love stories I put together

When I was seven years old, I learned for the first time the difference between parents who are divorced, and parents who had never been together in the first place. It’s an important distinction, because, as a seven year old, when someone asks you how long your parents have been divorced, you can find nothing less compelling than the urge to correct him or her, explaining that rather than bother themselves with the messy “d” word, your parents never even bothered with the whole together part before they decided to separate. And as a seven year old, it’s odd enough to think of the concept of marriage in general, but this is especially odd when your parents have spent less time in the same room together than they have each individually spent with you.

So you can imagine what an observation like this might have done to my understanding of monogamy in general. As a teenager, I was constantly looking to understand love in all its most idyllic forms, in movies, in Judy Blume novels, and when writing, I tried to emulate these definitions of romance, all placed strategically in stories with just enough tragedy and red herrings that they would, I imagined, keep any reader hooked.

As I grew a little older, I began to understand love a bit more cynically, i.e., I went to college, began to really understand the implications of a relationship like that of my parents, and after two year relationship ended by me while I was half the world away studying in South Africa, I decided a relationship was the very last thing I ever wanted or needed at such a turning point in my life.

Life always has other plans though, doesn’t it? Here are a bunch of stories/pieces I have written over twenty-one years of trying to understand exactly what love means in this world.

Love Ability

I wonder what makes a person loveable.

Is it something about what they share with the world? What they allow the world to see about them, whom they publicly admire, the portions of their talents they are willing to showcase?

Is there something about the way they smile at exactly the right times, or something about when they mourn in convenient empathy?

How about the way they smile as a polite hello, or shake hands and wish for a pleasant tomorrow?

I wonder if it is something everyone can see, if that’s the secret that makes someone loveable.

Or to fall in love with someone, do you have to understand the side of them they keep hidden from the world? Is there something about the way they smile and look down at the ground, sharing a secret with it that everyone is dying to know but cannot seem to understand?

In order to love someone, do you have to love the way they sit when they are alone, or admire the junk food they crave?

Do you have to smile at the pen that simply kisses the paper, nothing more, or are you only allowed to love the epic masterpiece?

How many times are you allowed to smile to yourself as you picture them deep in humble intelligent thought until you realize that they are unbelievably loveable and you are irrevocably drawn to them?

When they absentmindedly chew on their pen cap, is this when you imagine your lives together? Do you wish your lives to be as tangled as their messy hair?

Or is it even possible to love someone simply for their flaws?

To swoon when they let their façade slip, laugh at their simple misconceptions. How much time are you allowed to spend counting the freckles between their shoulder blades, each one brightening your smile and adding weight to their make-up bag?

It’s lovely to understand their humanity. To realize that even the best and brightest can make dumb mistakes. When they cry at a movie or grow angry with an outcome, are you allowed to nod in agreement, loving them all the more?

How many wrinkles may you caress until they understand and laugh with you to make ones anew?

How much salty seawater will you brave until you dry your eyes and blink in awe?

Perhaps being loveable is a combination, as all good things are.

The way they cheer and wave makes you beam. The way they lower their arms and clench something in their pocket clings in your mind. The sweat wiped from their nervous brow lets you into their world.

The way they poke and prod until your feelings burst from within.

 The way the key to their hope chest fits neatly in your palm.

Their dreams small enough to be coherently fulfilled.

I wonder what it is that makes a person loveable. Maybe it is just that humanity is perfectly romantic?

To find love in this world is a part of human nature and human nature is powerfully consistent.

Ryan/”Love”

As a sophomore in high school, I developed a yearlong, powerful crush on a boy from my swim team. I had first met him at a friend’s birthday party—you know, one of those parties where everyone is too young and too well-behaved to try sneaking alcohol, and where the most exciting things happen when certain people decide to sit next to each other by the bonfire or jump together on the trampoline. We were all young enough to have just discovered the magic of iPods, and we had pizza and chips for dinner. Our friend had a great backyard, and at the time it seemed like the most fun we would ever have.

Ryan and I met by the trampoline. He started talking about music, and in a bold move, I asked to see his iPod, so I could get a look at what kind of music he was into. When I discovered that he had just as extensive a collection of Owl City’s music on his iPod that I had on mine, he became more than just the cute new guy on the swim team. He was the cute new guy on the swim team who had the exact same music taste as me, something I at the time counted as the most important indicator that he could be my soul mate. We talked for a long time that night, he was new and didn’t really know anyone yet, and I was quickly falling into the spell of him.

Over the next few months, I couldn’t seem to find a single thing about him that I didn’t like. Well, aside from the fact that he wasn’t really into me in any perceptible way. But I was used to having to use my imagination, and so I pictured us in all types of dating scenarios. They were all innocent, centered mainly on holding hands in public, or swapping secrets on someone’s roof like they always do in teenage romance movies. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t interested in me; I think somehow for a while I didn’t even need that, the memories of our brief interactions were enough to keep me infatuated with him for a year.

