this is to a girl who got into my head.   the nerdy kid obsessing over the midwestern debutante. the paralyzing problem that belied my high school career. although the mental rolodex of my affection would occasionally drift and change, i always found myself coming back to you. it’s an odd complex borne out of naivety, that i could use you as a benchmark - when the concept, returning to something you’ve never had, is stubbornly divorced from reality. but i couldn’t help but betray logic with a stolen glance at those beautifully piercing eyes. the killer browns that reassured me even the longest struggle and slowly discouraging heartbreak would ultimately be worth the effort. the eyes i would stare into for eternity, like every teenage dramedy told me i’d be able to - just as soon as the climax hit its crescendo and i’d go from glossed-over to intimately close.

it’s always you in my big dreams.   teenage years spent chasing to no avail should have persuaded me to take up arms elsewhere. but somehow my ambivalence with reality had me convinced that with time, my self-indulgent neurotic fantasies would merge with a realistic timeline into a working narrative. ignoring that the intersection of awkward teenage romance and quantum physics is far beyond the realm of high school, i pressed on. so i waited for the stars to align, for the celestial opportunity to prove this could work. but the suppressive nature of teenage politics left me relegated to the background. only the pinnacle of an interstate escape proved to separate ourselves from the idle hallway chatter.

the present’s just a pleasant interruption to the past.   it was a perfectly singular moment - her head nestled snugly in my side with closed, remarkably peaceful eyes. i couldn’t help but be swept up in an odd calm; a romantic lucidity that made the endless pining and hopeless yearning justified. if only in this moment, i had you. my headphones piped in the culmination of everything i had ever wanted, making the term “moment” quite a misnomer given this lengthy piano ballad. but subconsciously i realized beneath layers of intentional oblivion that this was the equivalent of standing on a mountain peak looking down. but even then, if this was the bittersweet compromise to my hopeless devotion, there are worse ways to settle.

i made a lot of mistakes.   it was that sinking feeling of buyer’s remorse. i had bought into the concept that people shouldn’t be married at twenty-one. except we weren’t married, and our time together was only at the crest of becoming real. in dire fear of having to deal with the reality of modern relationships, i strung together enough of a trumped-up narrative to excuse my own inabilities. i should have given it longer. i had reconciled it as doing you a favor, as if cutting your line was a courteous drop into your worst heartbreak. i should have let you in.

in my mind, in my mind.   only in retrospect do i see that her manic, clinging, stubbornly prideful, and passive-aggressive optimist qualities were more endearing than aggravating. maybe things didn’t feel right for a reason. maybe there was a foreshadowing truth in laying beside her on sleepless nights with a nervous heart racing. or quite possibly, i was mortified at the process of becoming vulnerable and having to answer for my own missteps. or maybe being the driver on a 3am postcoital perkins run was the extent of the responsibility i was capable of bearing. i looked at her as a glass half-empty, exposing each simple fault as a great travesty to rationalize why it just didn’t feel right. it wasn’t fair, and only with maturity do i understand the brilliance of parity.

all things go, all things go.   on the drive over, i thought of every cliche line that would make this hurt less. i had hoped a bittersweet kiss at the door would say all the words i was about to fumble over, and we would always have that perfect, singular moment as our conclusion. forsaking hollywood, we ended up on the couch where i stared at the blank television screen for as long as possible. if only to delay the inevitable task i sent myself to do. i presented my case with awkwardly forced conviction, like defending the guiltiest of offenders. i could feel your tears starting to soak through my shirt. i wanted to cry, but my attempts fell numb. i let down my guard with your uncomfortably tight grip, trying to empathize with your panicked fear of me escaping your grasp. i remember looking toward your loft for validation found in the eyes of a terrier being puppysat. i still hear the confused, sad whimpers.

