I’ve re-read things I’ve written about the other lovers in my life. My time with them was messy, complicated, destructive. I wonder if that’s why it was so easy to let the words flow from my fingertips each time my thumbprints hit my keyboard. It’s as if my body simply needed to purge the messiness out of me so it wouldn’t hurt my heart any longer.
Of course, that’s never the case with heartbreak. The hurt lingers long after your lover is gone from your side, even though the only bed you’ve shared is his.
But with you, nothing was messy. Life was clean, and light, and fresh. Life was full of hope and endless possibilities, more than I ever knew were possible.
That’s how my love was for you. Full of hope and endless possibilities. Everything was possible.
There were no shouting matches, drunken messes, horrible words slung to each other as if they were mud. There were no points of blackout in a destructive way where things were bad bad bad. Even those blackouts somehow were pure and full of only the best of us both.
This time with you was the purest I’ve had in a long time.
Maybe that was the problem. Things were too clean, too perfect. I know that part of you was holding back from more. And truth be told, part of me held back from you, too. I only know how to be vulnerable, and it’s the scariest feeling in the world to let someone see your naked flaws when they themselves pretend as if they have none.
My point in all this is that I know what we had was real. It was real for me. It was everything I needed to realize that I am worth so much more than my past loves have ever allowed me to be. The toxicity of my past never showed up in the pureness of what I felt for you. And I think that’s why it’s still so devasting to realize that we were only as much as we let ourselves be with each other.
Which still, wasn’t everything.
I knew you weren’t ready for more.
Honestly, I’m probably not ready for more yet, either.
(You don’t need to say it. You told me so.)
But I was so close. I was so close to getting there with you. I was standing at the bridge that night, ready to take that leap of faith. I just needed you to show up and not let me go.
I guess the thing about things that are too clean is that there’s no growth without mess. There’s no passion without sweat. There’s no love without discomfort. And I know more than anyone that you couldn’t stand to be in the discomfort of emotional vulnerability even if it made you the richest man in the world.
I lie in it every night and think of you, still, probably because my words aren’t flowing out as easily as they used to.
Maybe it’s because I’m still holding onto hope that one day, I’ll be able to speak my words to you again.
Maybe, it’s because I want to be the mess in your life you don’t have to worry about cleaning up.
