Worth A Thousand Words

Excerpts from a book I'll never write *names have been changed

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9/11/15

We talked a little bit more that weekend, all things I think we needed to say but none of it extremely significant.

One of the last things I texted to you was this:

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be in a place where I can be your friend again, but I really truly want you to know I’m here for you. I don’t want you to think I’m belittling what you’re going through at all, but I know how tough and dark and horrible and lonely and shitty heartbreak is, so I’m here if you want or need me, and I mean that 100%. Please please try not to cut or burn or anything else along those lines. You have so many people on your team, and too many people that love you for you to be ding that. You are too great and have stayed strong for too long.”

I meant those words then, and I will always mean them. I am no longer in love with you, and I don’t think I have been in a long time. But I will always love you, appreciate you, respect you, and want the best for you. You were my first love, you taught me that love truly does exist as a force more than something in Nicholas Sparks movies, and I’m forever grateful to you for that. I still hear Mayday Parade songs in my head when I think of you, and not the stereotypical sad ones either, but the earlier, lesser known happier ones. When I picture us I think of that picture Rory took outside of Virginia Hall in September 2012, you in the sunglasses that are now in my car, me with my freshly dyed red hair and Hogwarts tee shirt. If I ever have a daughter and she asks me about my first love, I will tell her about a dark haired boy with kind eyes, a boy who wore beat up converse and rode horses, a biology major with a sensitive soul and an amazing taste in music. 

I started writing these letters two years ago so when we finally got back together you could read them and you would know what happened to me, you would know what you put me through. Now, I’m not sure if you will ever get a chance to read these; in fact, I’m pretty confidant you never will. But that’s alright. Because I’ve realized these were never meant for you, but always for me, to learn and to grow and to heal. In two days it will mark the anniversary of exactly three years since the day we started dating. Three years since I told you I wanted to be with you no matter how hard it would be, and I kissed you next to the fountain outside of my freshman dorm. I am so proud of how far I have come from the girl I used to be back then. You may never get to know the woman I am today, you may never understand how much I’ve grown. And that’s equally a shame, but also just fine.

Two years ago Grace showed me a blog written by a broken woman. In her very last entry, she thanks the man who broke her, “Thank you for setting me free.” I remember reading it and thinking, “I can’t even imagine being ok enough to feel that way.” I am ok now. I may not be the happiest person in the world, but I truly am alright. So thank you. Thank you, Dean. Thank you for your love, thank you for your abandonment, thank you for your friendship. Thank you for what each of these things taught me, how they pushed me to move on with my life, and how they molded me into a person I can finally say I respect and am proud of.

Thank you for setting me free ❤️

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9/4/15 Friday

On Friday, I got high and texted you. I knew in my mind it was best for me to stay out of whatever you were going through, but in my heart I remembered how helpless and dark heartbreak can make a person feel, and I didn’t want you to be alone. I would still do anything to let you know you are never alone. It was the first time I’d contacted you in six months.

Me: Hey. I’m sorry you’re hurting. Please don’t do anything dumb. I’m here if you need me.

You: I burned myself again because my scissors are too dull.

M: Please don’t do that.

Y: I don’t know what to do with myself

M: Heartbreak can be like that.

  - But it gets better everyday. I know that’s a cliche but it’s true. One day you’ll realize you can breathe without your chest aching. One day you’ll wake up and it won’t kill you to get out of bed. One day you’ll catch yourself not thinking about it. It may take two years and moving to a different time zone but it gets better. You just have to surround yourself with people who love you and stay busy doing things that make you happy. It’s going to take a hell of a long time and you may have to completely reinvent yourself to get there, but growth is a part of life. You’ll get there.

Y: I hope. For now it’s just drowning in misery.

M: I know. It’s gets better. I’m here if you need. 

Y: Thanks.

Had this been the end of our communication, this would have been a great place to end the story of you and I. But it’s me, and I never know when to leave well enough alone, and drunk texting is apparently one of my favorite past times. So unfortunately the communication continued later that evening when I texted you:

“Did you hurt this much over us?”

I was embarrassed, but not surprised, when I woke up the next morning to the evidence of the last night’s drunken message. What did surprise me, however, was that I also woke up to a reply. One word, four letters,

“Yeah.”

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9/3/15 Thursday

On Thursday I had my very first panic attack.

Thursday morning I checked your twitter before I even showered, because at this point I was extremely worried and extremely curious. 

I woke up to three:

One Bring Me The Horizon lyric: “Tastes so bitter, feels so sweet/ Lost in a dream, never fell asleep/ Tastes so bitter, feels so sweet/ I’ve come back to ole remedies.”

