It’s coming up on four months since the last time I said good night and that I loved you. Four months have passed already since I slept by your side and held you one last time before you left home to go on tour. Since the day we met, which incidentally, was a little over 3 years ago, this is the longest I have ever been without you and it’s certainly the longest things have gone on without speaking to one another.
Yet, I think about you every day.
Not so much about you specifically, but more about the indelible memories and the ways that we irreparably changed one another. I think about moments that seemed fated to occur and others the seemed to seal that same fate forever. If I close my eyes I can see it very clearly.
I walked down Grand Street in Brooklyn hand in hand with you and excitedly called my mom to tell her that I had a girlfriend. I was already in love with you. It happened the night I came back from tour and we went and got tacos at that place down the street from where I live. They weren’t particularly good tacos, but I got to see you, which made me smile and I took one of my favorite pictures of you. I ran down that same street, past the same taco place, chasing after you one night when we took a cab home and got into a stupid argument because one or the other of us had drank too much. I remember how happy something as simple as me making you dinner or sending you flowers would make you. Now I sit at home alone eating an avocado but remembering to save the side with the pit and wrap it because that’s what you taught me to do. Hours and hours spent writing down words and memories that you’d re-read and revise and help me churn out. I never thanked you enough then and I can’t thank you enough now. I can barely concentrate enough now to write a few sentences at a time. I can stare at a blank page for days and not think of a single interesting thing. It used to be that I was writing because you pushed me and it made you happy and helped me get a lot off my chest. But, now it seems stupid and a pointless exercise.
I remember the night you sat on your bed and cried because you were upset about not having prospects for a job or any money, but also excited for your future. I feel like it was that night that everything changed and you saw your destiny and knew to follow your dream no matter the cost. I vowed to help you and I tried to for as long as I could. I tried so hard. Thank you for helping me push myself, and I’m sorry if I pushed you away. I never said thank you enough.
I remember putting all my things in your room and us mixing all our stuff together and your piles of clothes everywhere. You would always clean up the house before I got back, but I secretly wanted those piles of stuff to be there. When I would walk in and see your clothes and your guitar I knew I was home. One night in a fit of rage I threw my phone against the wall in our room, and broke the clock, and there was forever a reminder of the scars of our love in the former of a 2 inch chunk of the wall forever blemished.
Every night - EVERY SINGLE NIGHT - when I was away I’d take whatever personal time I had to call and tell you what I had been doing. At first I think I wanted to carry you in my pocket all the time. I wanted you to experience what I had been experiencing all those years. Slowly but surely it started to feel that no matter how I’d try there would be a misunderstanding or a complication or I had upset you. My logical brain couldn’t understand what was happening.
"I had made the effort. Why wasn’t it good enough?" I would think to myself. If we had an argument or if you hung up on me I would mull it over in my head ad infinitum, as any normal person would. Unless I had been drinking, in which case I knew I was wrong even if I argued otherwise, then I would go to bed.
Slowly I went from trying to make you happy - which in turn would make me happy - to being scared. I was scared of fucking up. I was scared of making you upset. I was scared of hurting you.
Mostly, I was scared of you as a person. You, being smarter than me. You, knowing a vast amount of things, and knowing all of my ailments and the cures. I was scared of saying the wrong thing. I was scared of looking wrong or sounding wrong or chewing my food wrong. I was scared of your family who were around to monitor my every move and criticize everything that I tried to do for you and for us. My self conscious nature and my anxiety got the best of me a lot of times and with the right (wrong?) chemical mixture would make me explode.
I really wish that night I could have controlled myself. I wish that stupid girl had taken that apartment and not made me return that deposit to her. Things may have been completely different that night. I may have been celebrating rather than drowning out the noise in my life. I could have been more patient, or been able to understand that right then and there wasn’t the time for us to burden one another with the mundane details of our collectively shitty days. Maybe I would have gone straight home and fallen asleep watching TV shows on my computer while the dog yapped at me.
I can ask that now and forever. It wouldn’t make a shred of difference. I’m way over here and you’re way over there. The lights finally dimmed and disappeared just like you had predicted in one of the first songs you ever wrote for me and I up and disappeared like I always alluded to. My nature is to run and I did it again.
Against the advice of literally everyone I know, I still look back even though that’s not where I’m headed. I read emails. I secretly look at the photos and the things you post so I can see how and what you’re doing. I can’t help it. I feel like a deranged person sometimes. Maybe I still care too much. Or, maybe I’m punishing myself to release you for good. It isn’t healthy and it isn’t what I want to be doing and it isn’t what I promised you. I guess I’ve broken that final promise to you, too. Again, I’m sorry, but, I know it’s because I’m looking for some kind of closure.
Then I finally saw the photo.
I can’t lie and say that it made me feel like that was what I needed to see. Even though it wasn’t completely clear what it was, there you were. You’re out of the frame, but there is someone else holding on to your leg. Someone that I knew. Someone that I could consider a friend or at least an acquaintance. How long had he been waiting in the shadows? How long was everyone watching me suffer and fail and eventually fall apart? More importantly someone felt like this was for the best, and they were probably right. It felt like a dagger directly in my heart. I knew this reality was coming but I didn’t know it would come faster than I ever expected. I can’t lie and say I haven’t been out there trying also, but it’s hard for me. I’m getting old. I’m looking old. I’m feeling old. The kind of old that you were okay with me being. Now I just feel like shit and my head is a mess all day. But, something happened very shortly after. I think I finally turned the corner. I keep saying that to myself and everyone else, but now I believe it.
The other day I woke up and instead of impulsively and secretly wanting to see what was going on with you I just went about my day instead. The California sun was out and the weather was perfect. I got breakfast, I went running, I listened to music. I laughed with my friends. That night I went out and talked to women I didn’t know. I had a normal-ish day. And, I didn’t think about you once. Okay, maybe a little bit, but I knew that somewhere out there you were also getting on fine with me and it gave me the strength to make it through the day without dwelling on the could’ve/would’ve/should’ve.
Before this turns into my second book, I’m just putting it out there: I feel okay. For the first time in months I don’t feel like the world is ending. I hope you’re feeling the same. I hope he is making you happy. I hope that one day we can talk again. I’ll buy you a drink - Jameson neat - and maybe I’ll even work on your guitar for you if you remind me to bring my tools. I bought a couple of records that I know you’d probably like. We can talk about that. Or, we can get tacos. As friends. I hope that the shows are going well and that you’re touching people with your music the way you always dreamed and the way that I know you can. You’re a star.
P.S. feel free to read, revise, and edit this as necessary
