/ˈfikSH(ə)n/
(noun) literature in the form of prose, especially short stories and novels, that describes imaginary events and people.
Dear John,
I imagine what it must be like to hear those words. I imagine what it must be like to be the one who got left behind.
I can't say that I'm not familiar with it. I can't say that I haven't been there before.
I'm equally upset. Maybe not then, but definitely now.
If today you were to ask me why I did it, I'm not sure I can tell you why. I've thought about it over and over. I've formulated it in my mind. I've even come to terms with it. I'm sure that in another place and another time, I would have done things differently. I would have been braver. I would have been lovelier. I would have been better for you.
But we don't live in another place and another time. We live here. We live caught in this world, with our dreams and our fears.
I wish I could have been a better lover, a better girlfriend, a better boyfriend, a better friend, a better anything. I do. But I'm not going to say that I wish it didn't happen, that I wish I could erase that moment. I don't wish for simple things like that.
I just wish for a better you.
I hope you are well, John. I hope you laugh often. I hope you are the best of future things to come.
Sincerely,
Love
Her son liked to name his bruises and his scrapes.
His bruises were named after the girls in his class, girls who he liked at one point or another. There was Ainsley, Maggie, Bonnie, and Natalia. There were two Natalias in his class.
His scrapes were boys. "This is Rene. This is Abraham. And this," pointing to his longest scrape, red and jagged, "This is Manny, my BFF."
It made her smile. She thought how peculiar it was, and even a bit insightful.
She wondered if maybe she should name her own scrapes and bruises. Maybe that might help dull the pain. The kind of pain that's broken, the ones that won't go away no matter how far she ran, no matter how long it's been.
She often told herself she's over it. She liked to believe she got over things easily. She had to. She hated it when people can't let go, or get negative for years and years down the road because things didn't turn out the way they wanted it to so many years ago.
It's sad and it's pathetic, but she can't say that she hasn't been there. She can't say that she's still not dwelling too. She knew it, and she recognized it every time it comes around like a long-lost-relative.
Sometimes it came on fast and in passing. A friend or a colleague would mention their name. She would acknowledge that she knew them once, and then she'd moved on to other things.
Sometimes the passing was longer and she'd have to the tell the story of why things fell apart.
The hardest was when she was by herself. The pain and anguish got so intimate and so close when she was by herself.
First, it would wash over her like warm water. There were happy moments. So many happy moments. But the warmth never lasted long because the memory was always cut open by the pain of it falling apart.
Then, the agony would set in. She'd remember the countless nights, over the many years, when she wondered about what had happened. She'd wonder about that moment. When was that moment, that exact moment, when they thought it was ok to walk away?
She even remembered the time when she went after it, sought to repair a friendship that had started breaking apart. There were cracks, and at first she thought her friend just needed time. It was a long summer and things were tough for her friend. Perhaps she let too much time go by because when she finally sat down to have that conversation, her friend only said that it was too late. They had become strangers.
Sometimes she played it over in her head. She might cry. She might even wonder "What if?" But every time she did, she always came back to the same conclusion. She always knew that this one was over. This one was malicious.
There were others too who have just stopped talking to her. She always thought it was nothing personal, that perhaps they just had other things going on, or that they were just too busy. In the beginning, she would reach out. She kept reaching out. Sometimes they reached back, but most of the times they didn't. There was one girl she thought she had a kinship with, but she must have been wrong because she kept reaching out and the girl never reached back. A few years later, she learned that the girl had moved back to town. She didn't reach out to her again. It would just be too sad to find out why.
She even mourned the girl who she lost when they were too young to know how to be good friends. The girl who gave her up because of a rumor that a boy liked her instead of the girl. She never knew the boy, but she thought she knew the girl. They had witnessed the death of the girl's young cousin together; a death that would go into the courts and would years later require a trip for her to go back down south to see her lost friend. They never said a word to each other as they sat in that cold and barren hallway at the courthouse waiting to be called on for their testimony. They never testified.
She had been marred by all these friends who kept leaving her, but it was her oldest friend, her closest friend, her first friend that cut the deepest. Her friend who remained but is no longer here. Her friend who she thought would always be there. Her friend who knew her so well and who she took for granted while she mourned the loss of all her other friends. Her friend who broke down after college, perhaps from the heartbreak of her own too many painful scrapes and bruises, her own too many broken hearts. She faded in and out now, and one day she may fade out forever.
