I had initially planned that the goodbye was to be in two or three posts, but since I waited so long, I've outgrown the phases I was to have written those posts in. Now I will settle for one (probably very long post) with multiple parts. I had also written a note in my phone to guide the posts but I dropped my phone a couple of days ago, and so I can't get to whatever I'd written there either. So basically, I'm just gonna freestyle this one and hope it doesn't get choppy. Whatever happens, happens.
Also, happy belated birthday. I wanted to tell you, but I couldn't. I promised myself I wouldn't say anything else to you. I'm sorry.
i.
I used to miss you with a fever, a cold sweat, panicked fits, the gnashing of teeth in my sleep. I used to miss you with a hot flush across my cheeks and my face. I used to miss you with a dry, aching swallow and a deep yearning. The ways I missed you begged for prescriptions - and you know how I love to self medicate... Vodka just made missing you feel like sharp, prickling pain. It made missing you feel like acid pumped into my blood. It made missing you feel like white hot fire in my mouth. That was worse. (You'd be pleased to know that I haven't been drinking anymore, if it mattered and if you knew and most importantly if we were anything and not nothing.)
I stopped missing you actively, all the time. I missed you in episodes, in moments that came and went. I missed you like a hot flash, like panic attacks, like my asthma. You were more of a dull ache than a strong pull. I missed you when something happened and you were the only person I wanted to tell, because you were the only person I knew who knew me that well. (I just wanted you to know that JK Rowling is publishing the script for The Cursed Child, that okay yes Arsenal wasn't going to stay at the top of the table for long, that I hadn't had an asthma attack in weeks and you would have been so happy, that I remembered that you promised to make curry chicken with me, that one time I sat on my leg so long I could actually swear that I was gonna have to get it amputated and sciatic nerves and things and my first mooting debate trial was fun and I didn't even have a panic attack, that I didn't fail Jurisprudence - I actually got a fucking B and wow how did that happen... but none of that matters anymore either.)
I've stopped missing you (almost all the time). I realised I was water on concrete. I just kept pouring and pouring and pouring onto you. And God I think maybe you were always fucking concrete, but maybe sometimes you were soft for me and sometimes I curled up on you despite the hardness... Ultimately, we proved that I had been skinning my knees on you for a long time. I've put you away, like toys from some childhood, some relics of better days when things were good but do not work anymore. I don't choke on nostalgia, or resentment, or bitterness. I don't ache for you.
"I changed my mind about you / I don't miss you like I used to." (I Love My Love by Reyna Biddy)I have stopped avoiding all the places you memory lingers. The you I love is a memory now, a person that doesn't really exist anymore. You've become a ghost and these places are all for the living. I've stopped skirting through these places like stepping on graves. This new you, the you of the living world, I hardly see you either - but when I do, it doesn't bother me anymore.
I miss you now in the way I miss myself at fourteen, at ten, at eight, at five, at three. At fourteen, with the checkered Vans slip ons and the black skinny jeans and layering tees over long sleeves, playing obscene acoustic guitar, long dark hair and bangs tickling my eyelashes, the idea that I was invincible. At ten with curly hair and bruised knees and a boy best friend and purple football shoes and lunchtimes in the jungle of a garden with strawberry Monster Milk and laughing so hard we'd snort. At eight with my brother on the backseat of my dad's blue Mark II, long drives from Portland to Kingston, to Mandeville; the whole world a square of stars outside car window and my whole life ahead of me like the longest highway. At five, without fear. At three, with wonder. I miss you the way I miss all these people; without wanting you back, knowing you do not exist anymore. Not in the ways you did. I know that you cannot exist while the reality I know currently exists. I cannot be who I am now, with you.
