Over The Spaghetti

Oh My God.
This I thought to myself as I cried over the plate of angel hair with olive oil and parmesan cheese that I had just made for dinner.
It shouldn't have to feel this way.
This I knew, and yet, this I ignored.
I thought about all the things that made me most upset. I thought about how he canceled our plans to go out with other people on Wednesday night and how that made me feel like I wasn't important to him. I thought about how much he missed his ex-girlfriend and how that made me feel inadequate, and I thought about how that made me wish I was what he wanted. In my heart I had no idea whether he did or not. Or maybe I was just too afraid to admit what my heart already knew. If I didn't say so out loud, it wasn't true.
I thought about what Ryan said. "Some people just can't do relationships."
I burst into tears as if on cue. How could something like that be true, if I still felt like this about him?
Sabrina said I needed to ditch him.
I loved her, and maybe a note rang true in what she had said, but I couldn't do it.
She asked me if it was worth it to put up with this for a month.
I wanted to believe it was.
In my head, I reasoned to myself, if we can make it through this one month happily, it will all be worth it. I don't want to hate him before he leaves. I don't want to have bad memories. I don't want to feel like everything was fake. I didn't want to feel like another failed attempt at him recreating his feelings for Anna.
Yet this was how it felt right now.
So I hung on desperately, sitting alone in the kitchen, crying over my spaghetti. Sniffling quietly and hoping something good would come of this.
Hoping nothing bad would happen anymore.

The Red Balloon

I was SO HAPPY.
And in seconds he decimated me.
Life felt so....so much like it was coming together. I felt so glad to be independent. I felt the adrenaline pump through my veins as I completed task after task, and proved who I was to myself. I felt chills run up and down my body as slipped through the hallways of the biology building.
I even started my homework ahead of time.
And in seconds I lost it.
He ditched me.
Again.
I had begun to notice a pain in my right arm and a slight pain in my chest whenever I got upset. In addition to a twisting, turning stomach. It hurt and I didn't like it. Did I have some kind of condition?
I couldn't even threaten to break up with him because he would just agree.
I couldn't make him come home. I couldn't make him care.
I wasn't good enough.
I was decimated.

Sunset in Sandy

I thought about everything around me.
I wanted a nice house. Not a big house, but a nice, cute little house of my own. I would want someone to help me fill it, but a nice, cute little house would do for now. I wanted ivy growing on my house. I wanted a garden. Filled with vegetables and herbs. I wanted basil and thyme, lavender and rosemary. Tomatoes, zucchini, spinach, lettuce and corn, all with little heads sprouting green and promising from the deep brown earth. I wanted cool air to float in through the windows, smelling clean after a rain. I wanted to hear crickets and water. I want light to cascade through my bedroom.
I wanted to cook. They would be fabulous dishes, dishes that pleased everyone, especially myself. I wanted big tall trees I could climb and fantasize about. I wanted a nice life of my own, filled with all my joie de vivre.
Don't get me wrong, I had rough patches like the best of them. But I was yet to find someone who complimented me in my fascination and joy with the simple, delicious, and beautiful things. It's true my downs could be...down. But I was easily stroked back into a happy mood by joyous things. I was a girl who loved tall trees, pretty dresses, good food, soft kisses, fall leaves, crisp apples, and christmas lights.
I wanted someone to see that.
Even though I knew it was good enough for me that I loved life.

Days Inbetween

It seems so simple.
Just be happy.
A mantra I repeat to myself over and over again. I want to be happy. I can feel the capacity in my bones. But I also feel like I'm losing one of my closest friends. And his idea of helping me cope is to speed the process along.
But I'm happy with him and I can tell him almost anything. Of course, I've never mentioned my scrupulously shaved uni-brow or my odd tendency to draw a heart in pen just below the pinky on my left hand. I wonder why I haven't shared these things with my best friend.
Some days he's happy...other days he's not. I could want nothing more than for him to just pay attention to me, but it feels like to much to ask. Why can't we just be happy for a little while longer? And I'll move on later...
I will, I know I can. I have the strength in me now. After every honest moment he decides to have with me, the crumbling heart ache becomes less jarring. Although I'm still sad and sometimes, I just want him to stop deciding to be honest.
No. It's not that I want him to stop being honest. I just wish the honest didn't hurt me. I wish the honest was that he wanted to be happy with me for a little while longer.
I knew in my heart the best thing was for us to separate when he left. But did that have to be right now?
He made me happy, he was, as I will refer to him ever onward, my boyfriend and love training. Someone has to teach you what it is like. And even though I was never her, he was her. Sort of.
Maybe clinging to him was foolish. But it was what felt good, for now.

Few Lost Thoughts in My Soup

It's tragic really.
I can't stop wanting to be with him even though he hurts me.
All I can really think is, maybe if I was good enough, we could have these last couple months be happy. It's not that long, and he means a lot to me. I want to have at least a happy end, even though what I think would be happy would be to have him forever.
But is that really true?
No.
Because even though I say that's what I want, I know I won't be happy, because he won't be happy. I won't be enough, ever. I'm not right, as he says.
I know he says I am, but how can I be enough if he doesn't want me and is in love with someone else, even publicly?
Does he know how much that hurts me to read, to find a lie like that, publicly instead of privately?
For everyone to see.
I was coming to terms with it ending, the little glimmer of happiness as I knew the months would speed by and I would be alone again. In a month or so after his leaving, he would find another woman, probably of the red head persuasion, and she would fill the spot in his bed next to him, not I.
A space that I could never completely fill, no matter how much I tossed, turned, and spread.
And I would be alone. Faced with the task of filling my own bed, and stemming my leaking heart, while he, as is his way, felt nothing, no remorse at leaving me behind so broken. He would stay patched together, as it were, finding the new band-aid to his hopelessly torn asunder heart.
I would find myself again, I knew it.
A small warmth was managed in my fingertips amongst the approaching cold. A small gathering of friends, a man who knew the words to say. He appreciated me and saw me as a kind and caring being. And so the title of my memoirs came to me through our conversation: "Mistakes like Me."
Because he made the mistake, I suppose, of staying with me, of getting with me, or of picking me but not keeping me. Which, I can not be sure. I laughed because maybe someday I might actually write memoirs, if they mean anything in the future.
An image poured into my brain from some other planet. Maybe so many hours at the pool had influenced it, but I saw my body, streamlined and glistening, a snapshot in the blue sparkling water. The power behind my arms and lengths, a strength I greatly missed. Something I wanted back.
I had a passion for life, and I knew it. I just had to regain it in moments like these, when I felt like the only person who cared for me was letting me down. In reality, he shouldn't be so important, and I had good friends who could nurture me back to health. But in truth, I had thought I had found someone who could truly see me.
The intimacy of a relationship is such a wonderful thing. You feel a connection unlike anything else. You feel as if someone sees you for all your good and wishes (for the moment) never to be parted from you. To stay in your life as long as you will let them. That is why it is such a tragedy to break apart. A travesty, if you will. To be ripped apart from what you perceived as such joy, such love, such closeness is completely gone. The one driving force that understood you and saw you for all that you were has not an inch of faith.
And so you must find the faith for yourself, and hope that someday, someone will see that in your eyes and really never, ever part from you again.