It's hard to think about them, but she thought about them from time to time and she probably will forever. She kept them close, so close that they might have disappeared. But then just a mention of their names would bring it all back, the heartache and the pain, sometimes searing hot and other times cool & collected.
She often thought she'd like to let them go; let them float away like bubbles on a hot summer day. Or, perhaps she'd write them down in a letter, put them in a bottle and watch them drift off into the great unknown. But she'd never really let them go, or was it the other way around? They were her scrapes and bruises that have been picked on, scratched over and over that they have been etched into her skin. They were her mindful scars.
One day she'd like to name her scrapes and bruises like her son did. She'd like to point them out and say, "This is Amy. This is Karolyn. This is Jane. And this one," pointing to her oldest scrape, bruised, bloodied and raw, "this is Rose, my BFF."
1
They met late one night at a subway diner.
"It's ok to leave." She told him, "You can let me go."
"It would only be for a short time, wouldn't it?" he replied.
They said goodbye and walked out of the diner together.
As he watched her walk away, he thought he'd meet her again.
She didn't cry. She didn't think about it. She just put it away.
2
It was one of those storms that didn't come out of nowhere, but everyone was surprised when it actually hit. They knew it was coming. They even saw it, but they were still surprised by its ferocity and its sheer force of destruction. It tore them apart and when it left, they didn't know where to begin. It wasn't about starting over or picking up the pieces. "Everyone should just leave," they said. Where was that warning, he wondered, before it hit?
It took some time to recover. He had to erase. He kept erasing until there was nothing left. He wanted to be empty. He wanted some clarity. He kept erasing but it never became clear.
It was long and flat. It went on forever. It was excruciating to walk. In the middle of nowhere, he thought the sun would surely kill him. When he woke up, he was surrounded by strangers. They weren't friends. They were nice, but they were never friends.
Over time, he saw pieces of himself in others. He saw reflections. At first it was comfortable. And then it became uneasy. Finally, he couldn't look at them anymore. It was like looking in a mirror that reached out to touch you even before you knew it was only a mirror.
He wasn't lonely. He never lacked for intimacy. He always had company. When he wanted it, he even got some understanding. But it always made him sad because he never felt at ease. He never felt like himself.
There was a moment when he thought he saw her again. It was in the way her hair moved. She brushed it to the side and it fell comfortably next to her shoulder. He wanted to reach out and say something, but he didn't.
3
There were these birds that kept singing outside her window. They annoyed her in the mornings. It's too early, she thought, too early for chirping birds. One day when the winter was really long, she thought she heard chirping. It made her think that spring must have arrived but when she looked outside the ground was still covered with snow.
Sometimes she went for days without talking to anyone. She liked her solitude. She wasn't antisocial. She didn't talk to herself. She just liked being in her own company. She wanted to hear her own thoughts.
One summer she joined a running group. She didn't want to get fit. She wasn't much of an exercise guru. She didn't want to meet other people. She just wanted a challenge, and running felt like a simple challenge. There was no use for complicated challenges because people always give up when they take on complicated ones. She wanted to finish, that was all she wanted.
People came in and out of her life. She had some meaningful relationships. She met happy people. She met sad people, even a few disturbed ones. It wasn't losing them that hurt. It was the starting over. It was when they came back. They don't always come back, but when they do that's when it hurts.
She didn't have any best friends. She had close friends, but never any best friends. No secrets were revealed. No secrets were kept. Moments passed and alliances were formed. She shared smiles over tea and cake. She talked about dreams and possibilities. She became comfortable in her own skin. She liked her routine and her small world.
A colleague of a colleague of a colleague mentioned his name. Not his full name. It wasn't even him. It was his name, but it wasn't him. It made her think of him. She thought she had misplaced him, but there he was.
4
"I'm sorry," he said.
"For what?" she asked.
"I feel like I should say I'm sorry for suggesting it. It's different now and it just makes me sad."
There was a brief silence. She shook her head before she answered him, "It's ok."
He thought he heard someone else in the background through the phone. "Is someone there?"
"No. No one's here." There was someone, though, but he was only a friend. She didn't want to tell him. They were friends too, weren't they?
