xxiv. Me and My Husband

I'm never going to learn.

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It's approaching the time when I should be starting college, getting my finances in order, moving forward with what I want to do, and again, I'm stuck. 

I find myself missing you at odd times of the day. Every day I miss you at least a little. More than I want to admit. I miss loving you, even if some days it was frustrating, it was easy to just keep loving you. Loving you was never a hard thing to do; never once did I have to force myself to love you. It felt natural. Breathing felt more abnormal than being with you. 

An English teacher once said, "Love is such a heavy word that we have found other ways to explain just that. Love is as simple and as complex as wishing a flea would bite you and your lover so your blood could mix in its sack, so you are never away from each other." That's a reference to a poem, but I couldn't explain it better. It's as aggressive as a flea sucking the blood out of your body, but as lovely as the mixing of becoming one with someone else. 

I keep looking back at our last conversation before we broke up, and every time I'm so confused about how we got to the point that we did. On a misunderstanding and lack of accountability. A lot of our conversations went that way. I would say something absurd and out of character, you get mad at me, we're arguing, I'm trying to explain the joke, I have to apologize, and then it gets brushed off. Maybe it is my fault we broke up. Maybe there was nothing for you to learn and everything for me to learn. If I always have to explain myself, am I really being understood or heard? Maybe I am insensitive and should've been nicer at times. Maybe I needed better boundaries, or rather, to learn to respect yours.  

I don't think about our past relationship as a negative. Just two teenagers experiencing their own kind of love that itself didn't understand what it was. If I didn't have you as a lover, I would've loved to still have you as a friend, and it hurts every day knowing that we couldn't be. I learned so much from you, more than I thought I could. Your energy keeps me moving forward always. It pains me to know that my energy couldn't do the same for you. 

You only have one soulmate every lifetime, and I'm so happy that I got to meet mine. It's not about being the "perfect" partner; I never wanted you to be perfect. I understood your flaws, and not once did I ever want to change them. I would go hours on the phone with you until I fell asleep just to hear you talk. I preserved the memory of you, untouched by bitterness, because your flaws and mistakes never mattered to me. I loved loving you, and that's all that mattered to me. 

Today, actually, I had to write a grocery list, and I accidentally opened a different note, and it reads: "y'all laughing shaking the whole area." And I started laughing so hard I almost started crying. It always makes me think about how serious we took something so juvenile. Arguments were bound to happen, but who really cares? Experiencing someone else should've been enough. That's part of the reason why I got so upset. It's hard to experience things that aren't true.

If I think hard enough, I can still smell your cologne. I could feel your hair in my fingers. I could taste your lips. I could see how your glasses would enlarge your eyes. How it felt to play fight with you. Holding hands to guide you across the street. That time we were sneaking to hang out with N and A, and your mom called, and we were sprinting down the street to the mall again. How you would look at me when you wanted to kiss, but for some reason, too scared to ask me. You're always carrying around a jacket because I'm always cold. That wide-eyed look you would give me whenever I would say something outlandish. The equally stupid references you would force me to remember so I could say the second part of it. I would mention anything, and you would immediately ask if I wanted it. I think I also developed pee pee poo poo humor from you because my grandma got off the couch and it made a farting sound as I had to try so hard not to laugh.

Anyways. I was never here. I miss my husband.

And I want that photo you took of me the day before I left. I know I looked so bad.