Things finally ended with a heartbreaking realization on the front porch of my house, when I realized that Ryan, who I had always known to only respond to my texts sporadically, had been flirting all night at an unfortunate game of putt putt with my best friend at the time, and had been texting her religiously the entire evening, and a few days beforehand. The realization, finally, that not only had he never been into me, but that he was so not into me he had become into someone else sparked a night of quietly crying my eyes out, and a heart-wrenching poem entitled “Heartbreak”, in which I detailed all the ways that this crush had impacted my senses.

It was only years later, upon reflection, that I realized how this crush, though mostly in my own head, might have sneaked its way into the realm of love.

I know exactly what love feels like.

Love, that coveted emotion that smiles with its victims.

Love, for me, took shape in my sophomore year, with a boy I spent ages perfecting as an image in my mind.

At fifteen, I think I fell in love for the first time, with something unattainable. It began as something as natural as a crush, and developed into something much more.

I never really realized I loved him, not until much much later, when I had almost forgotten the entire affair.

Love is a beautiful thing, it is proven, yet this love story has an unfortunate ending, as many do.

I remember the way it used to make me feel when he walked into the room. Invincible. Nothing could touch me. No, as long as he was there, I would be all right. Smiling at me with his beautiful teeth, I remembered in each minute of being with him why I was where I was, why I had spent my time away from my room.

God, I was breathless when I was with him. I tried with every inch of my being to get him to smile when I spoke, to laugh along with me, alone with me.

Each thing we had in common, and, unfortunately enough, there were plenty, was like a brilliant ray of sunshine, it shined golden and beautiful, so wonderful that I did not once notice how much it hurt to be blinded.

It felt wonderful to love him; it was an intoxicating thing to indulge in. I would smile and follow him anywhere in the world. I was the happiest girl ever created if I got to spend two minutes alone with him. That’s all it took.

And yet, loving him was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. Each second I indulged in my love for him, I fed the monster that love supported: hope. It was so overwhelmingly easy, to close my eyes and imagine.

I could imagine lying in the grass next to him, our hands barely touching, but his presence being enough for me. We would count the twinkling stars until they fell asleep alongside us. We would learn to love under the scratchy moonlight.

Each time I hoped, I cried for the sake of my heart as it took flight with my imagination. The abyss between the two of us, him and I, would never be crossable, but a single blink from him to my direction convinced me otherwise.

It was difficult to accept, but in the back of my mind I understood that he did not love me as I loved him, and that he never would.

And yet the stupid parts of me hoped. Each night that I cried myself to sleep, I remembered something and convinced myself that it was not over, it would never be.

Until one fateful day when the realization finally did take hold—he had texted me first (first!) to ask for my best friend’s phone number and I gave it to him, but steered the conversation elsewhere, hoping to keep his attention the way he so easily kept mine. But soon it became clear that he wasn’t interested in texting me, I had only been the middle man in his own efforts to get the attention of my best friend.

Trevor/”First Kiss”

I started drinking when I was a senior in high school. I had gotten drunk for the first time before then, but I didn’t start really going to parties until I made friends from outside my high school, mainly, a guy I met at my part-time job as a lifeguard where I spent most of my weekends and my summers. He introduced me to his friends, and to the ease with which friends can be made when everyone is drinking, high school years are winding down, and people have learned to stop taking themselves so seriously. Consequently, my first kiss, a moment I had wondered about for years on end, and which I had coveted since I had learned to read young adult fiction, happened fairly quickly into my senior year party phase. I had kissed boys before, but nothing serious, nothing I found worthy of writing about. When I think back to my first real kiss, I narrow it down to a warm September night, in the back room in the basement of a friend of a friend’s house, on a squeaky pull out couch. I think of never wanting it to end, but also never wanting it to progress. I think of a naïve girl who had years ahead of her to understand the culture of hooking up.

“First Kiss”

My first kiss tasted like weed and water (he had been smoking it, not me).

Not regular water though. How water tastes when you’ve put it into a Gatorade bottle and it still has that faint taste of what the Gatorade used to be, but not significantly enough like Gatorade that you can remember exactly what flavor had been in the bottle before then.

My first kiss wasn’t magical, not really. I guess I kind of wanted it to happen but I don’t really think I would have minded if all I did was cuddle that night. I think that kissing is a byproduct of that night and who he was and who I am and what I’d been doing.

I think that the saddest part of my first kiss is that it was my first kiss but I am the only one who really sees it that way, as something that needs to be remembered and put away in a little box for me to come back to and compare every other kiss I have in the future.

And I can remember everything about it. Who initiated it (him) who was the one who was more into it (him), who tried to stay up and keep kissing (me), who eventually got up and left to sleep somewhere else (him).

And its sad because who knows how much he remembers—I think he even had a girlfriend at the time. Either that or he got one right after because the next time I saw him there was a new pretty girl at his side.

And the funniest thing? Well actually the weirdest thing, is that for a while after the first kiss happened, 

Anytime I smelled weed it would smell like

Familiarity

And I would feel wistful and strange and confused because a smell so universal, how could it make me feel so individually, specifically nostalgic?