"Do you remember that time when you went home with me," he continued, "and my mother was sick from food poisoning all weekend?"
"Yeah, I do." Her friend was motioning to his watch and wanted to leave. "I'm sorry. Someone's at the door. Can we chat later?"
He didn't think he heard the doorbell ring but he was miles away on a phone in a room that seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. "Sure. Call me later."
"OK. Bye," she said.
"Bye." He waited for the silence. He thought maybe she wouldn't leave. He wanted to tell her he just got food poisoning too.
He heard the dial tone from the other end.
She never called him back.
5
It kept creeping into her head like a pesky thought that she knew she shouldn't have. She never did before, but now every time she saw a stuffed animal she wondered if he still carried his with him.
One weekend she thought she would try to look for him. She didn't keep in touch with him. She didn't know how to. She threw it all away. They didn't have mutual friends. He had lots of friends but she didn't know any of them.
She looked online but didn't get much. She found some things about herself. She didn't think they were too interesting. She wondered if he looked for her online too. She knew he did. He was that kind of person. She liked knowing that about him and it was enough for her to stop searching.
6
He kept her email address. He would never get in touch with her, but he kept it. He wanted to remember her. Remember that she happened. They met, he thought, for a reason.
There have been times when he sat at his computer and typed in her email address. He didn't write anything. He just wanted to see her name. He wondered if she would reply if he sent her an email. He didn't think that she had forgotten him, but he wasn't sure if she would respond.
He missed her. It was desperate like trying to get back into a dream at the exact moment when you woke up.
7
He wrote her a letter.
"If it ended, we would still be friends. We would know we gave it a try and it didn't work out. We would still be friends, perhaps even better ones."
8
She wanted to be friends. She didn't have too many friends. She had lost too many of them. She only had a few left. She wanted to be his friend.
9
He wasn't sure when it happened. He just knew that it did. There was a connection that he had with her that he didn't have with anyone else. It was fierce and he wanted to see where it would take them. He didn't want to ask her too many times, but he couldn't stop trying. It was painful. He wanted to be her friend but he also wanted to be more. Soon he realized that he couldn't be neither, and she let him go.
10
When he told her he couldn't be her friend anymore, she cried for days. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to call him up and tell him what he wanted to hear. It wasn't because she didn't care for him, or that she couldn't love him. She already did. She just wanted to have one person who would stay. She thought he would stay. She was so sure he would stay.
11
They met in a low-key restaurant in the middle of everywhere. They were waiters. She seemed shy, and he was oddly charismatic. He asked a lot of questions, and she wasn't afraid to answer them.
She was convinced that he didn't really like her at first.
They quickly became friends.
She remembered when she tried to delete him from her life. She almost called off her wedding a month before the date. She really needed a friend. She wanted to call him but she wasn't that kind of girl.
A year went by. She was going through a tough time, a twenty-something crisis. She wanted to talk to him. She needed his help. She thought, "He would be friendly."
She emailed him. He wrote back, "It's so good to hear from you." She wanted to make sure he knew she had gotten married. "I'm good." she wrote, "I got married." He sent back silence.
A couple of weeks went by. Still no word. She wanted to write, "Are you there?" But she knew he wouldn't answer. She was sad. Then she was mad.
She deleted all of the emails that he ever sent her. She deleted all of the emails that she ever sent him.
She thought about him from time to time. Several years had gone by. She even had a son. She wanted to share the news. She got a Facebook account.
One day, she got a message that he had accepted her friend request. Facebook had gone through her address book and sent out friend requests to everyone on her contacts list.
She had forgotten to delete his email address.
She missed her friend.
It started with a suggestion. Let's get together. No, we're just friends.
It was painful to answer his question. It hurt to say no. It was slow, but eventually he found his way in. He crept into her heart. He was there for quite some time, and then she kicked him out.
She thought she had put him away. She thought she'd never think about him again, never that way. She never told him. She knew he would understand. She knew he would reciprocate. She couldn't do that to him. She couldn't ask for more and hurt him again.
She left for a while, hoping that she would get over him, wishing that the silence would make him miss her.
She thought that maybe if she left, he would notice the emptiness, the space filled with the absence of her.
But he didn't. Life went on as usual. It was peaceful for him, and she thought he even liked it.
