i make no apologies

Lying next to me, you said “I’m sorry I complicate your life.” The same words I was just about to say to you.  I’m sorry I complicate your life. But mostly I’m sorry for you, not sorry for me. I’m sorry I’m not more sorry.

You’re complicating my life because I’m complicating yours. You’re complicating my life because I desire you to. I welcome the complication– not the waves of pain that come with it– but the complication. The complication makes me feel like we’re interesting. And real.

Lying next to you, I said, “I love you. I know we can’t be together (I only know this because you make me know it)… but I do.”  And you said, “I know. I love you too.”

And in that moment, you told me what, at a minimum, I need to know to survive.

It was simple.

It was beautiful. Heartbreakingly so.

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xoxo,
B

The things you said to me fifteen days ago. The nearly condescending things:

“I just can’t picture it—us together… it’s been what… FIVE years?”
(But you can picture me naked, can’t you.  I am still wearing the same fire engine red toenail polish I was wearing the last time I was with you. Two months ago.)

“I can’t imagine you coming here to live. I mean, I would love having you in town, but I just can’t imagine it.”

“If you came here, we’d have to take it slow.”

“I have never met someone I was as impressed with as I am with you.”

“I obviously am still very attracted to you.”

“You know I’m pretty popular and well-liked in this town and know a lot of people, right? I mean, I could probably have my pick of dates, but I just don’t want to date anyone.”

“She was here last weekend and she said a lot of the things that you are saying now. And I think I could get her back if I wanted to.”
(Maybe the saddest thing in the world is loving someone who used to love you.) 

“B, it’s not a competition between you and her.”

“I am so confused.”
I responded, “Yes, it’s pretty tough when two people adore you at the same time.”
To which you said, “I guess you would know.”

“B, you KNOW I CARE about you. “
(So THIS is what it feels like. Unrequited love.)

-B

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I know that once you learn something like what you learned from me fifteen days ago, you can’t unlearn it.

Are you sorry you learned it? Or sorry you’re not sorry? Or not sorry that you’re not sorry?

It’s been fifteen days.

Maybe I don’t like what I’m learning about you.

Part III

Or maybe you just think

I’m selfish.

“When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it’s not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.”
—(yes, this shit came from Twilight. Supposedly. The interwebs said so, so it must be true. And no, I’ll never quote it again. And no, I’ve never read the books because I stand with Stephen King and don’t dig chick lit that’s about the importance of having a boyfriend.)

What I’m getting at is that I never took time to grieve us splitting up.  But that’s mostly because I didn’t let myself believe that we were ever really together.  In that way, it seemed easier? Easier for me.

You never introduced me as your girlfriend. We never talked much about having a relationship. Rather than talking about it, I guess we were just having one, for awhile.

(You still say, “You’re my B______.” And it sounds perfect and uncomplicated-complicated. But it makes it easy for you now, to use my name as a definition of my relationship to you.)

I remember lying on the floor of my sorority bedroom on the phone with you when I said, “Do you really, honestly love me?” and you said, “I do, B_______.” (When you personalize things, it’s incredibly sexy and irresistible.)

And I tried to talk you out of it. Because I was trying to move on from the waiting (for more of you).

I thought I was being proactive in avoiding inevitable rejection. That you were being so casual and slow with me because you weren’t convinced of me?
I knew I needed you for life and felt like I was losing you in the waiting. I needed your friendship even more than I desired a lover.

I refused to grieve the loss of my friend, my confidant & a love incomparable to others.
I thought that if I made it platonic, I could make it last forever. That I could mold us into the perfect “Let’s be friends.” Only, we would like
really. actually. be friends.
And it worked for awhile, didn’t it (Until we let it die.)?

It felt like I was your perpetual one night stand.
And then someone offered to make me their one life stand.

Yes, maybe I am

Selfish (but I am also a lot of other good and pure things that I hope you haven’t forgotten about).

“Grand declarations never meant half as much as what we didn’t say.”– (the interwebs fail me here.)

So, here I am, saying it now.
I wish that you were here, saying something.

XOXO,
B

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PART II

Maybe you think

that with my aforementioned jealousy, I’m pulling an “I don’t want you but I don’t want anyone else to have you”

(Not that I didn’t want you. I did. But I didn’t admit that I loved you in the way you wanted me to. Because you were so   casual… about EvErYtHiNg. Which was sexy at first but then heartbreaking. And I was the girl waiting. Waiting for our next class together, waiting for you to call me, waiting for you to answer your phone, waiting to see you alone again, waiting to run into you downtown.  W a i t i n g… for more of you. But that was when I was probably f*cked up from a previous relationship & attention hungry, and just gutsy enough to go after a man different than any other I’d ever been with to find more than what I’d ever found. And maybe I’m still f*cked up, but now I’m an older, more mature, post-sorority, post-put-you-bar-jeans-in-the-windowsill-overnight-to-air-out-for-the-next-night attention hungry, gutsy girl.).

And I know how that feels– to have someone not want you
(or want you only on their terms).

And for them to be completely unfair when someone else wants you
(without terms).

I know what it’s like to give them all the parts of yourself only for them to devastate all of it.

And I know how it feels to be with someone new only for an old love to interrupt it with a plea of “Want me. Be with me. Call me,” much like the Meredith Grey “Pick me. Choose me. Love me” (Season 2, Episode 5).
(But I don’t put my bar jeans in the windowsill anymore. Yes, smoking is banned in the bars now, but I don’t have even bar jeans anymore… I just have feelings for you.)

But if you do think this
(that I’m pulling an “I don’t want you but I don’t want anyone else to have you”),

you think wrong.

XOXO,
B

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PART I

I am confident

that you have no idea the effect you have on me.
Or how jealous I am when I think about you hanging out with someone else, and it doesn’t matter who they are, male or female. I just wish I was in their place, being with you.

Or how it hurts when I come to your town and don’t see you.
Or if/when I see you on the sidewalk, that’s all, because you don’t invite me anywhere. And you always let me go.
And the next time we talk about it (a year later), you say, “You didn’t even tell me you were coming.”
And I want to say (but I don’t because it scares the shit out of me), “Because I’m scared that one of these times you… just won’t care.”

that you have no idea that I dig out your letters a few times a year to read them and just feel close to you. Like when I told you the things I didn’t tell anyone else and trusted you with all of it. And when you trusted me too.

Or how I wonder whom you’re with at any given time and whom you take home to your bed for the night, and I’m jealous, without any right to be. But jealousy doesn’t come with rights: it’s just jealousy. And it doesn’t consume me, it just sits there and lets me feel it.

And I think that at one time, you maybe had those kinds of thoughts about me, but

I am confident

that you don’t anymore.

XOXO,
B

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