Growing Pains

Being twenty-four is a big pain in the butt. Being twenty ANYTHING is a big pain in the butt. There's so much personal growth involved. It seems like every other day some bone that makes up my emotional anatomy is broken and re-set. Which is cool. It's alright. It's certainly infinitely preferable to emotional stasis.

I thought I loved someone. Maybe I really do. But he doesn't love me...at least, not anymore. Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme. I wish I could tell you the whole long, involved story, but after typing half of it out, I decided that it belongs with him, and with me. I'll treasure our story in the same way you treasure that ugly sweater that your Aunt Harriet gave to you the Christmas before she died. Damn, it sure is ugly to look at, but it's all you have left of a person and a relationship that you owe so much. So you keep it somewhere in the back of your closet to examine and run your fingers over the fabric fondly on a rainy day.

Knowing him for so many years taught me how to like and respect someone so much that you make the choice to love them. Love is a choice, in my opinion. The last few weeks have taught me how to let someone go with love, after slogging through all of the bitterness with painful, leaden feet. I finally understand that he isn't the person I need, and I am not the person he needs. He walked away from me first, I know, though it happened so slowly I don't think either of us realized it until I was desperately pulling at his shirt to keep him with me.

He walked away from me first. I loved him in a way that took years to develop, that never came easily to me. He loved me instantaneously, hot as fire that consumed him and in the end was burned to nothing. I'll never forget the week that I knew he didn't love me anymore. I'd gone to stay with him at his apartment, and all week long, with increasing purpose and urgency, he pointed out my character flaws. I felt his hatred and disdain, a by-product of the guilt he felt for luring me so far into this relationship only to change his mind.

"You see? She's so volatile. Of course you can't love her. OF COURSE. See how she doesn't study until the last minute? So disorganized. You definitely can't love someone like that. I don't blame you one bit. This never could have gone anywhere."

I watched it happen, sometimes silently, sometimes hysterically, rushing around straightening my hair and applying makeup to convince him to love and want me again. What goes around, comes around I suppose. The first half of our relationship he spent desperately trying to get my attention. He'd throw temper tantrums when I wouldn't text him back, or dance with him at a party. Now the roles are reversed. But does that count as a healthy relationship? When you never love each other at the same time? Is that what love really looks like? I doubt it.

I'm still horrifically sad about it, of course. It's hard saying good-bye not only to my favorite person, but to the idea that I really ever loved him at all. To the idea that this could have ever gone anywhere. What I thought was a mature and abiding love turned out to be so cheap and so small, and that hurts. It hurts to be wrong. It hurts to be alone again after I thought those days were over. It hurts, in ways that surprise me every day, to say good-bye to all of the red-headed children we had talked about having. It hurts to say good-bye to a future that I thought for sure was mine. I wish I could've held it in my hand. I wish I could've kept it. I still can't believe something can pass away so quietly, so quickly, after fighting so long for it to exist at all. I wish I wasn't the only one left to wave a sad good-bye to this thing that could've been. I wish he could've waved good-bye with me, holding hands in a silent salute, paying homage to what almost was. But he's already gone, walking down another path that was never meant for me.

I'll miss that smug face you make when you think you know everything. I'll miss how much my body liked being close to your body. I'll miss the way your skin smells, no matter how long it's been since you've taken a shower. I'll miss your liquid brown eyes, even though I can't remember the way they looked at me back when you loved me. I'll miss your dry lips. I'll miss your small hands with big veins. I'll miss that moment where you and I were sitting on my couch in the dark, with that dog we rescued curled up in my arms. That was when I knew I loved you, although I never told you how much I treasured that moment. I wish you hadn't changed so much. I wish I hadn't changed so much.

I'll find my way to forgiving you, brother, for walking away, and for misplacing your anger and guilt. We are on two different journeys. I hope we both end up somewhere good. I'll find my way to forgiving myself, if I'm being honest, for somehow not being enough to keep you.

I love you, my friend, my almost-lover, the one I almost chose. I'll cry over what we lost enough for the both of us, and I'll make that sad, silent salute alone.