"Neither can live while the other survives." (I've been dying to use a Harry Potter quote on this blog, thank you.)So, in short, I miss you. I miss you a whole lot, and I probably will always miss you.... but not in the ways I used to miss you, and not the you that I think you are now. I miss the boy I met at fifteen with his untied tie and his growth spurt. I miss the boy I used to sit on my bedroom floor and talk to until he fell asleep. I miss the boy in the striped shirts and the stretched out white sock who held my hand while he drove through the Burger King drive-thru. I miss the boy with the dirty grey vans who sent me pictures of his mango Gatorade and the burning garbage bin and the orange highlighter. I miss the boy who made all the little things feel like big things. I miss the best friend I lost after four years and seven months. That you will always know that me better than anyone else.
ii.
I am so sorry. I have so very many things to be sorry for, and I want to not be sorry anymore. I want to move on from all the things I am sorry for and so I will apologise to you, like this, the only way I know how, the only option I have left.
I am sorry that I was so bad at saying how I felt - I felt so many things, all the time, and I never ever knew how to explain any of them to you. Like how I wanted to tell you that I wasn't always angry with you, I was just always tired of something that we could fix if maybe I knew how - I was tired of feeling like you wanted to be with someone else, tired of feeling like I wasn't helping (your panic attacks, your feelings of inadequacy, everything). I was tired, oh so tired, of feeling like you felt sorry for me, and that was why you stayed. I was so tired of being your unstable, inconsistent burden. I just always felt these things and never knew how to tell you any of these things.
I am sorry that I was the shittiest communicator in the whole world. I am sorry that I made excuses for being a shitty communicator. I'm sorry that I never tried to be better at communicating until it was too late. I am so sorry that I had so many things I needed to say and never said. I am so sorry for all the conversations that should have happened and shouldn't have happened, because I didn't know how to communicate properly.
I am sorry for all the nasty words I threw your way. Regardless of how I felt, and what happened, I shouldn't have said those things to you. I wish I could take those back, not because I didn't feel them, but because I'm sure they hurt you and hurting you didn't make anything better. Getting even wouldn't have fixed anything, and thankfully they didn't make us even. It just made me an ass. I'm sorry for being an ass.
I'm sorry for all those insecurities. Both for having them and for sharing them with you, but mostly for sharing them with you. I think insecurities can't be avoided, but I obsessed over those things and I let them drive me crazy. I turned them into a wedge between us, and when I couldn't take it anymore - I shared them with you. I shouldn't have, and I wish I hadn't. Now they hang there, in that space, heavier than they should have been. I am sorry I expected you to carry those burdens with me. I suppose your response was the one I deserved.
I am sorry for the overreactions (particularly the overreaction about the rumours I thought you started, and the overreaction about the stupid essay you had to go home to write, and the overreaction about a condom). I am sorry for the arguments I started (the one about the asthma attack, and the one in May and all the little ones that left nicks like shaving with a new razor).
I am sorry for everything, even the things I did that I can't remember and the things that you think don't matter and the things that probably don't actually matter. I am sorry that we both hurt each other a lot. I am so sorry for all the horrible things in four years and seven months.
Very importantly, I am sorry for the impression of you I've held for four whole months. I am sorry that before that I had you on a pedestal. Both times I forgot that you were human and failed to leave you room to be just that. I am sorry, and I am letting both of these things go. You are no longer on a pedestal and I am letting go of the way I felt about you in the past few months. You are human, and I acknowledge both the good and the bad. I am sorry that this wasn't always the case.
iii.
Now I want to tell you a million thank yous. I want to tell you thank you for listening, for caring, for making sure I ate, for worrying when I was sick or sad or anxious or going through things I didn't want to talk about. You were one of the most gentle people in my life and it sometimes still makes me a little teary with gratitude.
I don't think you know just how much I have to be grateful to you for. You don't realise how much better you managed to make the shitty parts of me. You held me together when I tried to hold everything else together. You kept me grounded, reminded me to be gentle with myself and take care of myself. You told me it was okay every time you saw me cry. (And here I had to pause because I tried to blink away my tears to keep typing and I couldn't... you know how hard I fight tears, and you know they always win.) And my God, you saw me cry so many times. Thank you for holding me tight to your chest until the tears passed.
