What Floats

It’s so interesting what ends up floating to the surface when things don’t go well.

I spent months and months missing Matt, and coming to the disappointing conclusion that we had bad timing and I had messed up in some way. I knew that I had made some mistakes and errors in judgment when we were together – and I knew I hurt him immensely. So I spent the last few months, coming to terms with the fact that some things just don’t work out… and even more heart breaking – that I messed this one up.

But, then, as Matt and I were talking… we were trying this thing called “friendship” – I finally understood that it was just as much his fault as mine… and the person I thought I was in love with was gone. He was a figment of my imagination.

I knew the minute he told me that if I wanted to be friends that I needed to stop seeing other people, and not date while we were friends.

At first, I thought I had misread his text message. Who tells an ex-love that they cannot move on with their life if they want to remain friends?

I read the text again and again – before asking him to clarify. He told me “I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately… and I know we are just friends, but the idea of you with somebody else kills me. So basically, I don’t know if I can have you in my life in any capacity if you are seeing somebody else.”

And when I said I just wanted to be friends, and if he didn’t want to because he needed to not be hurt – that was fine. He then told me that he wanted to be “more than friends” for a short period of time because that would help him get over the “betrayal” that I had committed.

 

Everything I believe about him disappeared…. he wasn’t the man I thought he was. He wasn’t the person I had fallen in love with. He couldn’t be.

Maybe I had made up the wonderful man I had fallen in love with – but I knew instantly that whoever that person I remembered wasn’t there…

All that was left was this angry man, who wants to, until the bitter end, win at our relationship.

He’s gone and whoever is left is this angry, unhappy, and mean person.

 

Some days

There are a few days, every once in while, where I can’t catch my breath because I think of you.

And in that breathless moment, I think about all of the mistakes that we both made and all of the possibilities I saw for us. Little flickers and images of what could have been hide behind my eyelids, and they drop away in teardrops.

Sometimes I have to stop myself for reaching for your hand in my sleep, or for the phone when I want to hear your voice. I remember the months we spent apart, and how I would call your voicemail just to hear your voice and feel a little bit closer to you.

I remember how desperate I was for your love, and how I felt your heart slip away from mine… and how that made me so so crazy. We did a lot of mean things to each other.

I remember a lot of the good and a lot of that bad. And I know each time I can’t catch my breath – we just don’t work together. It’s bad timing and all of the shitty things we did to each other that heap into a mound that is insurmountable.

I know the “we” won’t ever be again and I worry that you won’t want me to be a part of your life… your friend. Because if I can’t have you as the light in my life and heart – I want and need to be your friend at the very least. Sometimes a little voice tells me we aren’t friends… and I hate that little voice in my head.

Today is another one of those days where I woke up and I just missed you.