Your first kiss isn’t supposed to be an accident—who knows how long I’d convinced myself about the magic that would come when I finally got one. And yet, like so many things we wait so long for, the experience itself pales in comparison to the beauty of our imagination.

It’s supposed to be special right like you’re supposed to wait for a while and when it suddenly comes, you’re happier than you’ve ever been because it allows you to live in the moment, right? Or at least that’s what I’d come to understand.

But for god’s sake there is supposed to be a point at which you feel something, right?

Something other than a strange softness on your lips like there’s supposed to be fireworks or something, right?

Being drunk and getting your first kiss is like

Holding someone’s hand for the first time when you’re in Mass in middle school.

Or in line outside with all the other little kids and the teacher makes you hold hands with the boy next to you and you blush because you’re just old enough to realize that boys are different than girls but not old enough to accept it yet.

And you know they might not know your name or your story and they’re probably feeling a little less than you are, and you don’t know their story though you might know their name but you don’t feel anything other than exactly what it is.

And you feel like you should feel something but when it’s over within a few minutes and you go your separate ways to class you think and think and think

And overthink.

And as your mind runs in circles, a simply touch begins to mean more and more until you find yourself fallen into the uncomfortable but intoxicating rabbit hole of a crush.

You wish only for them, in some strange, singular way.

But when you finally find yourself outside your room and outside the realm of your imagination, and you see them passing by or someone mentions their name

And you remember your little meaningless encounter, was just that. A meaningless little encounter.

In a way, it’s like the physical boundary you’ve crossed doesn’t mean what you’ve built yourself up to imagine it would.

Because you haven’t gotten what you always imagined, and so now you feel as though it kind of doesn’t count.

Kyle/”Falling In Love With A Favorite Song”

My friend Kyle was the one who introduced me to drinking in high school. It was after meeting him and going to parties with his friends, that I learned all that I had been missing for four years by being shy, staying in my room and writing. We became close pretty quickly, in the way that people with similar senses of humor can easily become friends. And not only that, but he convinced me to come out of my shell. In a way, I could always sense that he liked me in a way that was deeper than he’d openly admit. And he wasn’t shy about telling me when he saw things about me that he really liked. At parties full of people who didn’t know me from school, who hadn’t been observing my location within the hierarchy of elementary, middle, and high school friend groups, I got to be whoever I wanted to be. And with this confidence and the confidence-producing capacities of underage drinking, I became friends with Kyle’s friends, lost the desire to impress the popular kids at my high school, and embraced my senior year as one that would be entirely different, full of new friends and new experiences.

The inevitable realization by both parties that one is more romantically invested than the other is not one that slipped by mine and Kyle’s friendship. Although, in this situation, I’m glad to say that the relationship didn’t end in fire. I think the real moment of testament came when I offered at work to write something for Kyle, and send it to him later. He told me later that he never read it, after sending me something he claimed he had written but later admitted he had Googled and copied and pasted in a response email to me. But somehow I have the sneaking suspicion that he actually did read it, and I hope that he enjoyed it, and that it was accurate, and that in breaking into what I imagined his emotions to be, I didn’t hurt him. But who knows. I’ve been known to be oblivious to people’s feelings before, and that’s never stopped me from reconciling things with them before.

“Falling In Love With A Favorite Song”

I like to think that falling in love is something like finding a new favorite song.

In the beginning, the song is new, eclectic, different. There really isn’t anything that draws you to it, except for the fact that it is simply unlike anything you have heard before. Its chords are put together in a way that might not be beautiful, not the first time you hear them, but instead, as your ears become accustomed to the sounds, you like it more and more.

The same goes for the first stages of falling in love. You meet her, and something about her draws you in. She may be quiet, she may be afraid to speak lest someone correct her in something that should have been embarrassingly blatantly obvious. But there’s something different about her, something pretty in the way she swings her hips in accidental sensuality. There’s something nice about the way her eyelashes curl upwards and something gentle in the way her collar bones connect with her smooth shoulders.

He may be something you can’t imagine yourself ever being friends with. He’s loud and everything about his personality swallows your own, making you feel self-conscious and scared because of its difference. He may not even talk to you for that first little while. Is it because he doesn’t like you? How on earth should you know, all you do know is that he’s different and you’ve always gone safe.

With enough time of listening to it, the song forces its way into your mind, and it makes you smile as you feel it drawing you in like a magnet. Everything about it feels like a good idea, and the more you listen the more easily you are convinced.

She’s something you need to have. It doesn’t matter where or when, but the more you get to know her, the easier it is to understand that things will not move on until she is yours. For one night, or longer, it doesn’t matter. She forces her way into your mind and you are willing to work hard to get what you want.

Everything about him seems harmless and tryable, as it flips over in your mind. How bad could it be? To try things out, as a way of understanding them a little more clearly. The yes you say to let him be with you for one night, it seems okay enough.

          

            It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The way this song can surprise you every time? Just when you’ve become comfortable in your understanding of it, you hear another little chord progression you missed, or another instrument that makes it that that much better to listen to.