Thank you for believing in me, for seeing things in me that I couldn't see in myself and for reminding me of those things when I needed to hear it most. I still hope that one day I'll be the great things you thought I was. Thank you.
Less sappy of me, but still kinda sappy... Thank you for the little things. For feeding me, for the compliments, for the hugs, for rubbing my head and my back. For making me laugh. For indulging me with shows and videos with never waning enthusiasm. For the kisses - all the different kinds of kisses, all very appreciated. Thank you for the conversations - the years of conversations. Thank you for teaching me lots of new things - I appreciate how well rounded you helped me become in four years.
Thank you for the littler things. For approving my selfies. For writing things that would make me smile on the corners of my notes. For wake up calls when I was worried about oversleeping. For fries and icecream. For funny pictures. For sharing moments of your day with me. For stolen moments of comfort. For letting me sleep on you. For letting me steal your food. For the silly things. For the inside jokes (walking from the bowl only takes three minutes after all). For just being you.
Thank you, separately and very seriously, for being a safe, nurturing and trusting environment for exploration and experimentation. For never taking anything too seriously, and indulging fantasies - both shared and personal. Thank you for being a safe, considerate first. And yes, I'm taking about that.
iv.
Finally, even though we are nothing, we once were everything. I don't think we'll be friends. I don't think we'll ever really be much of anything. In a few years, I'm sure I'll just be a name that you might stumble across in your memory and you'll remember but not really. One day I'll just be one of many. It won't matter.
But for a long time, it mattered. It mattered a whole lot.
It mattered so much, and I won't deny that, but I want you to find something that matters more. I want both of us to find better. I want us to do the things we did wrong, right. I want us to be happy. Both of us.
I'm actually really happy, if it matters to you. I hope you're happy too.
In your next relationship, and the ones after if there are ones after and what not, I want you to find someone who loves you so very very much.
I want you to find someone who sees you at your worst and holds you til your worst is gone, and loves you still. I want you to have someone to hold through heaven and hell, and I want you to know that both things are normal in a relationship. I want you to find someone worth staying with despite the hell for the heaven, even if you find yourselves in hell way more often than you find yourselves in heaven. I want the heaven to be worth it for you. I want you to find someone who loves you so much that the hell feels like heaven. I want you to be so happy that fire feels like laughter.
I want you to find someone who is proud to have you, even if you still think you're inadequate. I want you to find someone who thinks you're amazing, like really really really amazing, from the top of your head all the way to your tippy toes. I want you to find someone who loves you through the caveman stubble and the policeman/creepy uncle mustache and not just on the "oh yes daddy" days. I want you to find someone who won't mind your stretched out socks, and the holes in your underwear and the fact that almost all the shirts you own are striped.
I want you to find someone who makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you scream, makes you understand why everyone says love makes you crazy - I want you to be crazy about them. I want you to find real, pure, honest love. Unconditional love. Selfless love. I want you to find someone who doesn't mind when you're sick and doesn't resent you for all the time they'll spend taking care of you. I want you to find someone you want to take care of, too. One day you'll both be old and taking care of each other and it won't be exciting, but I want you to have that too.
I want you to find someone who won't even mind that you sleep across the bed. I want all these lovely things for you. I hope you find all these amazing things. (And in a way, I hope I never have to know if you ever do find these things. I don't want to know if you don't, because I don't want to feel bad for you or bad about you or anything. And I don't want to know if you do, because I don't ever want to know how someone else is doing it better than I did and I don't want to compare myself to someone else, because God I'm not doing anymore of that for you. In my head, it is enough to want these things for you without having to know about them in real life.)
I wish you the very very very best, because you mattered. You mattered so much to me and I don't hate you, and I don't resent you but I can't write about you anymore and I can't cry about you anymore and this is it because this is all I have left. I don't have anything left to offer you, and I know that what I have is not enough so I will leave it here and I'll wish you the best and I'll move on.
Goodbye my first love.