When she came back, he had moved on. The emptiness gave him space to continue and time to move forward.
Stretched out like a sunbathing cat. Wanting more, getting less. The sunlight receding with each passing moment. It was his love for her, stretched out. He wrote her a love letter. Not really a love letter, a hate letter. Shame on her for not wanting him. Treacherous little girl with her opulent breasts. He has come to know her enough, only enough, to say that he could love her. Fists clenched, hair in hand.
(noun) literature in the form of prose, especially short stories and novels, that describes imaginary events and people.
If Love Wrote a Letter to John - 3/1/13
Dear John,
I imagine what it must be like to hear those words. I imagine what it must be like to be the one who got left behind.
I can't say that I'm not familiar with it. I can't say that I haven't been there before.
I'm equally upset. Maybe not then, but definitely now.
If today you were to ask me why I did it, I'm not sure I can tell you why. I've thought about it over and over. I've formulated it in my mind. I've even come to terms with it. I'm sure that in another place and another time, I would have done things differently. I would have been braver. I would have been lovelier. I would have been better for you.
But we don't live in another place and another time. We live here. We live caught in this world, with our dreams and our fears.
I wish I could have been a better lover, a better girlfriend, a better boyfriend, a better friend, a better anything. I do. But I'm not going to say that I wish it didn't happen, that I wish I could erase that moment. I don't wish for simple things like that.
I just wish for a better you.
I hope you are well, John. I hope you laugh often. I hope you are the best of future things to come.
Sincerely,
Love
The Heartbreakers - 2/28/13
Her son liked to name his bruises and his scrapes.
His bruises were named after the girls in his class, girls who he liked at one point or another. There was Ainsley, Maggie, Bonnie, and Natalia. There were two Natalias in his class.
His scrapes were boys. "This is Rene. This is Abraham. And this," pointing to his longest scrape, red and jagged, "This is Manny, my BFF."
It made her smile. She thought how peculiar it was, and even a bit insightful.
She wondered if maybe she should name her own scrapes and bruises. Maybe that might help dull the pain. The kind of pain that's broken, the ones that won't go away no matter how far she ran, no matter how long it's been.
She often told herself she's over it. She liked to believe she got over things easily. She had to. She hated it when people can't let go, or get negative for years and years down the road because things didn't turn out the way they wanted it to so many years ago.
It's sad and it's pathetic, but she can't say that she hasn't been there. She can't say that she's still not dwelling too. She knew it, and she recognized it every time it comes around like a long-lost-relative.
Sometimes it came on fast and in passing. A friend or a colleague would mention their name. She would acknowledge that she knew them once, and then she'd moved on to other things.
Sometimes the passing was longer and she'd have to the tell the story of why things fell apart.
The hardest was when she was by herself. The pain and anguish got so intimate and so close when she was by herself.
First, it would wash over her like warm water. There were happy moments. So many happy moments. But the warmth never lasted long because the memory was always cut open by the pain of it falling apart.
Then, the agony would set in. She'd remember the countless nights, over the many years, when she wondered about what had happened. She'd wonder about that moment. When was that moment, that exact moment, when they thought it was ok to walk away?
She even remembered the time when she went after it, sought to repair a friendship that had started breaking apart. There were cracks, and at first she thought her friend just needed time. It was a long summer and things were tough for her friend. Perhaps she let too much time go by because when she finally sat down to have that conversation, her friend only said that it was too late. They had become strangers.
Sometimes she played it over in her head. She might cry. She might even wonder "What if?" But every time she did, she always came back to the same conclusion. She always knew that this one was over. This one was malicious.
There were others too who have just stopped talking to her. She always thought it was nothing personal, that perhaps they just had other things going on, or that they were just too busy. In the beginning, she would reach out. She kept reaching out. Sometimes they reached back, but most of the times they didn't. There was one girl she thought she had a kinship with, but she must have been wrong because she kept reaching out and the girl never reached back. A few years later, she learned that the girl had moved back to town. She didn't reach out to her again. It would just be too sad to find out why.
She even mourned the girl who she lost when they were too young to know how to be good friends. The girl who gave her up because of a rumor that a boy liked her instead of the girl. She never knew the boy, but she thought she knew the girl. They had witnessed the death of the girl's young cousin together; a death that would go into the courts and would years later require a trip for her to go back down south to see her lost friend. They never said a word to each other as they sat in that cold and barren hallway at the courthouse waiting to be called on for their testimony. They never testified.
