A petty game of Chicken

I used to write words that would leave those who were brave enough to read them speechless. Until you left me and I no longer had an inspiration to write ever again. I would let the emotions flow from my fingertips and now it is just so rare to feel that I may never be able to write as honestly as I once did. I have no desire to love like that again. Not the way I once loved you. Even after all this time I still feel as though this is a petty game of chicken to see who can last the longest and neither of us are winning. But you are. I don’t know why but even now through all the ashes I wait for you to return home, hoping that maybe one day we may be able to rebuild the home you burned to the ground. I clutch the key you gave me and stand waiting for you to notice the tears as they stream down in this bitter winter. I will never understand why it is I write all of this out knowing you’ll never read the words I write for you when I’m alone.

When I first had found you and you had found me in the dark you had told me you never wanted to see me hurt but you just didn’t want to see me do it to myself because you wanted to be the one to do it yourself. I’ve found that I feel as though we started something that you were unable to finish and I have paid the price of not being able to feel complete and so my work remains unfinished as well.

You are part of my past, and yet for some reason you are still here. You show up everywhere. No matter how fast I run from you. You’re somehow ten steps ahead of me and you must truly enjoy seeing me suffer like an animal in a cage, being poked and prodded. I don’t talk about you. No one knows. But, somehow, even they know. You follow me. You won’t stop. I’m trying. I tell myself none of them are you. It doesn’t work. It never does. They are all you, in the worse possible way; They are you.. People talk about being broken. They don’t know what broken is. You don’t know what broken is until you’re standing on your own front porch in the hardest cry you’ve ever been in looking the person you love in the eyes with them telling you to your face that they can do better than you...And you still love them more than a year later. That is truly broken.

Are you still that broken inside?

“Yes, we all know the relentless hatred I have towards you. Yes, we all know how I feel.” That’s not even remotely true because I don’t have relentless hate towards you. I simply grieve you. You’re not dead but who I love is. It’s the worse kind of grievance. Just your name gives me anxiety. It makes my stomach turn in knots. My blood boils in my body so much I can feel my cheeks turn ember red.

I wrote you a letter months ago.

Dear stranger,

I have sat here for months now just pretending to hate you because it’s easier than admitting the truth. You leaving me was one of the hardest things for me to experience in my life. I’ve told myself lie after lie of how I was okay, and that in a few months I would forget all about you. I never imagined that almost a year later I would be sitting here in the dark, brought to tears because I can no longer handle hiding the truth that you will never know. I have done a lot of thinking since you’ve been gone, putting my feelings of happiness away just so you could go on living without me. That’s all I wanted was for you to be happy. Though I wished it had been with me. This is my letter to you, so that one day you may understand that I meant it when I said “Forever and Always”. When you walked away that day in April, was like a thousand knives straight to my heart, and it has yet to recover. I doubt that it ever truly will heal, no matter how much time passes by.

I think of you just as often as I breathe. Even when I’m talking to him, my head somehow manages to find its way to you. Even though I love him too, he’s no you. For every bad thing that I come to remember, there are ten more good times I think of. I hate myself for loving you everyday. If you somehow you come up in conversation, I still get the urge to come to your defence, and then have to remember that you made the choice to break my heart. You made me see the world in a different light, and helped me live.

I hope that one day I will be able to say that I no longer know what your lips feel like against mine, or what it’s like to hold your hand in mine, but that is not today. I have wrote paragraph after paragraph about you. I can’t get you out of my head, or the memories of how happy you made me. The hurt I’ve felt is indescribable. And I know you haven’t lost sleep over any of this, but I still can’t help but lie awake at night, wondering if even for a second if you have ever shed a tear for me. Or if you ever hear one of our songs, and get the feeling like you made a mistake walking away.

Somehow even though you were the one who walked away,I still feel like it was because I failed you in some way. For wanting more, but wanting it with you. The only thing I want to apologize to you for is for loving you so much. Even now. I am so sorry, stranger. I know it’s not fair to you. But that is why I will never send or show you this. Not while you are still a just boy anyways. But maybe someday when you have grown up into the man I have faith that you can be. When you make it in the world, the way I know you can.

And I hope that you know, even without it being said, that I carry you with me everywhere that I go. And you never forget that I loved you then, I love you even now, and I will love you forever and always, even when we’re both old and gray and have long since moved on. I will always believe in you, and you will always have me on your side no matter what. You will always be a piece of me, just as I will always hope to be a piece of you.

I hope to see you grow and prosper, but also that you find that someone who you feel the way I feel about you. I hope that one day you will be able to tell me that you finally were able to understand, but more than that I hope you get to see the joys of life and experience what it feels like to have so much love for someone, as much as I do for you.

I can only hope that this is my last letter to you, as I move on with him. Who has shown me the way I deserve to be loved. I hope that you at least care enough about me that you would be glad to know that I’ve fallen for such a great guy. One who can love your past love the way you never could, and I hope that at the very least this is enough of an apology and makes up for the fact that I ever loved you in the first place. Please take care.

Sincerely,…

And yet, once again; Here we are. Or I should say, here I am.

Most of the time all there is, is silence. I don’t know what to do with that but it’s all I hear. Even with some noise or someone talking it all just seems like white noise to me drifting into the background. It is as if my life were a blank canvas and I have writer's block and just can’t get anything onto that canvas. And it stays that way. Never changing, just blank. On occasion there may be a simple thought or idea, but they always fade into bleak thoughtless expressions. It gets to the point where I’ll have to get up and move, or leave a room because the silence produces this ringing sound that I can’t quite describe. It’s awful. I hate it.