And two in your own words:

1) “Feeling so many emotions, I don’t even know what song to listen to right now.” (On a side note, this is one of the main reasons I miss you. No one else in my life right now would understand this real feeling of emotional and musical frustration that I have felt so many times before in my life.)

2) Old Habits die hard.

It was the third and last tweet that made my stomach drop out of my chest and onto the floor, fill my stomach with air and my mouth with bile. Old habits? What the hell are you doing? I didn’t want to picture fresh red lines on your hip parallel with thin white ones; blisters on your wrist; razors on your dresser or blood on your pillow. I didn’t want to picture it, but the images still flashed behind my eyes. I know we’ve both committed the crime multiple times regardless of how many times we promised the other we wouldn’t do it again, yet knowing you were harming again still made me feel like you’d broken a promise to me.

I sat through a morning full of worrying, distractions, anxiety, and absolutely zero schoolwork and notes until I decided I had to do SOMETHING so I texted Rory at 11 when I got to lunch, because in situations like this that’s really all I ever think to do.

Me: Rory do you know where Dean lives this year

R: Hi to you too. No I don’t, why

Me: Do you have any mutual friends or any connection to him whatsoever

R: none whatsoever

M: well could you make one, there’s only like 1,000 kids in your senior class your school is tiny

R: haha yeah except I don’t ride horses or party and don’t have classes in the science building 

M: Yes but you’re a good person and you care about people that need help even if they're not that great of people to begin with, not to mention I’m your best friend and I’m asking you to.

R: I don’t even know who his friends are anymore

M: I can’t do anything from 17 hours and a timezone away. Please?

   - You at least still have his number, right?

R: Yeah, I have his number.

M: Ok, can you please just text him and check in?

R: What’s going on?

M: I think he’s cutting again.

R: ok.

M: I mean I know he probably won’t tell you that but idk I can’t text him and you’re literally less than a mile from him right this very second and I can’t do anything and I’m about to cry and have and anxiety attack (at least I thought I was - at that point I’d never had an anxiety attack before) and my mom told me it’s not my responsibility anymore and that his girlfriend should be the one checking his twitter and looking at the song lyrics and being there for him when he’s cutting but what if she doesn’t know what the song lyrics mean because she only listens to country and what if she doesn’t understand things like anxiety and depression and checking for bracelets and long sleeves and I don’t think she even has a twitter and I can’t do anything from all the way in Mississippi, and even if I was in Fred I still couldn’t do anything because he doesn’t talk to me or care about me but I still need to make sure he’s ok and not cutting. ok?

  - And maybe I’m just freaking out over nothing. But that’s why I need you to text him.

R: Ok. Texting him now.

And then, when I felt like I had accomplished something, I finally let all my worry and stress out, and had my very first anxiety attack right there on the back patio of my sorority house.

Rory texted me back in stages, a new text for every new reply she got from you (as every loyal best friend would). This was the entirety of the conversation:

R: Hi Dean, this is Rory. Are you okay, it kind of seems like you might not be and if you’re not I want to help.

D: My girlfriend broke up with me last night. It threw me off the deep end.

R: How are you handling it?

D: The best way I know how, whiskey and cigarettes.

R: okay well as long as you’re not self harming. It’s going to work out.

I had so many feelings and emotions about this conversation, it’s hard to say which I felt first or strongest.

I was relieved to hear you weren’t self harming (at least you said you weren't, anyway).

The phrase “threw me off the deep end” made me chuckle. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but you have these few catch-phases almost, that you find a way to use for pretty much any situation. Or maybe we’re all like that and I was just more sensitive to yours. Regardless, that is one of yours, and I smiled to myself, because I’d forgotten about it until I was reminded of your oh-so-you lingo.

Then, of course, the part about your girlfriend. Honestly I felt so many things about that. Relief, disappointment, humiliation. When I saw the Mayday Parade lyric some part of my subconscious thought it was about me, maybe wanted it to be about me. And when I found out it wasn’t I felt extremely stupid and arrogant to have ever thought that in the first place. Along the same lines, though, I was relieved to find out I wasn’t the source of your pain. And maybe because I wasn’t the source, it wasn’t necessarily my responsibility to fix it. I was disappointed, because I got my hopes up over you, again, hoping you might be thinking about me, only to know deep down you weren’t. While I still check your twitter every day just to see if you’re ok, and send people to check up on you and make sure you’re not self harming, and I have to be reminded I’m not even a passing thought in your mind.

Rory didn’t mention that I was the one that suggested she text you. It was probably best we kept it that way. It was probably best I continue to stay away completely.

