Love and Lose

Phase 1: We Were Girls Together

When: Always

Annoyingly in love people always say the same thing about how to know that you’ve found your person. “When you know you know.” And I know, for sure, that in pain and in gain, thick and thin, all the vows plus some, that you are mine. But the way we love each other and the way we walk together makes romance seem small. I love you in a capacity that a man could never touch—our psyches are cosmically connected, in platonic perfection, in unflagging faithfulness. Our sisterhood is all the easiness of being alone, all the comfort of home, but colored deeply with adventure. Together, we are push and pull, swing and sway, flow and grow. Our combination is long, wide, impossible to avoid. Together, we are the day the devil beats his wife: maximum gloom, maximum glow. When I die and look back on the highlight reel of my existence, I will see us, criss crossed on the fluffy rug in our dorm room. Us, on sticky chairs, spilling secrets over cigarettes. Us, an invisible tin can phone stretching whatever distance lies between, making a bulleted list of what we will dish on after everyone else is gone. Because after everyone else is gone, it will be just us. This, I know.(1) 

A lot of people have left me. But you promised, you promised over and over again, that that wouldn’t be you. We plan to move to Asheville together next year. I finally love easily, the weight off my chest, trusting your word. We pinky swear, “I’ll love you forever.” We pinky swear, “I’ll never leave you.” We pinky swear, “no matter what.” We hold each other's hair back after stumbling inside, and we can't wait to do it again. On an impromptu road trip, we fight over the aux cord and the thermostat, and see our Super 8 bargain room like a presidential suite. You are my best friend. You take me to get a tattoo of the word “Friend” in your handwriting. I’ll never regret anything with you. (2)

Phase 2: Upside Down

When: September

“I’m tired of being ‘married’ to you,” you say. “I want to change my life. And I don’t see you as a part of the future I want.” Sitting in our living room, feet tucked up on the couch I never liked. Your face stays still while I tug on the ends of my hair and try to hold in a sob. I try to drive away from you then, but I am gagging on my tears. (3) I can’t see where I am going, metaphorically or literally. Somehow I am strong enough not to beg you to love me, not to beg you to stay. I want to, but you ask me not to, and you’ve always known I can’t resist you. Nothing true seems true anymore, because what I knew, really knew, isn’t real. I feel something rapidly decaying in my body and starting to gnaw on my bones. I think this is Loss. This moment is characterized by profound confusion, and I can’t remember the road to get home. 

Phase 3: I “hope” you’re “happy”

When: October

These days are full of righteousness, of taking the high road, of wishing you well. Hoping you find happiness, that someday you would find a man who will love you like I did, and who can know you like I thought I did, but knowing you won’t. Scrolling past your self improvement content on social media. Spending every spare moment with whatever friend will have me, inviting strangers inside, because being alone used to be with you, and the black hole you left threatens to suck me in. Wishing you well. Seeing you graduate on facebook. (4) Leaving the front door unlocked in case you come home and say “let's pretend that none of that ever happened.” (5) Hoping that you find new friends, that they never need too much or ask too much, that you always have the space you need with them. But secretly, hoping that you are never as happy with them as you were with me. 

Phase 4: I just think it's funny how…

When: November

You didn’t feel suffocated when you needed ME, you were fine with accountability when I had hurt YOU, you thought sacrifice was a good and beautiful part of a relationship when I was the one giving things up. (6) How no man has ever treated you how I did, and yet you said you don’t want this intensity with anyone but a lover. Weren’t we in a kind of love? I just think it’s funny, funny how you let my birthday pass without a word. Funny how you now only hang out with people who you said you didn't like. Funny how you still listen to our favorite band, still pick up shiny things off the sidewalk, still dance to our song at the only bar that we both liked, but you have no one now to share it with. Your Asheville Zillow search is switched to one bedrooms. I have no replacement in your life, and it doesn’t seem like you want one. I see you around town and we are worse than exes. It was like I didn’t exist anymore. Maybe I did this to us, maybe I just existed too much.