When she smiles and stands up to dance and laugh with your friends you begin to understand with surprise how much depth this girl really has. Maybe she’s more than you thought originally, because today she is somewhere she’s never been with people she’s never met, and she’s holding her own. How fantastic it feels to be surprised by her again! To sit back and smile because you really can’t seem to place her in a category where all her moves and moods are predictable. Tonight though, it is all okay. She fits in with your friends as well as the embers dancing from the tiny fire, as well as the empty beer cans littering the driveway, as well as the cold grass and the lights from the garage, as well as the moon in the dark blue sky.

Tonight is the night of your homecoming, and the McDonalds cup gives you liquid courage. It’s so easy to stand up and smile and talk to people you’ve never met before when your body feels this warm and this light. It’s cold, but that’s just until you start to dance. How could you have lived your entire life missing it in this way? Sitting at home when you could be smiling and twirling in circles and dancing with all your wonderful new friends? What has he introduced you to? A new world, and it’s wonderful and lit by the stars.

            

Your song has become familiar. There is a routine to it, and it’s a good thing, for now. The feeling is familiar, and it was unprecedented, but you begin to expect it will remain this way, even if you wish sometimes for a little more variety.

You know now how she will act. It’s funny to see people who don’t know her try to change her. It’s funny to watch as they try and fail, just as you have. But in the back of your mind, all you really want is for her to change enough to let you in. She’s so stuck in her morality, it’s hard to believe she would ever change. But the routine is taken over by the fact that you remember what she was before she met you.

What comfort he brings you. He’s something that will always be there to take you places and to laugh with you as you joke about your relationship. How could you ever really understand how much he wants you? You know the words, because you’ve heard them. But want is something of little importance to you, you have your own problems to be worried about.

            

A last few times of listening to your favorite song, and you finally lay it to rest, accepting that it is the same song and will not be surprising you any longer. It is time to move on to different and more open. There isn’t time or energy enough to work on new songs like this one in order to make them fit you.

It’s exhausting trying this hard, and you don’t know how you got into this situation this deeply. She’s still not yours, and that’s all you’ve ever wanted. Maybe it is time to count your losses and go back to the drawing board. After all, there are plenty of other pretty girls out there. She isn’t, and cannot be the only one.

Just when you believe you have him without actually having him (because who could handle that commitment), things are boring and stale, and it’s time to move on. Things aren’t like they were that first night, magic and fun and free.

            

The last stage of having a favorite song is stumbling upon it again after a while. It has had time to settle, and all of a sudden you remember how much you liked it before. Not only that, but you hear new things and it’s wonderful again.

Today she surprised you yet again, and you have to admit, it reminded you why you liked her in the first place. There’s new things about her and she’s different but there is still that little something about her. You can’t quite place it, but it’s there and you still want to have it.

Remember the familiarity? Well it’s different now, nothing about him is the same, but it’s still fun to be around him, and you always remember the fun of that first night and the fun that could be just around the corner. It’s great because memories last.

Drew/”A Love Note (3)”

For my senior prom, I took a boy I had just met two weeks before, at the suggestion of one of my friends. She knew him from another school, and he was “very nice and very smart,” and she thought we would get along well together. As it turns out, she was right. We met one random weekend evening when he drove to my house, picked me up in his car, and drove me to the only Sonic in my town. I honestly can’t remember if either of us ordered anything.

We had great conversation; our personalities meshed well together and it was easy to see that there was some type of connection. Exactly what type of connection this would be, I’m not sure we had the same idea. But I figured he would be a fun person to take to prom, and prom has always been a time and place where it is extremely important to have a date come with you anyway.

After prom we didn’t really end up rekindling our friendship after we parted ways for college until my sophomore year, and it was then that we started talking pretty regularly. I loved how open he was, and how willing he was to send me text messages that were super long and thought out, and clearly engaging. At a point in my life when I was really unsatisfied with a lot of the things around me, it was nice to have something to ground me. I had big ideas and it felt good to be able to share them with someone who was willing to take me seriously.

The summer before both of our junior years, we met in his car again, this time driving through the pouring rain to a Dunkin Donuts parking lot, and talking for a long while about our hopes and our plans for the future. We talked about how unsatisfied I was with my current relationship, how willing we both were to let everything go and embark on our upcoming semesters abroad. After we went our separate ways yet again, I remember feeling nostalgic one night for the friendship that we had given to each other. I wrote something in the form of a love note while on a kick from reading Mary Louise Parker’s Dear Mr. You, in which all of the chapters are written in the form of love letters to the men from Parker’s life. I’m happy to say that since then, we’ve talked again. It’d have been a shame to waste a friendship as unique as the one we had.

“A Love Note (3)”

What’s weird is that I only have two memories at an old Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through, and one of them involves you. I don’t know how long we sat there in your car, watching the rain skim lightly across the windshield. It took me a while to remember I had no reason to be wearing my seatbelt.