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9/2/15 Wednesday

On Wednesday I noticed something must be really wrong, because you had moved on from Bring Me The Horizon lyrics and had tweeted a line form a Mayday Parade song. Not just any Mayday Parade lyric either, but a line from (arguably) their saddest song ever recorded, Terrible Things. A lyric I remember us both tweeting a few times almost exactly two years ago:

“So don’t fall in love, there’s just too much to lose.”

I remember once I’d played that song for Connor, and he started crying. That was the first time he told me about Rachel, his first love and first girlfriend. They had met in a cancer support group. She died when they were fourteen. He visits her grave every Sunday. He asked me not to play that song again.

Maybe I’m extremely arrogant and narcissistic, or maybe I’m just dumb, but I still thought at this point there was a change you were talking about me. Maybe it was the Mayday Parade, or the fact that angst tweets of pop punk song lyrics had always played a part in our relationship. Maybe too much time thinking about you has just driven me insane.

You tweeted three more times that day, something that would normally be completely unheard of for you. 

The first was a BMTH lyric; “I’ve said it once, I’ve said it twice, I’ve said it a thousand fucking times, that I’m ok, that I’m fine, that it’s all just in my mind.”

The next one a Pierce the Veil lyric, one I recognized from my own twitter repertoire; “But you don’t know what it’s like/ to wake up in the middle of the night/ scaring the thought of kissing razors.” This one terrified me. You’ve lasted nineteen months, one month longer than I. Did you break your promise to yourself?

The last one of the day, one more BMTH lyric, another one I recognized from the end of you and I; “You could have saved us, instead you erased us.” I always hated when I read that you had said that. Like you were blaming the entire thing on me. I understand it, though. For a long time I blamed the whole thing on me, too.

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9/1/15 Tuesday

On Tuesday during one of my normal “check Dean’s twitter to see what he’s up to/ make sure he’s ok" routines i noticed a strange tweet. I assumed they were song lyrics, though I’d never heard the song before. Normally this wouldn’t be strange, except these were the second odd song lyrics you’d tweeted in two days, and I know you, and I know you only tweet song lyrics, especially that often, when you’re emotional about something.

So on my walk to class I typed the lyrics into google and found out they were from Bring Me The Horizon’s new single, “Throne.” Shocker, I know. As a big fan of all things alternative and punk rock, most of Bring Me The Horizon’s stuff is a little too heavy for me, but they’re your favorite band.

The first and most logical thing there was for me to do in any dire situation such as this one is to text Rory. 

Me: Are you busy

     - I’m in class but I need to talk to you about something.

R: Hi, I’m just in the car. I have class at 11.

Me: When you get the chance, look up the lyrics to “Throne” by BMTH and tell me what you think of them. 

R: Ok I will after class

Me: ugh. ok. How long is your class?

     - It’s not that long of a song and you don’t have to listen, just read the words. I’m lucky she loves me cause I can be a really whiney jerk.

R: Ok hold on.

   - I think it sounds like very poetic massochism. 

Me: Dean has tweeted the lyrics to this song for the past two days.

R: It kind of sounds like him. 

Me: Well what do you think about him tweeting it?

R: I’m not sure. I don’t really know the people in his life anymore ya know like why he could be angry

Me: Yeah. I didn’t know what to say. I guess I’d wanted, or maybe just assumed, that they had been about me. But just because my tweets (and not all of them, or anywhere near all of them) are still about you doesn’t mean yours have to be about me.

Then we changed the subject because at that point it didn’t matter very much.

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9/8/15

An Update on the Past Week and Beyond

I don’t know if you noticed, but I stopped writing as often. I noticed, maybe even mores subconsciously that I don’t need to anymore. I started putting all of my letters to you in a blog online. As I’ve been going through this notebook beginning to post them, I’ve been rereading everything I’ve written to you in the past two years, all of the raw emotion, the pain and the sorrow, the guilt and the anger, and it just made me realize how far I’ve come. I may still think about you every day and check your twitter, but my thoughts and emotions are not consumed by you; you are no longer my world or my life. I have a  whole world that you have no part in, you don’t even know what it looks like.

I no longer dwell on every specific detail, the songs we listened to; the dates; the pictures; the letters; the food we ate; our traditions, like meeting for breakfast at the fountain, class schedules, coffee and juice. In fact, most of the specifics I don’t remember anymore at all. The things I do remember I only still know because I’ve thought of them so often in the past two years. But time and memory both work in such wonderfully strange ways, how I remember these moments are probably nothing like how they actually happened. And that’s alright. You probably remember different moments in completely different ways, because they were significant to you for separate reasons. And as more years pass, we’ll remember even less; maybe that’s how it stops hurting so completely, and we’re able to move on. Maybe that’s just how life works.

