Disappear

I loved you. Loved. Loved you in the overwhelming idealized blind way that is so characteristic of my age. Loved you in a sweet, warm kind of way that didn’t care about religion or politics or preferences, loved you for existing, loved you for trying, loved you for loving everyone else – loved you while hurting me.

Today I love you the way someone loves a freckle, am as fond of you as this scar on my arm that I turn my attention to every day, feel for you much the same as I feel for the pencil I use to write my name. I know you for who you are, for who you could be, and for who you were, and these days I don’t know who I dislike most. Your presence is a ringing in my ear that, with time, I forget.

I wanted to save you. I was going to take you into my hands and smooth over the destruction, was going to patch the cracks in your heart. Now saving you doesn’t even seem worth it, doesn’t feel right – these days, I’m wondering if there’s even anything left to save. Each day you are losing me more, and I don’t think you realize I’m even gone.

I’m sorry for this news. For all the times I said I loved you when you just didn’t care. For the number of times I could not fix life’s disappointments. For the sorry way you say you still care when I know you don’t. For the wall of denial, pity and regret I have erected between us. For the fact that you don’t even know it’s there.

I am not known for physically leaving. As is my custom, I will say goodbye slowly. Soon I’ll be a whisper. Soon I’ll just disappear.

The Saddest Goodbye

Here is the puddle of tears you left when you told me you were unsure of our future.

Here are the sweet hellos you gave me early in the morning when we would talk on the phone in hushed whispers so that no one knew we were awake.

Here is the metaphor you gave me of the sky because you obviously did not love me more than the number of stars; I do not want to think of you when I glance into the beauty of the sparkling past every night outside my window.

Here are the carefully handled “I love you”s that I let curl around my heart and warm me on the coldest nights; I have no need for them now that I know the truth.

Here is the sound of my heart beating furiously against my chest every time you answered the phone.

Here are the nights we stayed up until five talking about the future; I will miss the ghosts of our unborn children, the rustle of the trees in the house we never inhabited, the warmth of your body holding mine.

Here are the dreams you shared with me in the depth of the nights you actually allowed yourself to imagine something better.

Here is the sweet sound of your name on my tongue, the gentle way my voice dropped when I would say hello, the candy of saying I love you over and over again.

Here are the unshared memories you abandoned when you decided to help rather than to feel.

Here are your promises of saving me from this sadness that I battle every single day.

Here is your heart that I have loved and held and guarded as if it were my very own. I hope you can open yourself up to love again. I hope she is a girl that will make you feel as if you are free, even though both of us know you will always be chained.

In return, I only ask for the fragments of my heart I handed you unwillingly, because we both know you stole it from me first. The tattered bag of dreams I left in your possession on a night when lightening lit up the sky. The tired aspirations of a girl too young to feel this incredibly old.

I want you to keep the hope I left on the doorstep of your heart, the fire of a love so passionate that it burned within both of us, the gentle comfort that friendship and companionship can offer.

I want you to hold it with you, stuff it in your backpack, store it in your glove compartment in your battered truck. And when you feel as if you are all alone, as if you cannot live another day or breathe another second, I want you to take all these possessions and remember that I loved you. I will always love you.

And finally, please take this goodbye. Have an incredible life.

Repressed Sorrow

“The future is the past returning through another gate.”

– Arnold H. Glasow

Her father had blue eyes and wavy brown hair. He wore glasses that made him seem smart; and he was about certain things, like what he thought of the stars, philosophy, art and people in general. “Watch their eyes,” he would always tell her as she sat on his lap looking out at the stars. “You can tell a lot about people by looking at their eyes.”

Her father’s eyes were glossy and far away. She always wondered where he was in his mind. She wondered why he didn’t want to be with her.

One day he left with his torn bag of clothes, a book, and her mother’s lemon of a car. She likes to think he went where he always used to be in his mind. She never got the chance to find out; she never saw him again.

Her mother said he was never happy. Bitter, she began dating again. There was Johnny the carpenter who secretly adored Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. She never got along with Charlie the banker from New York who couldn’t say coffee and liked to say things like “time heals all wounds” and “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Whatever that meant. But she actually liked Dave from Texas whose words were slow and sweet to her ears. He would take her and her mom outside and point out the constellations – “Look, there’s Orion’s belt and the big dipper! Look!”

They all left. Even Dave, who told her she was his best girl and never to trust boys with cars and never to give up because people have fought for centuries to survive so she can be here.

They all left with their bags. She watched them from the window, wondering where they would go, if they would think of her, why her mom wasn’t enough.

One day she realized the similarities: the glasses that made them look smart, the blue eyes, the wavy brown hair, the ability and need to walk away.

She read that “the future is the past returning through another gate” and she had to wonder why her mother allowed so many men to walk through so many gates, why she didn’t bother to lock these gates, why she let all of the men in their lives leave.

She decided after a while that maybe some people will just never learn.

Metaphor for Loving You

I know you don’t like metaphors, but they’re the only thing that makes sense to me in this too easily broken world.

If you were a boat, I would be the nails and screws and rivets that hold you together and prevent you from sinking.

If you were a star, I would be the planet circling around you over and over again, pulled to you but far enough away that you probably don’t even care that I’m there.

If the world gives you a thunderstorm, I’m the pathetic rainbow peaking behind the darkest clouds in an attempt to make you smile.

If you were a bird, I would be the air you use to help make you fly, always there but never acknowledged or thanked or even respected.

