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[shhthisoneissecret-blog]

your new haircut looks dumb

I still talk to your brother. But not about you. I don’t ask how you are. I don’t ask if you went home or are still in the states. I don’t need to know. I don’t want to insert myself into your life unwanted. I read in the paper that you graduated, and I smiled, thinking of all the days I spent helping you with projects and presentations.

It was bittersweet.

I wondered, after I left, if there was another girl, sitting on the floor of your bedroom, editing your research papers whilst you played video games.

Not that it matters.

My feelings for you are a mixed bag. I never gave myself time to pick through them and sort them out and place them in nice little rows in the way that healthy, sane people do. I just stuffed them down and piled in some glitter and wine and lint from the bottom of my handbag on top until I couldn’t feel them anymore.

I’ve gone numb to you.

When you cross my mind, my heart turns to radio static.

God, we were toxic.

I know it was my fault, initially. I was too young to care about the repercussions of hurting you and too desperate not to be alone to realize it was unhealthy. All those times you tried to end it. I cried and begged for more, and you gave in each time because deep down, I think you didn’t want to be alone either.

We were co-dependent.

I was substance dependent.

I should have let you walk away the first time, and saved myself the subsequent two years in which every day that passed grated slowly along my heart and my mind.

I was so turned around in you. In the idea of you. In the idea that if I tried hard enough, I could make you love me the way I deserved to be loved.

I’m sorry that I ended our relationship the way I did. I was honestly too raw to fight it out. So instead, I got drunk and I screamed and I ran away into the night.

When we met again a year later, in the throes of my failing marriage, you said you never loved me.

I believed you.

But I still care.

I wish I didn’t. I know it’s sick. But sometimes, a good memory floats to the surface. Like you, driving back from Atlantic City, smiling. Or you, drink in hand, dancing in front of the television to annoy your friends as they played FIFA. Those memories take me back to that place, emotionally, where I was good because I had you. When you were happy, you were golden, you were magnetic; to me, you were the inevitable slide into a warm bed.

There is no forgetting you.

They say that time heals all wounds. I hope time will fix whatever parts of you I broke. I make dua for you every day. That you are happy and safe and live a good life. That was where you were headed before you met me.

I hope that’s where you wind up.

[shhthisoneissecret-blog]

I think I saw you… For a few brief seconds, your face, stretched wide with joy, flashed in the background of some teenie-bopper’s five seconds of JumboTron fame. You were watching the game, not the camera, and I still can’t be sure if it was really you. I hadn’t thought about you in a few years. I know that sounds like a shit thing to say, but I don’t really expect you to have given me much thought either. But in that moment, when I saw your face, my heart broke again along the same old lines, crushed by the weight of what happened the last time we talked.

I will never be able to express how sorry I am. You reached out to me, after years of silence, seeking forgiveness and friendship. I had both for you; I still have both for you. My life then, the context of it, the edges of the frame that don’t lend themselves easily to being conveyed over text, would not allow me to give you what you wanted. Ten minutes after our last phone conversation, I was locked in a closet for 29 ½ hours. During those hours, all I had to think about was how irreparable was the damage I had just done to you. Those words, placed heavy-handedly in my mouth by my now ex-husband, sat cold and hard in my stomach for weeks afterward; after the door had been unlocked, after my phone number had been changed, even after the divorce had been finalized. Seeing you on that giant screen on Monday made me realize I had to take those words back. You didn’t deserve them.

You don’t need my forgiveness; there was never anything to forgive except hurt adolescent feelings and a bit of bruised ego. I’m so glad that you’ve reclaimed your life, that you’ve overcome your demons. I’m glad you’re happy now. I will always remember you as you were in school, with kind eyes and quick wit, eager to be a friend to anyone. I’m sorry I was unkind. I’m sorry that I won’t get to know you as an adult.

Good luck