Loving him often causes you to contradict yourself.

Although you want him to have the best coach out there no matter how far the coach might be, at the same time you would rather have him ten blocks away instead of ten hours. You often wish that he’d spend more time with you, even though you know how important it is for him to train. You would be happy if he had all the support in the world, yet you aren’t pleased about the idea of sharing with seven billion others.

How demanding you are seems to be directly proportional to how selfless he is, you realize, as he sacrifices hours of practice to have coffee with you on cold afternoons, as he constantly murmurs reassurances that he loves you, as he tells you over and over that he doesn’t want to go to Toronto - even though the anticipation dancing in his eyes says otherwise.

"Please don’t let Canada take you away from me," you want to say as you hug him goodbye at the airport, but you leave the words unspoken so as not to dampen his excitement. It’s still quite a challenge to stop the words from forming on your lips, but slowly you’ve learned to bite your tongue.

Being an ocean apart, the only way to see him is through the television screen. As you watch him face the roaring crowd after a brilliant performance, you can’t help but wonder if he ever wants to come back. Does he think fondly of the times when happiness was measured in the laughter, the shy smiles, the burning cheeks? Or does he relish the new freedom, the absence of the suffocating embraces that wouldn’t let him fly?