I know that you only wanted me to break up with my boyfriend because you thought that you and I might be better suited. Maybe if I had let you kiss me then, you wouldn’t take so long now to respond to my texts. There’s only so much I can do to make you fall in love with me.

Remember when you came to my pool? I was so nervous. I knew the sweatshirt I was wearing didn’t show any of my curves, and I was afraid you had already forgotten my personality. You were about to be free; I was so bound to the fall semester. We were on the brink of studying abroad—the experience we both banked on as giving us adulthood. In a way, it did. I broke up with my boyfriend. You broke up with me.

What’s kind of funny is that we went to prom together. I was sober the whole time, but I did that drunk thing where I look for the prettiest boy in the room. Maybe you’re him now, but I didn’t think so then. I remember prom as the flash of plastic jellyfish hanging from the ceiling, I remember it as a blue tank with a few ubiquitous dolphins. The food wasn’t seafood; that was a blessing. But you weren’t my boyfriend, and I felt alone. At least my dress was beautiful. The pictures my mom took of us are really sweet.

I don’t drink to forget you; in fact, it’s only in certain flickers of time that I remember you at all. Isn’t it sad how delicately life moves on? We spend so long feeling immersed that we forget that where there is water, there is a surface where it ends.

David/”During My Senior Week” part 1

I didn’t lose my virginity until a few weeks into the summer before my freshman year of college. It wasn’t something that was really on my radar until senior year anyway, but when I went away to senior week (a week in which freshly graduated high school students would flock to Ocean City for a week of unsupervised mayhem) hooking up and losing one’s virginity were constantly being talked about.

A few weeks before I had met a guy who I would eventually lose my virginity to, and emotionally, I was already somewhat attached to him.

But, dutifully, like any high school girl who wasn’t quite eighteen yet, I got myself into a situation, in a room, with a boy who had intentions. We didn’t really do anything at all, and he eventually ended up leaving in the middle of the night, throwing his things together and storming off without saying goodbye. I didn’t miss him, but I did miss the attention he had given me, and when I got home after that week, I was quick to substitute that attention with someone else’s.

But I wrote a poem, eventually, about David.

“During My Senior Week” part 1

At the beach after high school graduation,

I distinctly remember my feelings for

him.

He kissed me the first night,

assumed he was paving his way for sex

and I let him believe it.

I let him believe his tongue wasn’t

prying in areas of my mouth

where it did not belong

I let him believe I wanted him

the way he so clearly wanted me.

Drunk on the idea of him,

I created summer romance.

On top of the purple sheet

that covered the stained one beneath it, and

I couldn’t fathom the idea of us together

He stormed out when my hands were too still

left me in a huff of cheap alcohol.

The next morning

that was all I could taste.

John/”During My Senior Week” part 2

I lost my virginity in a spare bedroom in my friend’s basement. I didn’t know the guy very well, in fact, I found out later that he had a girlfriend, and therefore was uninterested in pursuing any type of emotional relationship with me. That first time, the sex was underwhelming, filled with uncomfortable silence and the swishing of sleeping bag material on the bare carpet, and a concerned whisper in my ear the next morning from a boy sobered up enough to question if I thought I might be pregnant.

I guess we all have our fair share of horror stories regarding how we lost our virginity. And even though we only tried it once, I was embarrassingly attached to him, inviting him over and begging him to stay when all he wanted to do was leave. When I look back on it now, I wish someone would have told me that I never deserved to put up with a guy who treated me like I was worth so little.

“During My Senior Week” part 2

A week later and

2 was possessive

yet I believed.

This one fooled me.

He kissed me kindly and

it didn’t seem to be about anyone else.

I lost my virginity on the

floor of a room with no furniture

save for a rocking chair in the corner.

I thought it was real because

we had been on the couch

barely able to keep our eyes

to ourselves. 

He had me embarrassing myself

when I assumed he would come back.

At least I wasn’t pregnant.

Kevin

Before starting school officially at Loyola, I did a pre-fall program. It was a weeklong set of activities, including bonding time, community service, and a crab feast to acclimate all the non-Maryland incoming freshman to something they really wouldn’t ever have to think about again unless they decided to move to Maryland during the summer.

It was fun though, and I’m grateful to the experience for giving me friends before the terrifying first real week of college, for distracting me from wanting only to return home and avoid all new things, and for pushing me out of my comfort zone, at least for a little while.

This pre-fall program is where I met a boy named Kevin. He spoke French, came from a family with just an odd a mother/father dynamic as mine, and stirred something in me that made me forget all about the mistakes I made with John earlier in the summer.

I don’t exactly know why I fell so hard into an entrancement over Kevin, I just know that I was willing to drop anything and everything to be where he wanted me to be, and I was willing to turn and close my eyes if it meant he would still call for me later on, and ask me to come outside with him to smoke a cigarette (he would smoke, I would just watch).