Phase 5: I didn’t deserve this

When: December

I shy away even from my family. I get sick, and my mom comes to make me dinner. She sets up a tree with me, hanging stockings and lights, and asks where you are. (7) I don’t want to tell her what happened, because I don’t want her to hate you. Even when you are gone, I protect you. Anything you ever needed from me, I always gave you, even to the point of letting you leave me. Setting your ringtone to full volume so I could always wake up when you called. Never making pancakes cause you hated the smell of maple syrup. Donating all my purple clothes because the color made you anxious. (8) Always driving so you didn’t have to park. Cleaning blood off your arms and hiding my pills. 

The love I gave you was imperfect, but it was patient, and generous, and unconditional. For years, when we cried on bathroom floors, tumbled off of barstools, and sat waiting for luck in the cold wet grass, our tears had mingled. Any grief became shared. But this, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do without you. You tossed me overboard and dragged my lifeline to shore.

Phase 6: Loving you still

When: January

Months passed without you. During this time, as Lewis says, I sit with my anger long enough for her to tell me her real name was grief. (9) I cry on the clock, afternoon light on me while I sit on the bathroom floor, and I have to tell my boss about you. I love other friends, love them with reservations. I ask them to promise me nothing, because I don’t want them to have lied. I go on few dates, because they all ask me about my tattoo, your handwriting on my arm, and I can’t keep explaining it. I realize that I never lied, that when I said I would love you till I died, I meant it. (10) But now, now I know that my love is permanent, and even after I take down the ten thousand photo strips on my wall, after I return your borrowed books, after I finally tell my sisters what happened, your fingerprints are still all over my life and when I see them, my heart still whispers: friend. (11)

Phase 7: Mosaic

When: March

Your coffee order is still better than mine. My dog still waits by your empty bedroom door every morning. My boots are still threaded with beaded in-jokes. Sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I have your smile. I still help worms cross the sidewalk in your honor. I want to tell your mom that I love the rooibos tea she recommended, and would she like to borrow the book I just finished? I ask the parts of me that are made of you to please, please don’t change. I am learning that I will always be made of the people that I love, and I don’t want not to be. But I am also marked, aching, wishing the pain would fade faster. Wishing the ones I wanted had wanted me back.

Phase 8: Community will come

When: May

Sometimes I think that if you weren’t my person, then my person must not exist. Someone tells me that my community will come, that you were not aligned with my values, that you didn’t love the way I do, but that there are people out there who do. I try to be patient, and I try to look for them. (12) The truth is, though, that I don’t really want someone new, I just want you to have been right for me. I don't want new friends, I want my old friend back. I miss you. I have a dream about you, and when I wake up, it takes me a moment to remember.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, I accept that no one will ever be you, and I don’t really want them to be. I look around at others in my life, friends who will prioritize me whether I ask them to or not. Who won’t mind my mess. Who want to watch my favorite movies, want to hear my favorite music. I can love them too, just as much. What we had is and always will be unique, but it is not all the world has for me. 

Phase 9: For when it happens again

When: July

Everyone I love, I love uniquely. And in each subsequent relationship, I bring who I was and who I loved before along with me. The idea of “getting over” someone I have loved is not only unrealistic, but it does not do justice to the kind of love I am capable of. Love is not a scarcity in my heart. (13) Its abundance is stunning, and that is how I know that I will persevere, and I will change and be changed by many many others. I can’t guarantee to myself that this won’t happen again, that I won’t love with my everything someone who is not prepared to give that back. But I can be the kind of person who will continue to love and love longest, and I am proud of that.

1. When you can’t come out of your head, you say you see me. “All edges of sweaters and hair like the flaming center of some auburn flower from those woods, those woods, all loveliness and open palms and dark lashes and odds and ends and home and free at the same time. And I am a little out of my head, because you are worth being out of my head for.”

