i find it hard to believe i must force myself to drink water

looking through old photos the ones where i was in france i sense an air of naivete a time of inexperience a time of escape. all i see is a 16 year old self who is no longer me, that girl tasted differently, she liked to things differently. she liked sex and drugs, she wanted to escape and she wanted nothing more from the pain of a family she thought hated her and the pain from those that she thought had no interest in her. she is a different girl who clings to anyone who showed her respect and anyone who started to talk to her. and as i look through the photos of her, a girl that was once me, i feel when i went to chicago i should have taken more photos, thousands of them, billions of them. of me and him, walking through the streets, streets that felt so familiar yet were so unknown. and i was scared and naive then too, but a different sort of naive because i felt safe with him. when i hold his hand i feel safe. i think of the beauty of the lights outside the taxi window with just me and him and our silly foreign driver inside the vehicle -- just us and that's it. how tightly i held his hand. out of fear, out of unknown, out of curiosity, out of something more than love, out of something noncorporeal. it is more than 'love' that brings two people together, it is relating on levels that do not exist on earth through our physical actions and our touches and our words with one another, the good and the bad. change can happen in so many ways and so quickly, ways that i didn't think were possible. but now i can say that whenever i feel disrupted in my life it means nothing because nothing can disrupt the contentment i feel with my life when i know that i belong to him