She had been marred by all these friends who kept leaving her, but it was her oldest friend, her closest friend, her first friend that cut the deepest. Her friend who remained but is no longer here. Her friend who she thought would always be there. Her friend who knew her so well and who she took for granted while she mourned the loss of all her other friends. Her friend who broke down after college, perhaps from the heartbreak of her own too many painful scrapes and bruises, her own too many broken hearts. She faded in and out now, and one day she may fade out forever.
It's hard to think about them, but she thought about them from time to time and she probably will forever. She kept them close, so close that they might have disappeared. But then just a mention of their names would bring it all back, the heartache and the pain, sometimes searing hot and other times cool & collected.
She often thought she'd like to let them go; let them float away like bubbles on a hot summer day. Or, perhaps she'd write them down in a letter, put them in a bottle and watch them drift off into the great unknown. But she'd never really let them go, or was it the other way around? They were her scrapes and bruises that have been picked on, scratched over and over that they have been etched into her skin. They were her mindful scars.
One day she'd like to name her scrapes and bruises like her son did. She'd like to point them out and say, "This is Amy. This is Karolyn. This is Jane. And this one," pointing to her oldest scrape, bruised, bloodied and raw, "this is Rose, my BFF."
Let's Just Be Friends - 2/26/13
1
They met late one night at a subway diner.
"It's ok to leave." She told him, "You can let me go."
"It would only be for a short time, wouldn't it?" he replied.
They said goodbye and walked out of the diner together.
As he watched her walk away, he thought he'd meet her again.
She didn't cry. She didn't think about it. She just put it away.
2
It was one of those storms that didn't come out of nowhere, but everyone was surprised when it actually hit. They knew it was coming. They even saw it, but they were still surprised by its ferocity and its sheer force of destruction. It tore them apart and when it left, they didn't know where to begin. It wasn't about starting over or picking up the pieces. "Everyone should just leave," they said. Where was that warning, he wondered, before it hit?
It took some time to recover. He had to erase. He kept erasing until there was nothing left. He wanted to be empty. He wanted some clarity. He kept erasing but it never became clear.
It was long and flat. It went on forever. It was excruciating to walk. In the middle of nowhere, he thought the sun would surely kill him. When he woke up, he was surrounded by strangers. They weren't friends. They were nice, but they were never friends.
Over time, he saw pieces of himself in others. He saw reflections. At first it was comfortable. And then it became uneasy. Finally, he couldn't look at them anymore. It was like looking in a mirror that reached out to touch you even before you knew it was only a mirror.
He wasn't lonely. He never lacked for intimacy. He always had company. When he wanted it, he even got some understanding. But it always made him sad because he never felt at ease. He never felt like himself.
There was a moment when he thought he saw her again. It was in the way her hair moved. She brushed it to the side and it fell comfortably next to her shoulder. He wanted to reach out and say something, but he didn't.
3
There were these birds that kept singing outside her window. They annoyed her in the mornings. It's too early, she thought, too early for chirping birds. One day when the winter was really long, she thought she heard chirping. It made her think that spring must have arrived but when she looked outside the ground was still covered with snow.
Sometimes she went for days without talking to anyone. She liked her solitude. She wasn't antisocial. She didn't talk to herself. She just liked being in her own company. She wanted to hear her own thoughts.
One summer she joined a running group. She didn't want to get fit. She wasn't much of an exercise guru. She didn't want to meet other people. She just wanted a challenge, and running felt like a simple challenge. There was no use for complicated challenges because people always give up when they take on complicated ones. She wanted to finish, that was all she wanted.
People came in and out of her life. She had some meaningful relationships. She met happy people. She met sad people, even a few disturbed ones. It wasn't losing them that hurt. It was the starting over. It was when they came back. They don't always come back, but when they do that's when it hurts.
She didn't have any best friends. She had close friends, but never any best friends. No secrets were revealed. No secrets were kept. Moments passed and alliances were formed. She shared smiles over tea and cake. She talked about dreams and possibilities. She became comfortable in her own skin. She liked her routine and her small world.
