I Left Out the Most Important Part

Cooper Thornton
3 min readMar 16, 2024

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Photo courtesy of RawPixel

I failed an audition tonight. I failed a part of the audition that had nothing to do with the audition. I might still get the job. I don’t know. I don’t care. I missed a real opportunity to let the person I love know how much I love them. And it wasn’t the first time.

The audition required that I share a brief 30 seconds about myself. And I shared about my sons and about my woodworking. But I didn’t share about the most cherished and delightful woman in my life.

Believe it or not, I’m a pretty private guy, particularly when it comes to sharing things about the people that are closest to me. At least that’s what I’ve thought. But the person who is the closest to me, the person in whom I confide everything and who confides everything with me, the person I love so deeply pointed out to me the flaw in this. That it’s possibly for fear that I fail to own my love for her.

Because in truth, I’ve been afraid to share about this love I’ve found. Why?!

I tell her that it’s because she is sacred to me, what we have is sacred, that I want to hold it close and protect it. That to share it on a platform such as this, in my mind, somehow cheapens it. Then everyone will have some ownership of the information. Anyone can comment on it. And I don’t want to offer that up to the world. As if the world really cares. But that’s what I’ve thought. At least that’s what I’ve said.

But it communicates something else to Nicole. That’s her name. Nicole. I like the way it feels to say her name. I don’t mean writing it here. I mean to actually speak her name. The way it forms in my mouth and sounds in my ears and feels in my soul. Nicole.

I’ve written about almost anything and everything in my life on these “pages”. About my sons, being a father and a husband, about my divorce, about my mental and physical health, about my troubled relationship with my father. About my prostate and my bowels. But not about anything to do with my love life.

Yes, I want to keep some things private, but I think now if I’m really honest with myself, in the past I hadn’t wanted to advertise that I was in a committed dating relationship maybe because I was afraid to commit. Afraid to publicly declare that I am in love and unavailable.

But that doesn’t make sense anymore. I’m not afraid of that. Because I am committed to Nicole, in love and unavailable. We love each other. We get a great kick out of each other. We have incredible emotional, intellectual, spiritual and physical intimacy. I am full with her. Like I can breathe deeper. And cry harder. And laugh longer.

Nothing fills me like her smile. And the touch of her hands. Or the feel of her sweet feet on mine. The smell of her hair. And our hugs. It’s like she’s hugging me from inside.

I didn’t think for certain that she even existed. When we first met, at the very first sight of her, I was so taken aback. I’m still taken aback. I am still every day, many times a day, caught by the wonder that we are together.

That’s why I twitch. My love tourretes. I truly have no control over it. I see Nicole, I twitch. I think of Nicole, I twitch. Electricity flowing through me that has always been a part of me but has only now been able to complete the circuit.

There is such a flow of energy and love with her. I want and need her in my life.

I failed to say any of that and it left her feeling that she doesn’t matter.

How could I do that?

Tonight, I told a brief story about myself and left out the most important part. I’m in love with Nicole.

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Cooper Thornton

Parent, Actor, People Lover, Observer, Writer and Most Often Happy Depressive in NC by way of LA by way of UK by way of BC by way of TN, where it all started.