I just realized I absentmindedly slipped into third person instead of second person while writing. For all non - english majors out there, by that I mean after two years of writing about this, of pouring my heart and soul and tears and mind into these words that i thought were all for you, I finally was writing completely for myself.

today is Tuesday, September 8th, 2015. This past week has been very eventful. Well, I’d actually say less “eventful” and more of an emotional roller coaster. But it’s been good for me, Eventually it ended up being good for me, that is. It really didn’t start out that way.

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8/8/15

12:01 am

I figured it out. I don’t know if you’d care, in fact I’m pretty sure you won’t, but I figured it out. The answer to the question you asked me so long ago, the one question you needed answered, the one answer i couldn’t give you. Why do I push people away? Why do I do it so consistently and vigorously that not even the most adoring and loyal and voted “Best Boyfriend” superlative could bear to stay by my side? I’m sorry it took me this long to find an answer.

Really, it was Rory who pointed it out. It’s a test. A test to determine who is willing to stay by my side through anything, my roughest self, my toughest times. A test of loyalty. But I push people past their breaking points that even the strongest, most loyal person would end up leaving me eventually; they would have to, because I force them to.

Maybe if I died they’ll wish they’d held on a little tighter.

Or maybe not. Because it really was all my fault for pushing them away in the first place.

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8/7/15

To an insignificant boy on an insignificant summer night:

You think you’re the first boy to tell me I’m special?

You think just because you said it, I’m going to start believing it?

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7/18/15.2

He tweets once a month, maybe less. I still check his account multiple times a day just to see if he’s said anything, to try and catch a glimpse of a thought of a life I’m no longer a part of.

We were broken together. I romanticized it.

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7/18/2015

You call her love.

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6/29/15

Rory - 

When I’m gone, write about this, and us, and them.

Smoke a bowl on the rocks and throw my ashes in the river. Bring him. Tell him everything he never understood.

Do it for me.

I love you.

- M

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6/28/15

I will never be in love with another human as much as I’m in love with driving fast and alone with the windows down shouting along to music no one else likes. Another person could never make my heart yearn and ache the way the melody of a soft, sweet Mayday Parade song can. A boy could never make me happy the way simple pleasures like waking up without an alarm on a Saturday morning to the smell of pancakes do. My preferred bed partner will always be a fat orange cat. No matter how much I love someone, no matter how much someone claims to understand me, I will never feel more understood by or connected to anyone than I feel while reading a Hemingway short story. And finally, my loneliness will forever best be cured not by a lover’s touch, but by thousands of strangers, yet somehow all family, connected on a Saturday afternoon in the Ole Miss Grove.

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6/27/15

Some love stories aren’t epic novels; some are short stories. But that doesn’t make them any less important, or any less filled with love. 

You’ll always be my favorite maybe; my favorite goodbye.

Sometimes I wish I lived in a Mayday Parade song, but then I realize I already do. Sweet and slow, a little dark, and oh so irrevocably lonely.

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6/19/15

I just went through the box for the first time in about a year; you know the one. I went through every single letter and picture and flower petal as they passed through my fingers, pausing at familiar textures and scents. I saved the ring for last, as usual. It was strange, because as I took it out of its box it looked familiar to me, but beyond that I felt nothing. All of the magic and mystery, symbolism and mysticism that had surrounded it the past two and a half years was gone, and now it was just this old, cheap, forgotten piece of tarnished metal at the bottom of a shoebox. I tried it on; I used to feel like my heart would explode looking at that ring on my finger, first filled with awe of its beauty and the love it represented so completely. Months later I would look at it and feel only grief, the ring still beautiful but heartbreakingly so, like a Mayday Parade song or a Betty Davis movie. This time as I slipped the ring over my knuckle it felt like trying on a favorite dress from childhood and looking in the mirror only to realize the bows and frills that you used to love no longer make your heart jump. Not because the dress had shrunk, or become too childish, but you had simply outgrown it. It was now too small, too young, for the body and peace of mind you now carry with you. 

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6/10/15

I don’t know you anymore. But I know myself better than I ever have.

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4/28/15

People are really romantic about the beginnings of things, have you noticed that?

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4/8/15

Have you heard the new All Time Low cd? Have you seen today’s Warped Tour announcement, are you excited about Pierce the Veil as I am? Have you laughed today, long boarded, had more than five cups of coffee? I had two, which is a lot for me. I want to be the person you tell these things to; I used to be.

Do you remember that my birthday is Sunday? Have you talked to your parents about vet school, your chemistry classes? I believe in you, even if you don’t believe in yourself. I want to still know you.