losing a whole year.   this is the anthem for realizing our knock-down drag-out fights weren’t simply born out of a couple working through their issues. it’s for realizing that despite my very few shortcomings and best efforts, there was nothing left i could do to impress you. to melt your heart. to make you throw yourself into my arms willingly and voluntarily. to make you kiss me without lips pressed so tight i felt like the proverbial coal to be turned into diamond. and for all of that, i despised you to the point of questioning our relationship. but i never had to ask to be painfully liberated, you answered that for the both of us.

now i realize that you never heard one goddamned word i ever said.   at what point did my declarations of love ring hollow? for better or worse, i meant it until the last day you let me. i wish i could say the same for you. i’m surprised you pulled your strongest punch, since you were so honest with your red-flag-raising admissions of guilt. oh, you went straight to him when our problems became real? oh, he almost drove five hours to meet you on one of our worst nights? oh, you’re worried about cheating on me? oh, you told me all of this out of honesty and not out of a cavalier sense of vindication? maybe you wanted to see how far you could push me to absolve yourself of the need to end things yourself. but you didn’t get off that easy, did you? because i meant every word i said, down to every last futile letter.

it always seemed the juice used to flow.   i was the best you ever had. even when compared to him in awkwardly phrased compliments using “since” as a benchmark. and at some point, you marginalized it to a chore; as if intimacy was a burden equal to washing dishes. you could never explain what went wrong. instead you replaced that with complex rambling that amounted to working yourself up to be attracted to me. when you let me in closer than at arm’s length, i could feel us drifting further away. i could see the distant look in your eyes provided they weren’t closed. but that’s not love. that’s idealizing a fantasy where you pretended to be anywhere but here. 

when you start talking, i hear the prozac.   every word out of your mouth is a thinly-veiled criticism. maybe it’s to deflect your own insecurities on others. or maybe your emotional liabilities run so deep that the line between bitchy and self-deprecation is as blurred as your irrational logic. i did my best to repair you to a livable state, but that was under the naive pretense that there was a functioning mechanism to begin with. sure, your childhood was rough. but when you’re 24, the perpetual game of sob-story one-ups-manship gets old. you’ll never appreciate what you have, because you’re wired to see the worst in everything. you look up at the clouds and cry, without looking at the ground that supports you. it’s hard to love someone who can’t love herself. and for your sake, you should be eternally grateful that cats exist.

wouldn’t it be nice?   it was our song. the song that you said perfectly described us, back when our honeymoon period would be the envy of newlyweds. of all the uncertainty that comes with the last months of college, i knew this is what i wanted for life. i wanted you for life. and in a perpetual desire to grow up fast, we missed the opportunity to be young and take things slow. even if it would only delay what became the inevitable.

wouldn’t it be nice if we were older?   we were supposed to be that couple. and i guess in a tragic sense, we were. instead of being the fairytale romance, we marginalized each other to the point where it was a relationship in name only. and instead of fighting for the sake of love, it was for the sake of a shared identity we feared we couldn’t live without. we were titles. and titles don’t come to your defense when competing ideals and big plans create a looming expiration date. maybe if we were older, our youth wouldn’t magnify life’s longevity that worked both for us and against us.

wouldn’t it be nice to live together?   against the whispered, hushed reservations around us, we rebelled and moved in three months into our honeymoon phase. ninety days of dating be damned, we told them. this was real, and you just don’t understand. but they did. everyone did. and while they didn’t tell us until it was too late, i’m glad they didn’t out of romanticized naivety. it just felt so real, and for the first time i felt at peace knowing that was where i was meant to be.

we could be married, then we’d be happy.   every day felt like the first year of a marriage. kisses before and after work, homecooked meals, lazy sundays, ice cream binges. bickering about the small things, then making up because we knew we were so above the pettiness that causes love to slowly die. i would jokingly call you my wife as a term of endearment, waiting anxiously for the day it became official. but it never did. looking back i can’t help but think that the phrasing of “wouldn’t it be nice” was more of a passive surrender than a wedding song gone unplayed.