Sappho says love is bittersweet, but it isn’t, not really. She says love is γλυκύπικρος- literally, sweetbitter.
And she’s right. The sweetness comes first. The sweetness is watching your lips move as you talk to our coworker about something I wasn’t paying attention to (I was preoccupied). It’s ecstatically reporting back to my friends over lunch that you smiled in my general direction. Then, finally, going to restaurants, beaches, arcades… with first almost-kisses in a mall parking lot and roller skating on Fridays… and one evening nervously moving the laundry off of my bed to make space for us. It’s sweet when I call you when you get home after being together since breakfast. I could forever look at you, examining every inch of your face, and listen to you tell me about your day. It’s bliss.
The bitterness comes next. The sweetness never wore off (and I know it never will), but as months went on, it became combined with something else. Maybe it was September creeping up, because I was leaving for school too far away up north, while you stayed where you were. But you knew that when you met me. I think it was knowing that our limbs had melted together… How could we get torn apart after so long of fitting perfectly into each other’s arms?
Through long phone calls and handwritten letters, we’re still two parts of a whole. But in a different way than before. We know so much about each other we could never be completely separated; never torn apart. Some days I don’t even feel like my whole self without you next to me.
I’m reminded of the bitterness during long goodbyes, softly closing car doors, and watching your car’s bright red brake lights get smaller and smaller until you turn right onto Kent (I still watch your car drive away from my driveway). When it’s 6 a.m. here and 7 a.m. there and the day’s first sunbeams hit your window before they ever reach mine. When I know I’ve got two more years until I wake up to you by my side (wherever that might be).
But what is love without the bitterness? The bitterness is much more beautiful than sweetness; the sweet is easy and the bitter is hard. The bitterness does not leave a bad taste, but rather a more complex and memorable one. Let me revel in the tears, the heartache, the pain, because in the end, when it all turns out, it’ll prove just how much I love you.
