Tag: heartbreak

What if it was supposed to be me?

Harvey Milk said:

“Go after her. Fuck, don’t sit there and wait for her to call, go after her because that’s what you should do if you love someone, don’t wait for them to give you a sign cause it might never come, don’t let people happen to you, don’t let me happen to you, or her, she’s not a fucking television show or tornado. There are people I might have loved had they gotten on the airplane or run down the street after me or called me up drunk at four in the morning because they need to tell me right now and because they cannot regret this and I always thought I’d be the only one doing crazy things for people who would never give enough of a fuck to do it back or to act like idiots or be entirely vulnerable and honest and making someone fall in love with you is easy and flying 3000 miles on four days notice because you can’t just sit there and do nothing and breathe into telephones is not everyone’s idea of love but it is the way I can recognize it because that is what I do. Go scream it and be with her in meaningful ways because that is beautiful and that is generous and that is what loving someone is, that is raw and that is unguarded, and that is all that is worth anything, really.”

Sometimes I wonder what if I tried one more time?

What if I told you that I was sorry?

What if I told you that I missed you every second of every day (and even the intervals between seconds), that I loved you so much that sometimes I just didn’t even notice it, not like an afterthought, but because it was that much a part of me, it was just a part of my existence, like breathing. ?

You were necessary like breathing to me.

What if I showed up one more time? What if I looked into your eyes one more time?

I am forgetting what your voice sounds like.

I am forgetting what your laugh sounds like.

I looked up one of your social media accounts.

I saw you with your new girlfriend.

You love her so much, you wrote.

You love her family as well.

She’s supportive and kind and crazy about you.

And that’s all good and well. It really is.

But I can’t shake the fact that I should’ve been the one holding your hand forever.

What if it was supposed to be me?

–S.

Ghost Stories.

I am walking with your ghost again,

through fields filled with weeds, abandoned store parking lots, and cemeteries you now call home.

I am walking with your ghost again,

through empty playgrounds, the haunted city asylum, and the forest where you told me your first secret.

I am walking with your ghost again, through buildings where our laughter no longer echoes, on rusty train tracks, to the last place we were whole.

I am walking with your ghost again,

but you are fading as the sun is climbing the sky.

I am walking along again,

bracing myself for your millionth goodbye.

–S.

A Texas Summer.

That summer, he shaved his beard off.

She cut her hair.

Running his hand through her short hair, he said ”I loved your long hair, why did you cut it?”

She laughed and said, ”I tried to cut you out of it,” with sad eyes.

And he stared at her – like he’d tried to cut her out of his beard, too.

–S.

Dreaming.

I dreamed that we could always be that close.

That I would always be the one that your heart desired, that it loved.

That we played together, that we laughed.

That when one of us was down, the other was always around to bring them up.

I dreamed of giving my virginity to you.

of you being the one for me, forever.

Just one. The first and the last.

I dreamed of you as the perfect husband and devoted father.

Affectionate.

I dreamed that our chemistry never faded.

That it always burned as brightly as it ever did.

I dreamed your laugh forever.

I dreamed your smile.

I dreamed your love.

I dreamed your touch.

I dreamed your weight on top of me.

–S.

I will miss my friend.

I was disappointed to find out that nothing had changed.

That within me there still lived this thing, something that always wanted to please you.

I hate that and that is the truth.

I can’t be your friend. I actually don’t want to be.

I would be –  in an ideal universe where my head could un-think what it thought about you and erase all of the memories.

I would be – in an ideal universe where my heart could un-feel what it felt for you.

I would be – in an ideal universe where my soul didn’t feel like it was supposed to be connected to yours forever.

That is what I will miss the most – my friend.

For most, well all situations, I usually say that I wouldn’t change anything about the way the events played out because of the experience and the lessons that I learned along with it.

But, I would undo this one.

I want you to know that I would undo it all to ensure that we could always be friends.

As with most things, my mind added fresh paint over the pictures of us, the memories of us, the fantasies of us, the daydreams of us.

My daydreams and fantasies creating the perfect encounters.

However, they never actually existed.

At least not in the way that I painted them to be.

In another life, maybe.

In this life, never.

–S.

Heavy Heart.

