In the early days, when the Backstreet phenomenon was just beginning, or perhaps even a little before, I used to ask myself whether I really wanted to be with him. Not because I didn’t love him, no: that I loved him was indisputable. He was my world, my everything. There were days that knew I couldn’t breathe without him; I couldn’t live without him.
Having said that, while the pressure of so much time apart was often hard to deal with, it only contributed part way towards my questioning the point to our relationship. His touring and my studying contrived against us; ensured that we spent little quality time together. But when we were able to snatch a few moments…oh, they were pure bliss. In a twisted way, I was almost able to enjoy the time we spent away from one another, because I knew that those limited periods when we were able to sit, entwined in each other and our comfortable silence, were so much more meaningful when they finally happened. Those were moments that truly could be described as ‘quality time’.
So maybe you are wondering what possessed me to doubt our relationship. I loved him; I loved spending time with him, even if it meant spending time apart first. He could make me laugh, or cry, or content to lie for hours in his arms. He wasn’t the first to make me feel such emotions: there have been others before and since. But with him, those emotions were magnified to such an extent that I was sure I was going to explode. Some days I had to get up, walk away from him, and spend a few moments calming my erratic breathing and thundering heart, in order to prevent myself succumbing entirely to the overwhelming feelings he awoke in me.
I was happy: exceptionally, dizzyingly, ecstatically so. And of course, it didn’t impair matters that the man that I was so deep in love with was one of the most beautiful men on the planet. Because of that, there were occasions when I couldn’t understand what he was doing in a relationship with someone like me. I wasn’t unattractive. Average, you would probably say. Average face, average hair, average body. The only exceptional thing about my physical appearance was my height: at six foot, I could practically look him dead in the eye.
I might have described myself as average, but he used to tell me that I was the most beautiful woman he knew. I never used to buy that. You never do: I mean, they have to say that, don’t they? It’s expected. Plus, I guess you could say that I don’t have the greatest opinion of myself. I was never one to accept compliments easily or graciously.
Anyway, I’m going off on a tangent here. Back to the reason that I was so doubtful of our relationship in the early days. The truth was nothing to do with him: he was the perfect angel. The reality was probably that I loved him too much. There were days that I questioned whether I would be better off without him. Perhaps, with him out of my life, I would be free: from commitment; from need, from the reliance I had on him and the control, however subconscious, he had over me.
Then, there were days when I realised how ridiculous the idea of me without him actually was. We weren’t a couple, we couldn’t be described as a pair. We were the same individual: our lives were too entangled, our love too entwined to be separated. Without each other, we were both half a person, each living half a life. Together, we were something incredible; apart, we were nothing.
On the surface, it sounds ideal. Imagine a love that strong, that impenetrable. But in reality, it was too much. The need was too great, and the reliance too strong, on both our parts.
So, on the days that I believed that we coexisted perfectly, I would gradually succumb to a bitter internal conflict as I sought to oppress the feeling that I should not need someone so greatly. And as that feeling threatened to overwhelm me, I began to believe that we should not be together. But of course, once I convinced myself that perhaps we would be better apart, where we could both live more complete and independent existences, I would remember that we could never successfully be parted and still manage to maintain convincingly fulfilled separate lives. And that reminder of the strength and sheer power of the love that we shared served only to increase its intensity further.
A vicious circle: perhaps the most fitting description. We were both
aware that it was a positive feedback loop that could drag us down and
finish us altogether.
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