days when I read headlines about the attacks in the Middle East, it’s hard to not wonder if he’d be counted among the impacted had this happened fifteen years ago while he volunteered for the Red Cross. Now that it’s summer and I’m often drenched in sweat, I’ll think “fuck I’m so sweaty” before internally chuckling whenever I remember the time he said that he doesn’t sweat, he perspires. Recently, I was dating a guy who was balding and suddenly I missed running my fingers through the man’s incredible, curly brown hair (eeek, not proud to say but woman enough to admit).

It’s not everyday that you meet someone so driven yet grounded, confident yet vulnerable, and safe. I miss the man on the third floor more than I like to admit. Grateful to the people and experiences that shaped him, to all the stars that aligned that spring, and to a younger me that was open enough to give him, it, and herself a chance. To said man: thank you for setting the bar high for not just what a good friend and partner look like, pero tambien alguien con ganas de comerse al mundo. Te aprecio mas de lo que te puedas imaginar.