2. On your birthday, I wish you a happy birthday on instagram. “Friendship with you is like your heart is imploding and also exploding but you’re also a cat in a sunbeam and there’s a song in the air. You exist in sunbursts and daylight but also moonbeams and starfire. You love me when I don’t deserve it, you know me when I don’t know myself- when I fail you and myself, you keep reaching out your hand.” I mean every word.

3. When she said what I never thought she would

   I was going 12 over, but I couldn’t help it. a great groaning was expanding from behind my ribs to clench a saltwater steering wheel, and the blinker thudded like heels down a hollow hall. For once, only one seatbelt light blinked red, and a poltergeist of what now? rebounded in the drivers cabin and built pressure, pushing glass till I had to open the skylight 

   to gasp 

4. I got sick off airport sushi / while you walked across the stage / it was a moment I would have treasured with you, taken Polaroids and / themed in-jokes / but you were shaking hands and had hat hair / while I got sick off airport sushi / i taxid and you waved / congratulations, friend / Come be young with me / or I’ll have to see an Arizona sky alone

5. If i ever loved you ill never hate you: Half drawn blinds like winking eyes, poised to close / (in case you come home before the lights are out) / Wholly broken heart still hoping to heal / (in case you come home before my time is up)

6. I miss you. I love you. I feel a great swollen tenderness for you. I wish desperately for the assurance, the knowledge, the faith to believe that you love me too, or ever did. I have always believed there is something in me that recognizes something in you, and loves it, and is like it, and will never forget it. I always loved to change for you, to grow for you, to hurt for you. I want to drive somewhere with you right now, and listen to music we don’t both enjoy, one of us too cold and one of us too hot. I want to try to book a yurt this time, instead of the super 8. I want to stay forever, in different climates, one of us always with an earache, desperately riding the orbits of one another’s sun. Wearing that light like a quilt over shoulders on a porch swing. I miss you so much. I want so badly to know that you miss me too. 

7. when grief comes in satin and stripes / and the early setting sun washes tree trunks red  / I say thanks for the early dark because early dark is the only place where loss can warm me. i / ask again, and again, for loss to leave me too (don’t go) / my throat burns when Bedford falls shows up / because I, too, / was rich (am rich) was richer 

8. I'm bathing in lavender now, lilac slips over my skin, purple electrifies me. Can you forgive me for that? 

9. I am not pushing through. I am not powering through. I am not fighting with my grief, I am moving with it. Slowly, rocking back and forth, a waltz of sorts. Sure, this dance hurts worse than others. It lends a blurred, watery lens to my day, an extra splash in the dishwater, an extra ache over the weeds.

10. I will always be I

    Even if you are not always you

    Because if I look at the truth of it

    Who could be?

    Go as far as you can as fast as you want to

    But know that I will wedge open windows/and block open doors until I die 

11. I didn’t know it’d be permanent 

    I didn’t understand the long term 

    I didn’t know I’d have to hold this forever

    I thought when I loved you I could just love you 

    Not that when you left I’d still be there 

    Underneath it 

    But 

    I decided to love you forever 

    No matter where we end up 

    I decided to love you forever 

    If you can’t too, I’ll love you enough

12. I am searching for a place where it is safe to ask for nurture

    To lay pitiful while someone presses their hands into me

    Drag palms and fingers deeply into my soreness

    Carry me a hot meal 

    Wash my face, please, and comb through my tangled wet hair

    When I fill my lungs to aching, remind me “breathe out”

    Growing pains immobilized me, irreversible, ruined me

    Let me be a child again 

13. The choice to love may be yours but the choice to be loved is not. // It is a deep earth magic to love and not be loved in return. // I love you like the lichen crawls on the limbs of a tree. I love you like water runs deeper than digging. I love you like roots that knot to each other and emerge gasping for air. I love you like a shot into the darkest deep. I love you like an acorn. You are tattooed on my body and my bones and I am not ashamed of the ringing of my heart in response to your name. // Today, I honor the power of myself. I honor the resilience of my heart. I honor the devotion of my spirit. I honor the resounding hum of deep deep love that erupts at the sight of a friend.