Excerpt from a letter that now almost seems like it was written in a past life.

I’ll miss your stories. I’ll miss fighting with you.

I’ll miss your deep voice. I’ll miss knowing you.

I’ll miss hearing your smile through the phone. I’ll miss you calling me on your lunch break.

I’ll miss falling asleep to your text messages. I’ll miss waking up to your text messages.

I will miss everything so fucking much.

God, it’s really over.

My heart is so heavy.

It is so so tired.

–S.

I don’t understand any of it.

Another letter written to my dead grandmother from years ago.

Grandma,

Love is a strange thing. Love in connection with death is even stranger. It’s when you no longer inhabit the earth that the regret hits. All of the phone calls you should have made. The time you should’ve spent. The memories you should’ve made.

I have to believe that in some way this will reach you. That in some way, shape, or form – it still can.

Some days it scares me that the memory of your laugh and your voice is fading. It scares me that people immediately get caught up in the politics of it all. Where did the mourning go?

People prepare you for heartbreak. And sex. And to cook. To clean. To love. To remember to feed the dog. To take responsibility for your actions. To say sorry.

They don’t prepare you for death.

And maybe that’s why we all act so differently. For some, it’s the pain that comes with waking up every morning. For some, it’s their smile and how it will never be fully genuine again, never reach their eyes. For some, it’s burying any real emotion, six feet.

For others, it happens at random moments. The wind against their face. Blades of grass brushing against legs. The sun burning the skin. Rain hitting the window. Or it hits every few months. Or years. The darkness finds its way into your bedroom. It sleeps with you. It eats with you. It bathes with you. It breaths with you.

I won’t tell you what it is for me. Just know that life is what it always was. And then some days – I remember. And life becomes something entirely different.

I don’t understand many things. They crash into me and knock me over. And I don’t understand them.

Love is a strange thing.

Death is even stranger.

Mourning is the strangest of them all.

I’m still loving on you girl. I know that you’re still holding it down – wherever it is that you are.

–S.

Storyteller.

All I really know is that we were on the phone and he told me that he wanted to tell me a story.

I was happy because I knew in that moment that he could have chosen to be on the phone with anyone, but he chose me.

And there I am listening to a story about a man with only one thumb.

But he is laughing and I am not.

He says, ‘I guess you just had to be there.’

It’s not that. I am not laughing because a big part of me is sad. I’m sad because I am thinking and preparing for a moment a million moments from now – when he doesn’t tell me these stories.

–S.

Black Boots.

2014.

I’m driving home.

It’s 2:32 in the morning.

It’s chilly in Texas now.

More late at night than during any other time of the day.

I wonder what the weather is like where you are. I turn the radio on, and I hear Justin Timberlake taking back the night.

I wonder what you’re listening to nowadays. Are you playing your piano?

I turn the radio off. I don’t want to take back this night. It’s beautiful. I want to burn it into my memory forever. It’s truly been special and I haven’t done anything special in quite some time. When I am wearing my faux leather black boots, I feel like I can do anything. I wore them tonight. If we still spoke, you’d know about them. I would have sent you a picture. I was dressed in all black with touches of gold jewelry. I felt sexy and mysterious all wrapped into one with a ribbon on it.

I laughed a lot tonight. Real laughter. I meant all of it.

And there was this moment when I was driving home, and the air was blowing aggressively against my face, that I missed you.

I really really missed you.

I wondered if you were at work maybe thinking of me too.

I wanted you to wrap your words around me and bring me warmth the rest of the car ride home.

I wanted you to lay me down on my pillow and sing me to sleep.

Your deep low timbre.

I would do anything to hear your smile – even over the telephone.

I don’t even need to see it, it would be enough.

Just to know that it was my smile. For me. Because of me.

If it’s cold where you are, I wish you warmth.

I wish you the sun.

–S.

I remember those faux leather black boots. I wore them into another love story. They were my favorite boots to dance in downtown. Eventually – one of them started coming apart and I would use black tape to keep it together. I was wearing them in dimly lit bars and clubs, but also didn’t give a fuck if anyone noticed the tape.

I loved those black boots. I LIVED in those black boots.

RIP Faux Leather Black Boots.