3:00 AM

I want to call.

I want to hear from you.

I miss you.

I want to know how you are.

I want to be able to be friends.

I can’t. I hate that. I fucking hate that.

I could call you and step back into your life to make myself feel better, but I know that every step back in just steps on your definition of who I am. It’s not fair for me to do that. I know that you need to have nothing to do with me so that you can get back on your feet and get what you deserve. I know that it means I have to be the bad guy. I need to be vilified, not because you really hate me, but just because it’s a step in the process. I could reach out, and blurring the lines would be fine in theory, but blurry lines are too easily crossed. I will not cross you. I will not hurt you more. I will not toy with your emotions so that I can feel better about myself. I have to throw my own desires behind me because I want what’s best for you. What’s best for you somehow became letting go.

I want to be there for you.

I want to protect you.

I want you to know you are cared for.

I want to feel the way that you felt.

There it is. There’s the realization that breaks down my façade of cool indifference. I want to feel the way you felt. Let me rephrase that: I want to feel the way I felt. The sting of defeat is still here. The memory of intense moments where I felt really alive in your arms still stays with me. Those moments come rushing back and the tears well up in my eyes. What the hell happened? Why did it stop for me? What is wrong with me? It scares me to look back because now doubt hangs in an ominous shadow over everything we had. The disconnection took place, and now I can’t seem to reconnect even the pieces of what was good so that I can understand what was genuine. It makes me wonder if everything I felt was a desperate grasp at having the kind of love I used to know. God, tell me I wasn't just stealing reality from you the whole time. I can't decide which is worse: having had something genuine and losing it, or never having had something genuine at all. It makes me wonder if I’m still capable of really being in love, or if I’m just trying so hard that I’ll talk myself into it at the drop of a hat. It makes me afraid to approach someone new. How do you explain that to somebody? “Sorry, it isn’t that you’re not attractive or nice or intelligent, it’s just that my heart was broken once, and I’m not sure I ever put it back together quite right. Nice talking to you.” Here’s where I come to understand people who labor under that old cliché, “It’s not you. It’s me.” Nothing was so irreconcilably wrong. Nothing was shattered. Nothing was beyond repair. Something inside me just stopped. What the fuck?!? Why not be head over heels? What is it in me that is so Goddamn insatiable? Why am I sitting alone, writing about ‘what’s best’ instead of happily curled up the way we used to be? Why did I have no choice but to break your heart?

I wish I could undo it…but undo it honestly.

It wasn’t too much to ask. I wish I’d been willing to grant it…but grant it genuinely.

I wish I knew what happened.

I wish I could fix it.

You deserve that.

You deserve better than this.

You deserve better than me.