The weather is changing again. I sweat against my sheets at night, withdrawing myself from different medications and yet I am cold throughout the day. September’s anxiety has come two months early, and here is why: The love of my life flew back in nine days ago. All the way from Canada, where he has been for six years. A little longer than the initial three months that he had promised. He told me that he was coming to see me, that I was the only reason that he would be here, and yet somehow we seem to be further apart than we have ever been. Eventually, he has committed to seeing me next weekend, but I broke and told him that I feel distanced, that I feel upset and that I don’t know what to think anymore. I went on a first date with a man almost one month ago. It was an effort in keeping myself busy, in connecting with somebody new, in proving to myself that I am my own person and that another man could find me attractive. I declined that second date, as I promised myself that I would, and yet somehow I found myself in his bed for the second time, just last night. He is clever and small and gentle, but he is surprising and strong and sexy and I have never felt a pull towards another person in the way that I do him. For the first time in my life, I am having sex that transcends my body, and I feel as though I have never felt such intimacy with another person. We lie naked beside each other for hours, looking at the lines on each other’s faces, neither of us uttering a word. I cannot stay away. I do not want to stay away. He is very clear about his intentions, he says he is crazy about me, and he believes that despite how I pull away, my heart is there for the taking. I want every inch of him. I want him. I know that lust is talking, that lust is steering me in the direction of something that will break another man’s heart. Another man who has talked me down time and time again from what he hasn’t known has been the cusp of death. Of a sadness that I always felt would end my life. And yet I feel, because of him, here I still stand. But he lives thousands of miles away and cannot come home for years. I feel like I’m repeating history, like this story is doomed to repeat itself again and again. We are caught in a cycle of being apart and I do love him, but we are not together, and the strain of too many miles is blurring the lines. I don’t know what it is to just be with him and him alone, without the complications of other lovers or parents or distance or trying to explain how this whole thing came to be. I’m supposed to see him next weekend and I can’t believe myself when I say this, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to sleep in his bed and to do the things that we haven’t been able to do in an attempt to prove to myself that he is everything above all else. He doesn’t even know that I am having doubts. He doesn’t know that I’ve been in another man’s bed. He doesn’t know that I’m not all in. How do I break his heart a second time and get away with it? Do I want to? What do I want? And so I keep quiet, crumbling in on top of myself and these secrets that I swore that I would never have again. The cold of September is in my bones, clutching at my softly beating heart. It should not be this difficult to stay out of another person’s bed.