I remember one night, standing outside of the science building on Loyola’s campus, overwhelmed at being a freshman, at being outside when it was warm and going somewhere other than a friend’s house. I didn’t have a fake ID but I was doing something so quintessentially college by going out anyway. I was tired but I would have followed Kevin anywhere. This was in the strange two years of my college experience before Uber had made its arrival, and so we still relied on the funny coincidences that were cabs, pulling up in front of dorm buildings when they knew kids would want them, and loading five six seven of us in the backseat as we pulled out sweaty wads of dollar bills to hand into the front seat.

On this night, I was feeling lost, but Kevin put his hand on the small of my back and ushered me into a cab, and told the driver exactly where we needed to go and I felt more taken care of than I ever had recognized, and I fell in love with him a little that night.

The exact dates of certain memories blur, but I remember sitting across from him at a table in a bar called Maxie’s, a pitcher of beer illegally between us and the thrill of being eighteen palpable in the air. He grasped my hands like we meant something together, and told me that he planned to have a year dedicated to being reckless, that he wanted to do lots of drugs and drink to excess, and wander around a city that wasn’t new but was new to him.

Of course I promised I would follow along those words exactly, I would have said anything to keep him near me, and I knew that my own apprehensiveness about drugs would be nothing but unattractive to him in that moment. So I pictured myself as wearing torn t-shirts and boots with no socks, and waking up with the sun in my eyes and beer on my breath, and realizing I had done things the night before that were worth telling in a story. I was willing to be his little disaster, if it meant he would be mine.

Things took a turn for the worse when Kevin no longer answered my texts on time, and when he tired of having me follow him like a puppy. I suppose we all have our college romances where people get frustrated with you and friends are lost and you have to stop “accidentally” going to all the right places to run into that one person. I showed Kevin to my mom from across the room at a banquet for pre-fall programs, explaining that later we would have to venture to his sister’s apartment to retrieve the jacket I had forgotten there, because he didn’t have a car and wanted me to go get the jacket myself instead. I never introduced my mom to him, because it didn’t seem like something he would want to be a part of, and when I found myself telling the story to others I slowly started to realize how clearly I was dragging myself through hoops when he didn’t even care that I followed behind him in the first place.

One night he came home drunk with a mutual friend, and as I set my phone down in his room to spend the night taking care of him, our friend pushed him into the bathroom and waited outside of the door. I went outside to socialize with his roommates (who had become used to me and fond of me by then), only to see a few minutes later Kevin’s hand close the door to his apartment and latch the lock with our mutual friend still inside.

Of course I burst into tears—there’s nothing worse than feeling heartbroken and entirely stupid. This was a night when I realized how nice people you barely know will be to you when it’s clear that you’ve been wronged. Some of the most beautiful realizations come from the ugliest things.

I ended up having a conversation with Kevin a little while later, after recapping the ways he had played both our mutual friend and I, and I asked him to give me space, and though he seemed sad to see the potential loss of any friendship at all, he wasn’t as heartbroken as me when we finally had to part ways.

It certainly hurt, but eventually I fixated my thoughts on other things.

I wrote a couple poems:

“During My Senior Week” (part 3)

3 barely kissed me at all,

but I was willing and able

to jump through hoops for him.

I remember distinctly

in the hallway

just outside his bedroom door.

He had some excuse, but

leaned in and kissed me anyway

As a person who based her

sexual experience on Sarah Dessen

and Judy Blume novels,

I identified this as the moment

when I tipped over the edge.

Stuck in his words,

I forgot the times he killed me.

It took the realization that he was like

the dad I couldn’t talk to anymore

that I finally pushed him away.

He went willingly.

“Just Once”

When I took Art History

last semester, I was always willing

to skip class.

Giotto means nothing,

especially not when pale fresco

is more forgettable than

wispy clouds from a

cigarette someone else is smoking.

All I wanted from my first year here

was to feel something more

than what the boy from last summer

taught me:

it feels a certain type of way

when there is something foreign

in the space between the trees.

It’s funny to me now,

that what we see isn’t necessarily

what we believe.

Because when all it takes is a cab ride,

I tend to forget that

whether he’s holding my hand

or not

doesn’t matter because

tomorrow morning he will have learned

and he’ll be swiping out

all possibilities

and tomorrow afternoon

I’ll shower and get dressed

alone. 

“Better Than A Promise”

Through the window of your hands,

my fingers trace scars

and I am reminded of the tideline.

I didn’t know the sea could be so black,

but I suppose I should have known:  

loss is dark because

it takes more than one color

to make.  

Take me from the shoreline

I want to understand

what wild is elsewhere.

If you write me

notes in the dark,

I swear it will feel better

than a promise.

I want to understand

why you don’t sleep

when the sun goes down.

Embrace me with your sorrows,

convince me no one is ever

who they say they are.

I know it’s pain that haunts you

but how long until the ghosts

overshadow me too?

“Shaving At Night”

The sun is gone.

There is no day, and it is beautiful.

Relying completely on the moon,

I look, attempting to see.

Pain is silvering scars, 

invisibly bleeding but still beautiful.

It’s as if we never knew

daylight,

never wanted to.

Night is here when I’m gone.

