Seeking Tate

FFFI met her in the coldest part of my life, when I was in a place where it was incredibly hard to even think about rolling out of bed each morning just to sustain myself. I was more or less a lone traveler, a boy who had lost sight of home long before I liked to admit I did - a hopeless cause and a reckless dreamer destined for a path of destruction.

It seemed that the only way I could survive day-to-day was by falling asleep to visions – visions that I was laughing and dancing and actually living my life instead of simply skidding by, riding on the edge of tipping into a canyon I would not be able to climb out of.

She was my sunlight – the warmth that I needed to cut deep down to thaw those icy bones that had chilled my soul to the point in which I felt nothing.

I was a road warrior, a distant traveler who’d seen everything, experienced so much, and still could not find the happiness that I so desperately sought out.

And then I saw her smile, in a place that I had never found anything worthwhile in before: my hometown.

It was the spark that I needed, the tiny warmth that flitted in my stomach and stirred up emotions that I couldn’t even put proper emotions or words to.

For so long, I believed I’d belonged nowhere, to no one, that could relate to no specific group of people – forever the tortured poet that would never find his muse. But it took just one second, one glance, one casual run-in, to change my mind.

The second I looked into Tate Winchester’s eyes I knew that our story wouldn’t just start and end with one single moment. I wouldn’t allow it – couldn’t allow the feelings felt to just fizzle out.

Her eyes told me I was home – a place I hadn’t experienced in so long.

And in that moment, in that feeling of comfort – of belonging - I knew that she was what I’d been searching for for so long without even realizing it.

It was a miracle really; not only did I need her, but she needed me too, for some reason. How such a beautiful person needed a calamity like me in her life would forever be a question that would go unanswered. It just was; she just did – without a justifiable reason, without a legitimate cause.

She needed me.

And I took to the role faster than I liked to admit.

Tate made me a better person. She healed the wounds that I’d carried around, the burdens that had weighed me down for so long. She was a natural helper, a beautiful soul, the calmest, most elegant person I’d ever seen before – a magnetic being. She understood me, and I understood her.

But sometimes things are too good to be true, and it really does take getting everything you’d only ever dreamed about and losing it to realize just who you are.

But sometimes – just sometimes – it only takes re-writing an old story to gain it all back.