A colleague of a colleague of a colleague mentioned his name. Not his full name. It wasn't even him. It was his name, but it wasn't him. It made her think of him. She thought she had misplaced him, but there he was.
4
"I'm sorry," he said.
"For what?" she asked.
"I feel like I should say I'm sorry for suggesting it. It's different now and it just makes me sad."
There was a brief silence. She shook her head before she answered him, "It's ok."
He thought he heard someone else in the background through the phone. "Is someone there?"
"No. No one's here." There was someone, though, but he was only a friend. She didn't want to tell him. They were friends too, weren't they?
"Do you remember that time when you went home with me," he continued, "and my mother was sick from food poisoning all weekend?"
"Yeah, I do." Her friend was motioning to his watch and wanted to leave. "I'm sorry. Someone's at the door. Can we chat later?"
He didn't think he heard the doorbell ring but he was miles away on a phone in a room that seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. "Sure. Call me later."
"OK. Bye," she said.
"Bye." He waited for the silence. He thought maybe she wouldn't leave. He wanted to tell her he just got food poisoning too.
He heard the dial tone from the other end.
She never called him back.
5
It kept creeping into her head like a pesky thought that she knew she shouldn't have. She never did before, but now every time she saw a stuffed animal she wondered if he still carried his with him.
One weekend she thought she would try to look for him. She didn't keep in touch with him. She didn't know how to. She threw it all away. They didn't have mutual friends. He had lots of friends but she didn't know any of them.
She looked online but didn't get much. She found some things about herself. She didn't think they were too interesting. She wondered if he looked for her online too. She knew he did. He was that kind of person. She liked knowing that about him and it was enough for her to stop searching.
6
He kept her email address. He would never get in touch with her, but he kept it. He wanted to remember her. Remember that she happened. They met, he thought, for a reason.
There have been times when he sat at his computer and typed in her email address. He didn't write anything. He just wanted to see her name. He wondered if she would reply if he sent her an email. He didn't think that she had forgotten him, but he wasn't sure if she would respond.
He missed her. It was desperate like trying to get back into a dream at the exact moment when you woke up.
7
He wrote her a letter.
"If it ended, we would still be friends. We would know we gave it a try and it didn't work out. We would still be friends, perhaps even better ones."
8
She wanted to be friends. She didn't have too many friends. She had lost too many of them. She only had a few left. She wanted to be his friend.
9
He wasn't sure when it happened. He just knew that it did. There was a connection that he had with her that he didn't have with anyone else. It was fierce and he wanted to see where it would take them. He didn't want to ask her too many times, but he couldn't stop trying. It was painful. He wanted to be her friend but he also wanted to be more. Soon he realized that he couldn't be neither, and she let him go.
10
When he told her he couldn't be her friend anymore, she cried for days. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to call him up and tell him what he wanted to hear. It wasn't because she didn't care for him, or that she couldn't love him. She already did. She just wanted to have one person who would stay. She thought he would stay. She was so sure he would stay.
11
They met in a low-key restaurant in the middle of everywhere. They were waiters. She seemed shy, and he was oddly charismatic. He asked a lot of questions, and she wasn't afraid to answer them.
She was convinced that he didn't really like her at first.
They quickly became friends.
Remember When - 2/23/13
She remembered when she tried to delete him from her life. She almost called off her wedding a month before the date. She really needed a friend. She wanted to call him but she wasn't that kind of girl.
A year went by. She was going through a tough time, a twenty-something crisis. She wanted to talk to him. She needed his help. She thought, "He would be friendly."
She emailed him. He wrote back, "It's so good to hear from you." She wanted to make sure he knew she had gotten married. "I'm good." she wrote, "I got married." He sent back silence.
A couple of weeks went by. Still no word. She wanted to write, "Are you there?" But she knew he wouldn't answer. She was sad. Then she was mad.
She deleted all of the emails that he ever sent her. She deleted all of the emails that she ever sent him.
She thought about him from time to time. Several years had gone by. She even had a son. She wanted to share the news. She got a Facebook account.
One day, she got a message that he had accepted her friend request. Facebook had gone through her address book and sent out friend requests to everyone on her contacts list.
She had forgotten to delete his email address.
She missed her friend.
Never Again - 2/23/13
It started with a suggestion. Let's get together. No, we're just friends.
