Still Life With Matches

STILL LIFE WITH MATCHES, WINE, AND A WOMAN WHO WAS REAL

I’ve spent most of my life cultivating an appetite for things that don’t require me to be fully seen. Work. Discipline. Control. Self-improvement projects disguised as virtue. The kind of pursuits that reward endurance and punish vulnerability. You can be admired there without ever being known. It’s a comfortable arrangement. It keeps the knives pointed outward.

Then she showed up.

Not with fireworks or melodrama or some ridiculous, prepackaged romance. She arrived quietly, the way the best things do—through conversation that didn’t feel like negotiation, laughter that wasn’t defensive, moments that didn’t need polishing before being presented. She was intelligent without performing intelligence. Warm without demanding anything. Present in a way that made time behave differently.

She was—this is the part that still gets me—effortlessly herself.

There was nothing needy about her. Nothing grasping. No agenda. She didn’t want to be saved. She didn’t need fixing. She wasn’t auditioning for approval. She simply existed in her own skin, and somehow that made the air around her lighter. Being with her felt like taking off a coat you didn’t realize you’d been wearing for decades.

She listened. Really listened. Not the polite nodding kind, but the kind where you realize halfway through a sentence that you’re saying things you didn’t plan to say. The kind where silence isn’t awkward—it’s companionable. Dangerous territory for someone like me, who has built a career out of articulation as armor.

She was kind without being soft. Strong without advertising it. There was depth there—earned depth, the kind that comes from having lived and felt and lost without turning bitter or theatrical about it. She had that rare combination of gravity and levity. You could talk about serious things without drowning. You could joke without feeling like you were hiding.

In another life—one with fewer barricades and more courage—I would have stayed.

Because yes, I fell in love with her. Not infatuation. Not projection. Love in the slow, terrifying sense. The kind that rearranges priorities without asking permission. The kind that makes you look at your carefully constructed life and think, I would trade all of this for mornings with her and the honesty that comes with them.

For a moment, I was ready to leave everything behind. Not impulsively—clarity has a different texture than recklessness. I saw the cost. I weighed it. And I still thought: worth it.

That should have been my answer.

Instead, the old machinery kicked in.

Because here’s the part no one writes greeting cards about: love doesn’t scare me because it might leave. Love scares me because it might stay. Because staying would require me to believe something I’ve never fully accepted—that I am worthy of being loved without proving, performing, or paying for it in advance.

I’ve always carried this quiet belief like a sealed indictment: that love is something other people receive naturally, and something I must either earn through usefulness or sabotage before it exposes the fraud. I don’t fear rejection as much as I fear being accepted and then found out.

So when I realized I loved her—really loved her—I did what I’ve done before.

I retreated.

I told myself stories that sounded responsible. I wrapped fear in maturity, called withdrawal wisdom, labeled self-protection as moral restraint. I convinced myself I was sparing everyone pain. That I was doing the right thing. That I was being noble.

It was bullshit.

What I was really doing was choosing the familiar ache over the terrifying possibility of joy. Choosing control over connection. Choosing solitude because solitude, at least, never surprises you.

And the tragedy—the kind you only appreciate with time—is that she didn’t demand anything unreasonable. She didn’t ask me to become someone else. She didn’t push or manipulate or corner me. She offered presence. She offered honesty. She offered herself.

And I walked away.

Not because she wasn’t enough.
Because she was too real.

I think about her often. Not obsessively, not romantically embalmed, but with a steady, sober awareness. She has become a benchmark. A reminder. Proof that what I claim to want actually exists—and that I recognized it instantly.

That matters more than I like to admit.

Because now I know the cost of running. I know exactly what I gave up. And I also know that my fear didn’t protect me from pain—it just delayed it and stripped it of meaning.

I don’t write this to absolve myself. There’s no absolution here. Just inventory. Just honesty. The kind you do late at night when you’re tired of lying to yourself and the bottle’s empty.

She was wonderful. Truly. In ways that didn’t need exaggeration.

And I loved her.

That’s the truth.
Uncomfortable. Unresolved. Undeniable.

Still hungry.
Still learning which fires are worth walking toward.