When I’m dreaming enough to forget

what is painfully obvious:

the moon needs to rest too.

Daybreak, and I am alone.

A rising sun and

I finally understand:

the sun and the moon

will never harmonize,

one cannot have everything.

Dani

I met my first real boyfriend on Tinder in February of my freshman year in college. The only reason I had downloaded the app in the first place was because my roommate had talked me into it, and Dani was one of the first people I agreed to meet with in person. I trusted him immediately; his willingness to come up to Baltimore from his home just outside of D.C. proved something about him that I hadn’t yet gotten used to seeing from boys my age.

A few of my friends and I discussed at length whether or not Dani and I would hit it off, or whether he would kiss me that first time we met, and I remember feeling so nervous, filled with anticipation as I checked my phone and picked out what I would wear when we finally met.

We went to a Panera, he made fun of my choice of socks, and we spent the entire afternoon and evening together. He didn’t end up kissing me, claiming some rule that he was opposed to kissing girls on the first date. But our mutual attraction was something both new and familiar at the same time, and when he came back the next weekend it became obvious pretty quickly that we were going to have some sort of extended relationship together, outside of our Tinder romance.

You never do forget a first kiss with someone, and my first kiss with Dani was anticipated and awkward and sweet, though I don’t remember feeling a desire to go back and relive it—I was more focused on moving forward, on having someone I could call a boyfriend after so long a period of waiting for one. Things got so serious that I immersed myself entirely in being with him, focusing entirely on the weekends when we would see each other instead of living in the present as the end of my first year away at college quickly arrived.

My first roommate and I had an awkward falling out when I decided I no longer wanted to live with her and another of our friends, and so she left as early as she could, citing an awkward apology and quick goodbye and then never really attempting to pursue a further relationship with me. It’s one of my deepest-set regrets, but I guess that’s kind of the point of college, right? To make friends and then lose them just as quickly. She ended up transferring at the end of the next semester anyway, breaking the heart of our other mutual friend and causing a bubble of tension to only shift into a realm of further confusion.

But anyway, for the last week and a half or so, Dani and I had the room to ourselves, and so we pushed the two single dorm room beds together, and inhabited the space as if we were truly living together, getting closer in the way of dependence but also annoying each other more than ever. Our relationship wasn’t bad by any means, but our personalities were so different that we clashed often. I’d say that Dani made me happy in a way that was so appropriate for the time, but it was a happiness I kind of always knew wasn’t meant to last forever.

Our two years together is a blur of memories to me, because I never took the time to sit down and write about it. When I think of dating Dani, I remember the time we went hunting for Christmas trees, and how we sat in the dark for hours watching the Walking Dead. I remember how much my mom grew to love him, and how anytime I would dogsit he would come with me, staying at the house with me and pretending we lived together. I remember how comfortable it was to have him just be with me at my house in the winter, how we would cuddle together on the couch and how close he got to my two dogs.

Two years is a long time to spend knowing someone, and though our relationship wasn’t perfect, I couldn’t help but find myself growing closer and closer to dependence on it. I lost a lot of friends my sophomore year because I found it easier to simply drift away every weekend as if the only person whose appearance in my social life mattered was his. I remember the good times, but I also remember when we would argue about the difference in our refrigerators, how he would make me feel crazy for starting arguments, and how hard it was to talk to him when he didn’t seem to want to take things all that seriously. I only ever told him “I love you” twice, and each time he refused to say it back because I think in some sense he didn’t really want to settle down into a relationship that seemed permanent, at least not at the time, and at least not with me.

During the almost exact middle of our relationship, I sat in the dark of an empty classroom on an odd Tuesday night, crying without really being sure why and opening up a new post on this blog I used as a dumping ground for writing. It’s the only time I can remember while dating Dani that I wrote something, but it certainly describes my feelings at the time.

It's a simple thing, when you stop receiving compliments for the things you used to. Perhaps it is so dimly present because you have been receiving compliments about other things. Or perhaps you have approached a frame of mind in which you no longer look to others to make yourself feel stable on two feet again. The confidence has come in a different way, and it has brought sadness with it. Quietly, and in a new skin, but sadness still emerges.

The time I knew things were different was when I kept something from my mom. Nothing big, and not even a development that lasted more than a few days, but I avoided sharing with her because I knew what she would say. Who knows if my prediction would have been accurate, but I seem to have found someone new to confide in, and that scares me infinitely. I know my mom would never leave me, I know she never could. But when you meet someone who makes you question everything, the line between relationships that will last and relationships that could very soon end becomes blurry.

I've never felt more secure about the things I am doing. Logically, I am prepared, organized, in the best place possible. And yet I am fragile, so fragile. And scared.

I've never questioned the future, never considered that things could be different from the idea of chasing all the moving pictures in my head. And sometimes I get a reminder, and I am sure of this all over again. But it’s come to a point that my days don't move like time-lapse pictures anymore. They move with a stillness, a certain stagnant type of lapse that makes me feel full of time I don't want. Things are confusing, and I wasn't heartbroken to learn I couldn't be abroad for an entire year. I don't want to be in my room anymore.

