Sitting at home on a ran­dom night, caught between the com­fort of your room and the stim­u­la­tion of peo­ple. You once told me I could always call when I said I didn’t want to be a hyp­ocrite, but I don’t know if that’s true any­more. It’s been a while. I won­der if you ever think about me, and if you do, whether it’s with fond­ness, dis­taste, or indifference.

By now you’ve prob­a­bly fig­ured out that I can never be the one to pick up the phone first, which is why it’s hard for me to believe we’ll ever see each other again. I wish there was a way we could just talk, and not have things get com­pli­cated, and not have to worry about you or me or any­thing between us.

Sometimes I think I’m strong enough, but I think of that call and that voice and the burn­ing across my skin, and even­tu­ally I real­ize I’m only fool­ing myself. Just mak­ing excuses to see you again cause I miss you so much. I’m not yet used to the fact that I can’t share these songs, these expe­ri­ences, this hap­pi­ness with you, and it’s left me feel­ing incomplete.

Even now it feels like there was so much left unsaid. Like my words were always inad­e­quate to the bur­den of my heart cause I was never able to con­vince you of how spe­cial you were and how much I loved you. But time is teach­ing me that you knew, and that noth­ing would ever have been enough.

Not long ago, I real­ized it’s not just you I can’t stop think­ing about, it’s all of my past, from insignif­i­cant instances to major events. If only you weren’t one of the only things worth remem­ber­ing, and I wasn’t try­ing so des­per­ately to forget.

I was just try­ing to get away, to remove myself from the vul­ner­a­ble way I felt — the way you made me feel — among the din and the chill. That night I learned that beauty comes in many forms. I started believ­ing I could love again, and my wounds began to heal for the first time since she told me it all had to stop.

There was such a won­der­ful moment of vul­ner­a­bil­ity flick­er­ing across your eyes when you said we hooked up¹, quickly as if to hide the fact, while plung­ing your fork into our slice of cake with a smirk on the side of your face. It’s moments like those that direc­tors dream off.

John wanted to know how it went. I told him not to ask, and we never spoke about it again. He thinks it’s because it went badly, but really it’s because every­thing went so well when I knew it was the last time I was going to see you.

Those were dif­fi­cult days. I always believed you could have saved me, until I real­ized that I needed to save myself. Not that it mat­ters. Things are dif­fer­ent now any­way. I have a ten­dency to say too much; all too often I mis­take open­ness for inti­macy, and it gets me in trouble.

I always imag­ine that you’ve fig­ured things out, and have been caught up in your own hap­pi­ness ever since. People like you were never meant to speak of heartbreak.

1. Instead of the vul­gar we fucked or the pedes­trian we slept together. [↑]