The city where we fell in love

I drove around last night in the city where we fell in love, with someone who wasn't you.

I tried not to think about you, but the weather was moody and there was a light breeze and a drizzle blurring the colored street lights out of the front window.

That was the weather you loved.

I was silent and introspective, and he probably thought I was weird, but I didn't care. I watched the ghosts of us walking down the street hand in hand. Basking in the rays of our puppy love.

Sitting at the park on a beach towel, high, laughing, at the clouds above us. Just happy to be around each other.

Eating ice cream at our favorite spot. I would eat it until my stomach hurt, and you would always finish the rest.

I wanted to scream.

There's so many things I wish I could tell you, but I have to remind myself I tried. I tried to unravel these thoughts in my head for you. I plucked them out carefully, thoughtfully, and packaged them in a way you could digest. In a way that should have lead to an understanding, a compromise, respect. In a way that should have cleared the air, any doubt, and allowed love to come drown our fears out.

These words contemplate themselves on the tip of my tongue, but I know I could never speak them around a stranger. You would have been the one to understand me, or at least that's what I always hoped.

I wanted so desperately to be understood by you. I wanted you to know and love every edge and curve of my body and brain. Take the good and the bad and hold it in your arms and never let go. Tell me how I make the stars shine and your universe whole. I wanted to do that for you too.

I wanted to fill in the spots of you that were missing. I wanted to cradle your fears and dissolve them with love. I wanted to nurture your doubts and help make your dreams blossom.

But love can not be one sided.

It didn't matter what I wanted did it? What you did was allow me to tear myself apart piece by piece to help fix you. When that wasn't enough, you took the parts of me I thought I knew and turned them into a stranger.

You were a cup over flowing and a I was an empty glass with cracks. I'd look in the mirror, tired. Dark circles rimming my eyes, no smile to light the fire back in my soul.

What had I become while trying to help you? Who had I become?

As much as the good memories pain me to remember, as much as it hurts to drive around in a town so abundant with the ghosts of our young love, I finally feel like me again.

I tried.

I'll always think fondly of these good memories, and some days I might miss them so much my eyes drown themselves and my heart dissolves into a thousand pieces.

But I have to remember I did not ruin these good things between us. I did not break your soul and laugh as you tried to gather the pieces, I did not extinguish the fire that should have been burning toward a path of excellence, of happiness.

You did that.

So I pass by the park, and ice cream shop, and my dorm room where we first made love, and I say goodbye.

Because now I am driving around with someone else in the city where we fell in love.