Here's a poem

Usually, flashing lights
don't have to be any specific color and
I still feel like I'm dreaming. Depending
on what I was drinking, the fragrance of
the straw (if there is one)
might make me quiet or
dancing fast enough for
everyone to see.

But this time,
the lights are green, yellow and blue
and I want to cry.
It's stupid, and I don't understand
but he is in the middle and he doesn't care
and I'm probably overreacting.
My back hurts and every time
someone new flashes me a smile
and asks if I'm having a good time
I have to hide my tears
in music I can't relate to
and pretend I'm not struggling to breathe.

Usually I like people and I don't mind
if someone brushes my shoulder but every
breath of skin is mixed with all the things
I used to believe made the world more interesting
(I would have helped search for the spark on the ground
but instead I wish I could stomp it out)

What's wrong with me lately?
I'm still a teenager, I just don't like
to have a runny nose (from gray smoke) and
I've had too many headaches to
believe feeling them in the morning is normal.

"It's more fun to go to the bars when you're single"
yes, that must be it, and
it surely is more fun to want a relationship when you're
not terrified of losing this one.

I wish it didn't make me want to sob into the grass
when I think about that fact that
someone could be the first one to say
"I love you" (if they believe in saying it at all)
and that I could be with someone who would
fly planes with me in my dreams,
and that being in something doesn't need
to feel like me making a big deal over what
isn't plausible.

I don't know if he's the best
thing to happen to me lately
he certainly is in a few ways
but I barely write anymore
except when I'm being productive
and taking control and
being more organized than I've been before.

I still picture things
but my brain and heart don't
agree anymore.
I feel rational, like I could settle in
and be here and be happy.
I won't ever let him read this
does that say something?

When I broke up with him while abroad my junior year, it made me sad like any breakup would. But it was amicable, and in a way seemed so much like the right thing for me to do at the time that I didn’t allow myself to let it hold me back. When I came home, I learned that Dani had felt a bit heartbroken for a while after the breakup, that I was on his mind for quite a while and that “his heart had belonged to me” for some time. To be honest, it struck me as kind of shocking—I had spent so much time during our relationship feeling inadequate, I had figured once he was free of me he would do as he had always seemed so intent on doing—exploring what else was out there and getting away from his trend of being a serial monogamist. Meeting back up with him after an experience living without him, I felt so naïve for having been so caught up in him that I would neglect other parts of myself. And when I read the written expression of my feelings at the time, I feel sad for how lost I used to be.

Meeting up with him and hooking up for the last time, I felt regret, and sadness, and emotion fixated in a way that I wasn’t used to. I wrote something about it:

Sitting in the warm glow of my bathroom, I leaned gently on the toilet seat so as not to disturb it, you lounged comfortably on the bathtub rim. It was weeks before I was leaving. You were getting antsy, I was nervous about your anticipation. One of the lightbulbs in the bathroom had burned out, and I was dismayed at how dusty the holder for the extra toilet paper rolls had become. I suppose it didn’t matter since you’d been over so many times. My mom was probably downstairs cooking dinner, or asleep in her room.

My eyes were wide and tearful, yours were relaxed. Although you still tripped over your sentences as you told me what you were thinking. I guess at that point neither of us was feeling very good with words. 

You talked about breaking up with me as if it were no big deal; the sex was close enough that you could imagine a distance from it, you wanted to. I felt tears slip down my face and I was embarrassed at how singularly I wished for you. You stared into me as if you knew how tightly I held onto you. I pictured love letters and let myself be naked.

We finally settled on an agreement, although I think I knew then how unsatisfied I felt. I prayed you would know better than to take my words seriously. I couldn’t imagine being in the world that had come before we were us, two people, together.

The funny thing is that it took me longer to get comfortable calling you my boyfriend than it did to call you my ex. I’ve seen you twice since then, and each time I’ve felt more confident than I ever did while we were dating.

But waking up and having you next to me, I can only feel annoyed. I wish you hadn’t stayed the night, wish the sex had felt more natural, wish my roommates never got to learn what you look like. I can tell from your eyes that you love me, and yet I feel only upset with myself for letting you tap into that vulnerability. I want to feel more for you, and in the moments that I do I feel terrible. I don’t miss you all the time. But sometimes I do, and it takes everything I have not to crumple and admit that this is what I was always afraid of. It took me six months to break up with you because I knew how hard it would be to keep knowing you. I don’t want you out of my life. I just wish that we had a more natural existence together. I wonder what kept me distracted for so long—was it because I loved you so blindly?

Now you’re the person I always dreamed of while we were together, and I can’t bring myself to want it.

Sometimes I wish we could go back in time, slip under the covers, watch walking dead, laugh about Christmas trees. I want to have the knowledge that you’d follow me around the world if I asked. But the world is different today. And I know that if I asked you to follow me now, the only thing you’d do is trail me like a nervous shadow, wondering if at any moment the sun might go behind the clouds and force you to disappear.