It’s constantly there, even if it’s only in the back of my mind. I’ve had it all my life. I remember the first time I ever noticed it though. I wondered what the feeling was. I wondered that for a few years til I was old enough to realize that it wasn’t a feeling, but just the opposite of that in fact. It wasn’t me feeling something… It was me feeling nothing. I had become numb by the age of 12. Every year it has just seemed to worsen.

I’ll be 18 now in just a little under 8 months. It got really bad when I was in the 8th grade. I thought about trying to cut that year, but was to afraid to use a razor and just ended up making shallow cuts on my arm by pressing a mechanical pencil to my skin. It was a different type of high for me. By the time I was 15 ½ I had already had 3 pregnancy scares.

From time to time the urges still come back. I stop myself by telling myself that if the people who cared about me knew what I was doing they’d be disappointed in me, and that’d just make things worse. So, I don’t. I tell myself this, but there are still times when even though I know I have people who love and cherish me, that I’m completely alone. I was 16 when I first started smoking weed, I don’t do it often. Only when I really need to stop the anxiety. Or as an escape from the numbness. It’s better then feeling the sharp pains in my chest. I want to cry every day. And for no other reason then for living. It seems as nothing more than a constant string of regrets.

At times I honestly don’t even know why I go on with living but I do. My mother calls me an anti social pessimist, but the truth is I believe in a better world. But how could I make that happen if I’m dead? The answer is I can’t. So, I keep on living and do my best not to hear the silence.

It had never been about the material things he could give me. Money, gifts, jewelry.Those were never what made me fall in love with him. They were nice, but they weren’t what bought my soul. It was the way his eyes pierced me to the core. Being able to look him in the eyes was what was to seal my own fate. The clearness of them. The eyes unlike any I had ever seen before. They were big. And they were beautiful. And he had this underbite that caused his lower lip to stick out. Not much, but enough. His hair was long, and he always let his beard grow. He was tall. But not skinny. But not fat either. Even though we joked about it. He was confident, to the point of arrogance. He lived in his own little world. Once I got a taste of it, it made me want more.

He was perfect to me. Flaws and all. It was all the little things. And the way he smelled, was out of this world. It intoxicated me. It was the way he enjoyed beating his high score or doing a song perfectly on “Osu”. It was the way he took things personally. And the way he’d let me play spore, and then play for me when I asked. It was the people he introduce me to that were amazing, and unforgettable. He had always managed to seem as though he could type flawlessly with all the coding he’d do just to create a page with my picture on it to say “I Love You”, or to create a whole game of his own, and make it snow, just for me. The way he would protect my clan.

From the way he’d come to the library and just had given me time, his time. It was when he could look at me and see only me. If there ever was a time like that it would have been at the park where we spent our six month anniversary, or at our favorite restaurant. I could still order for him. It was always the same thing, in the same booth. It would be no different. It was the way he’d teach me about Parkour and the path’s he’d take to get through the crowd. It was even worse if he was jumping off the walls of the parking courage where we got our song, and watched the sun set. It was the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen in my entire life.

It had been until we watched the sky turn black at his sister’s wedding where we dance, and sat outside and just talked. It had also been were we put on mask, and had just had fun that night. And even though we were young, we were happy. Then his niece had been born. And I can just remember us standing in that hospital room thinking that that could be us someday. Even though that someday will never come now. That someday had turned into the same thing as our Forever and Always.

All this and so much more was what made me fall even harder. It was the way he had made the butterflies come to life in the pit of my stomach. The way I could always take him by the hand and just smile. The way he walked I could have watch for hours. The way he made me laugh, was like no other. It had been a shame once the late night conversations that I once adored had become nothing more than a burden to him. His smile had been infectious. If he was happy so was I. I had only seen him cry once in the entire time that I knew him. It was only a few months into getting to know each other. I’ll never forget the look he had on his face that day.

That was the day I knew how I had felt about him. That was the day I had become so sure and had lost any doubt. I hadn’t felt that way again until he had moved into the apartment on the other side of town. There was a small swing hanging from a tree in the yard just off the driveway. I was scared, but he had been there so I went on it anyways. I could always feel myself blush when it had come close to him and we’d kiss.

When we kissed it was like an explosion. He had kissed me in the rain once. It didn’t even matter to me that it had been thundering. My fear had been washed away while he was there. Time had stopped, like we had been frozen in time, just as it had felt like when he kissed me underwater. Nothing else, it had just been us. I hadn’t realized at the time but we had been on a metaphorical fourwheeler ride. And a literal one. If he hadn’t changed me on the long walks we’d go on at his dad’s house to the big rock, or just to the little hill past the small ponds where we’d catch frogs. Especially when we would spook the horses and their riders when they’d come around the corner of the path by accident. I would never had gotten on one of those things if I knew he had forgotten that I was on the back that first time he brought me on one.

How could I ever forget the times he danced with me. I always had told him I could see his Halo. I made sure I had been wearing my key necklace that night. He told me I had been beautiful. I kissed him after that. That kiss had brought me back to our first kiss. He had been my first kiss ever and my many more after that.

It had been a while since I had felt that my fears wash away and just as my doubts had crept back in he grabbed me by the hand, in front of his mother, and danced slowly with me. Almost as though he knew what I had been thinking, what I had been feeling. In that moment he knew what I needed, and gave it to me with no questions asked. He made me believe he was worth dancing with in that moment.

Sometimes, I could even gently squish his cheeks together and know the exact response I’d have gotten, because we all know fishies never smiled. I would use to get so mad at him at times. For whatever reason. I’d be at my breaking point, and I’d say that I was done with everything. And that had always included him. But the one thing that never changed was that as soon as I would go to walk out the door he’d come up behind me and just hug me as tight as he could, without hurting me, and wouldn’t let me walk out. As much as I would struggle, or try, he wouldn’t let go. So I would stay.

And then one day I had to let it all go, and I was finally gone.