Eau Parfumée au Thé Blanc Bvlgari 2003 Eau de Cologne

A whole decade we have shared together, you and I, a decade full of madness and melancholy, fireworks and ocean depths, heavy metal and soft tones.
Tears by day, laughter by night, chimes at odd hours and hours dripping by far too slowly.
A decade with a black sun and a red moon, with magic rays in the night sky and a return to the womb.
Did you think that we would experience all this and much more together, back on that day in Simone's perfumery?
There you stood, cool, clear, subtle, and very elegant - I already knew your big green brothers, the red one was not yet in the world.
I liked you, I took you with me into that time when a love affair swept me away, that lifted my world off its hinges, washed my brain, and flicked my soul to Venus and back, letting me plunge without a straw into a wild sea that promised to swallow me, to drown me.
You witnessed all of this, silently, reserved, never joining in, always keeping a distance from my feelings, my longings, my memories.
Two years later, the tornado spat me out, leaving me behind with twisted, shattered limbs, breathless and without will.
Do you remember?
You watched me as I picked myself up and fell again, as I crawled and stumbled blindly, walking slowly beside me on the long path back to myself.
You were there, bright and cool, never touching me, not my head, not the heart that was just minced meat, and yet you never left me alone, never.
Eventually, many days, weeks, months later, I was well again, the survival mechanisms had kicked in and banished the dark fog from my brain.
You were still there, still - many of your brothers and sisters had to leave, had found another home, because I could no longer bear them, not the images, the memories, the deep pain that their scent revived again and again.
You remained with your citrus cheerfulness, the restrained floral sweetness, and a gentle yet distinct tea note that kindly stimulates and calms at the same time, cooling and restraining my blood.
You never wanted to become herby with me, a bit scratchy perhaps, as your namesake can be, the white tea, if one dares to treat it wrongly.
And I know that you will punish me with silence again, and yet I must again think of Calvin Klein's famous One, which becomes so similar to you on my skin with that aquatic nuance that closely intertwines with the citrus notes and relegates the tea to second place.
Of course, you are finer in your composition, more fragile and cooler, softer and more mature, calmer, more grown-up than CK One, but still...
What is so wrong with mentioning you both in the same breath?
Don't forget that he, the healer, wore that very Calvin at our first meeting, who perhaps didn't really fit him, but also didn't disturb and certainly didn't prevent anything.
It will soon be eight years since then.
He is still there, warm and firm and constant, my rock in the surf, my ripcord on the parachute, my crackling fireplace when the storm howls through the trees outside, my lifeboat when I have once again played Titanic, my I-am-with-you.
He is there.
Just like you.