It was painful to answer his question. It hurt to say no. It was slow, but eventually he found his way in. He crept into her heart. He was there for quite some time, and then she kicked him out.
She thought she had put him away. She thought she'd never think about him again, never that way. She never told him. She knew he would understand. She knew he would reciprocate. She couldn't do that to him. She couldn't ask for more and hurt him again.
Empty Space - 2/21/13
She left for a while, hoping that she would get over him, wishing that the silence would make him miss her.
She thought that maybe if she left, he would notice the emptiness, the space filled with the absence of her.
But he didn't. Life went on as usual. It was peaceful for him, and she thought he even liked it.
When she came back, he had moved on. The emptiness gave him space to continue and time to move forward.
Love Letter Enough - 10/5/12
Stretched out like a sunbathing cat. Wanting more, getting less. The sunlight receding with each passing moment. It was his love for her, stretched out. He wrote her a love letter. Not really a love letter, a hate letter. Shame on her for not wanting him. Treacherous little girl with her opulent breasts. He has come to know her enough, only enough, to say that he could love her. Fists clenched, hair in hand.
On the Other Side - 10/2/12
She wasn't one of those studious girls who had her whole life mapped out for her, who knew what she wanted to be and stayed the course. She was everything that was true of a cliche. She didn't know anything, she partied too hard, she did stupid things, she explored, she had fun. Then, she hit a brick wall and everything started closing in. In the moment when she finally found what she wanted to be and what she truly loved, she started to lose some of the most important things in her life, her closest friends, her allies. In that darkness, she realized she wasn't strong enough to be by herself. She didn't completely cave in. She kept moving, kept groping for all the right answers. In trying to move forward, she didn't stop to resolve her conflicts. She didn't require answers. She just shuddered in the dark and ran like hell.
She was so incredibly depressed, and it was not the artsy-smartsy depressed where she could use it as her muse. It was the frightfully "She should have been in therapy" depression. It was the kind of depression where she tried so hard not to be depressed and suppress it so far down that she knew it would only come back to haunt her many, many years down the road.
She knew that one of the reasons why he was so important to her and why he's such a critical part of that period in her life was because he was the one person who helped her out of that darkness. In such a dark time, she was able to find or be found by someone who didn't turn his back on her, who thought she was worth fighting for. He understood her on a level that even she didn't understand herself. Without him, she knew she would have definitely disappeared.
When she left, it was with a very heavy heart. On the one hand, she was so happy to be leaving she couldn't run fast or far enough. On the other hand, she was conflicted because she was leaving a good friend behind. Her future was unsure and she had no clue what she was going to do, but she knew she could never go back.
Onstage Facing Each Other - 9/12/12
Him: I was more than just a friend, and better than an ex-of anything. I was a kindred spirit, a soulmate of yours, if it pleases you. And for that, you will always cherish me.
Her: I could not promise you that anything I said would not hurt you, or that you would find any answers worth hearing. You were more deserving than that.
Him: You would always be welcomed in my life, but you realized that it's only a matter of time before I closed my door on you forever. And, yes, you're hesitating because you're afraid that time is upon us now.
Her: I would never be able to make that up to you, and would always be grateful that you had not shut me out of your life completely. Perhaps we met too soon, or we met too late.
Him: Whatever happened, however we choose to go from there, our relationship was more than just that of friends who became lovers, and ended in betrayal.
Her: You were supposed to be my constant. You were supposed to be my due north. It was always supposed to be you with your smart music and me with my bad taste in movies. That was how it was supposed to be. And then you fell down that obvious hole and you turned me into just another "f*ck you" girl.
Him: With me, you could come in from out of the storm, yank out your heart, set it on the table, and knew it would be safe. With others, you were not so sure.
Her: “We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor each other for what we are: each the other's opposite and complement.”
Blackbirds - 8/27/12
She had been wondering about him. She had been waiting. Where did he travel to? How did he go? He was disappearing. She was afraid that he was drifting too far from her now.
It wasn't that the blackbirds didn't sing anymore or that their wings were broken. They were wandering farther and farther from home. The distance was becoming harder and harder to count.
She had not been sleeping anymore. She had not been listening. The sounds were quieter than she remembered. The words were louder than before. It was peaceful, and sometimes too much for her to hear.