sneaking in

We fought. Argued. So often. We'd bicker, and I hated it. Especially before bed. You didn't want to talk about the fight the next morning. I did. I wanted answers. Why did we keep doing this? Mustn't this be a sign? You said that all couples fought. And I refused to believe that. You said I overreacted, calling me selfish for wanting to talk about it because you said you were done with the conversation. And "how could I" not accept that. I told you I wasn't being selfish. That I just wanted a plan. To work on, or towards. To make this get better. Not knowing for sure if it really ever could, get better.

I was sad. Upset. And discouraged. Thinking, wondering, is this as good as it gets? This? This is what it's like? And I began to think maybe I was overreacting. I began to cherish the good, lived for the good of it all, of us. Those few and far between good times, amidst all of the turmoil. I would apologize, over and over, for making you upset. Actually believing that it was my fault.

You said you never felt this strongly for someone before. Couldn't picture life without me. You, we, we pictured a family together. Marriage and a house and children and a puppy.

We would have our happy times. Takeout on the floor over candlelight. Ice skating hand in hand on a cold winter day. Then, inevitably, it would go back. Back to bad. To yelling and drinking and tears in the bathroom, or over chai tea at a Starbucks with a girlfriend down the road on a bad night.

Using all of the emotional strength I could muster up, I tried. Over and over to make it all work. Make it better. Make us better. Tried, with all I could, to make us the happy couple that I hoped we could be. I wanted so badly for us to just be happy together. I thought I could do that could be us.

It didn't work. After a while, it all ended up being much, much more actual work, to make us work, than it was worth. I loved you with everything I had, and pulled the hardest move I've ever had to make when I told you I couldn't do it anymore. When I said goodbye.

It's been a long time since all of that. I don't think about you as often as I once did. But I still do sometimes. And it's sneaky. It sneaks up on a warm sunny Sunday afternoon in the summertime. When I'm not doing anything we ever did together, I'll think of you then. And it will throw me for a loop. We never had a summer. I'll be on a bike ride, or eating homemade salsa at a friend's house, and you'll be there. Not physically, but you're there. And it will hit me like a ton of freaking bricks. It creeps in. You, creep in. You end up in my thoughts, just like that, and sometimes in my dreams. Into my mind at a random moment.

And maybe there are some triggers, who knows. Seeing your friend, who is dating my friend. Me, meeting a new guy. Hearing a song on the radio that reminds me of you, of us. But sometimes, there you are, again, all of a sudden. With no rhyme or reason to it all, you're back. And I don't even see it coming. The bag and box of you and your things, your reminders, the notes and cards, our pictures and your boxers, they're all stowed away. Gone are the physical reminders of you.

But those emotional reminders, those damn emotional reminders, that have a way of getting in, unexpectedly, they go, and they stick right to my heart. And then I feel it, and I feel you, like a little twinge from time to time. A reminder maybe. Of a time when. What once was. What is so different now, today. Of where I've been and where I've come.

You're still there. Here. Sometimes more than others. Often it's nothing. Sometimes it's really intense, pulling, abruptly at my heart.


I miss you sometimes, and I don't really want to anymore.