And I know you don’t love me the way I love you. I know that I cannot make you care the way I do. I know I can’t get mad at you for not loving more or loving differently, but this pain is an ocean and I am a pebble and I can’t keep myself from getting lost in the bottom.

When I look at you I see cracks of betrayal where I once saw trust, right there at the corners of your eyes and in the curve of your smile.

When I think about you, I see a broken door knob and I feel stuck and frustrated that I cannot find a way out of loving you.

When I think about the fact that none of this matters to you, I see a pile of dust that once meant life and warmth but now is composed of a bunch of dead skin cells and dirt.

You are the tree and I am the leaves that you use to give you light and energy, but utterly gets shed in the fall.

You are the bat and I am the ball and we are made for each other but you can’t seem to exist without hurting me.

I am the pathetic loser who loves you, and you are the cool person who “cares”, but we – we do not belong together. Not now. Not ever. And that realization makes me the biggest fool for holding on.

Saying Goodbye

I wanted to give you happiness, but you became best friends with despair. I guess it makes sense; he is much easier to get along with, and he is more persistent than even me. But I got over it, and I moved on, even though you never realized just how deeply your preference cut.

I wanted to give you peace of mind, but you wouldn’t accept my treasure map to the secret. You opted to follow someone else, and you got lost in a jungle of sorrow. I got over that, too, and cut through the vines of depression and anxiety until I reached you, threw you over my shoulder and walked back to safety, trying to ignore the fact that you had abandoned me in the first place.

I wanted to give you love, but you used me as a reservoir or fountain to drink from only when you could find nothing else. I got over this, too, but not really for it still burns within me.

And I wanted to give you the whole entire world, but you must not like my metaphors or gifts or love because I see it trampled at my feet, a bitter reminder of every lost dream I have because of you. I am holding this world in my hands right now, turning the destruction over, and I am not over this. I have not forgiven you. This is not okay.

So instead of love or hope or happiness, I’m giving you this to tell you that you could have had everything. I am not amazing or breathtaking or even great, but I love with a burning passion and I protect as if my life were a shield to yours and I could have been everything you ever wanted or needed.

I wanted to give you everything you ever wished for, but instead, here is this goodbye. Hold it in your hands, tuck it in your pocket, feel the crumpled edges of where I tried to conceal the evidence from myself, and know that this is over. We are no longer. You will never feel the warm embrace of a love like this ever again. And for that, I am sorry.

How to Survive a Break-Up

You wake up in the morning and ignore the fact that the taste of his name still lingers on your tongue. You brush your teeth to remove the bitterness that lingers even after you try to shove him from your thoughts. You avoid your eyes in the mirror because you do not want to be reminded of the fact that sometimes it felt as if he could see directly into your very soul. You do not want to see who you are without him. You do not always like who you have become.

You go over your day in your head in lists to keep his face from appearing behind your eyes as you get dressed. You take notice of the sky and the clouds and the trees as you drive where you need to go, and you do not think of the fact that you once planned on traveling the world with him holding your hand. You think about the fact that you are alive and you are here in the car and you have a life to live. You do not think of the fact that you ache for him to still be a part of it.

You smile and laugh with the people you encounter. You make up stories of how your day is going because, if you were to think of how you really are doing, you would not be able to stop your body in time from unstringing itself and falling all over the floor in a puddle of tears. You smile until it feels natural again. You talk until the conversation is the only thing on your mind. You learn to lose yourself in moments that do not necessarily matter after they are gone, because you must learn how to live despite the fact that the sound of him murmuring he loves you is slowly fading from your mind.

You force yourself to eat even though you are not hungry; or you make yourself slow down even though you are desperately famished and your body tells you to eat until you no longer feel empty at the fact he is gone. You will eat because it keeps you alive, and despite the fact that life without him does not feel right – feels more like a sweater that is shrunken after a tumble in the dryer – you need to learn how to trim the edges until somehow this new life fits.

At night, when nothing but your own mind can convince you that everything is okay, you will look to the notepad beside your bed and tally in a single line to add this day to the grand total of days since you last cried over him. You will go to sleep thinking of sunsets or the ocean or school or anything but him in hopes that he will not appear in your dreams.

But if today you cannot do this, cannot accept the fact that he is gone, you will cry over every shared and unshared memory that you wish you could lose.

You will feel your heart crumble beneath the weight of the fact that the feeling of his arms wrapped around you no longer burns in your skin.

You will feel as if you are suffocating over every dream he threw out the window the day he decided you were not good enough or did not fit into this perfect little box of his life.

You will want to scream but you will remain silent as tears just continue to flow in uneven currents down your weathered cheeks.

You will take that notepad and rip off the sheet that tallies the number of days since you last cried over him, and you will crumple the piece of paper, listen to the sound of ripping that is so similar to the absolute tearing of your heart, and you will throw all your progress in the trash along with all the hopes and dreams and memories that you thought you two were supposed to share.

But tomorrow you will wake up, and you will take in a deep breath of this world of yours that exists without him, and you will go about your day as if he does not matter.

At night, you will make a single uneven line with a sharpened pencil on a new sheet of paper. And you will think, Today I lived without him. I know this is possible.

And you will continue this every day until you no longer need a notepad, no longer need to remind yourself how to live.

You will continue this every day until the memory of him and the picture of his face is stuffed in a closet in the back of your mind, no longer prevalent or important, a mere screenshot in the film of life.

And you will be okay.