"I just want to go to a beach somewhere with you and sit there on the sand, looking at the sea, feeling it, smelling it, holding each other, like we used to," I said, through the tears which he patiently wiped away with his thumb.

It had been one of those days. I get them about once a week, on average. Everything was conspiring to overwhelm me, to engulf me in panic, to fill my eyes with tears as soon as I was left alone to contemplate. The approach of the annual stress-fest that is Christmas, the never-ending stream of chores to be done, the cloud which hangs over our house (alluded to, though not in any detail, here), the stress of driving home every day in the cold and dark, the long journeys required to see my beloved friends, the feeling of never having any time to study, to relax, to just simply be.

It seems that I've spent my adult life moving on and starting over. Each time, I tell myself: "This is when my life really begins...". Each time I'm left with a strange ache, telling me I'm not there yet, I'm not living yet, I don't quite belong. The daily routine takes over and deadens me and I just feel I'm being carried along by life rather than actively living it.

I thought that being with Big would "fix" me. That nothing else would matter as long as I was with him. As a long-term singleton, it's easy to think that all your problems will be solved as soon as you find someone. In some ways, the things which need "fixing" in me which had been lying dormant during my singleton years have been brought to the fore all the more by finding my soul mate. He's the one person who understands the complicated mess of neuroses which is me. I am compelled to be completely honest with him. To the question: "Are you okay", I cannot just say: "Yeah, I'm fine". Not when I'm not. Not with him. He always senses it, and draws it out of me. Hopes, fears, worries and tears. And whilst he can stand there and hold me and stroke my hair and wipe the tears away and tell me it's okay, ultimately he can't fix me. I must do this myself.

But before you can fix something, you need to know the precise problem. All I have are the symptoms. Inexplicable tears, the feeling that I can't cope, that I'm chasing my tail, that I don't "belong", that I'm not "there" yet.

Maybe I'll never get "there". Maybe all I have is this journey.