Best to be the Changing Water

It's been so hard to get through this. Broken promise after broken promise; and now I'm blocked on everything with no way to reach out. I miss you so badly.

It's a shame you just keep running away from your feelings. You can run to booze, to weed, to another person, but you won't be happy until you focus on yourself first.

I know it was probably rude of me to say what I said, but it was the truth, and you could have said something instead of just straight up blocking my number. I told you time and again that all you had to do was tell me to leave you alone. But once again, instead of talking to me, sounding out your feelings and possibly working through the issues, you just turned tail and ran.

I never knew you were such a coward.

I think I'm finally starting to get over it though. I'm still hurting, still wounded and angry, still resentful and yet somehow hopeful. And I still love you, because I always will. Some part of me is still holding out hope for our friendship, but it's wilting under the pressure of your silence.

How could you be so cold?

I thought I knew you, but I guess I only ever knew a little bit; I understood how deep your heart runs but not how easily you could give up on someone.

You told me once that you wanted me to be a part of your life forever, the same as I wanted you. You promised me a friendship beyond measure. And you promised that even if we broke up it wouldn't change our friendship. But you lied.

How many lies did you tell me? How often was it the alcohol talking, Dranky at the wheel?

Do you remember the day we sat on the back swing at my haunted house and you told me I deserved someone who would take care of me? That I too deserved to be saved, loved, supported? and I told you I had someone in mind but I was scared they couldn't handle me.... and I was right. You couldn't handle me when I got carried away, when I let the blind love take me like waves and pull me under. You couldn't take care of me, because you couldn't even take care of yourself enough.

Maybe my mistake was trying to take care of you. Maybe I should have just let you carry me, floated on the current and believed you'd hold me up.

Then again, I'm drowning now, so who's to say you wouldn't have let me go anyway, too far out to save.

Who is supposed to save me now?

I thought I could love you better
Turns out I’m just like all the rest
I’m not the best
Just another broken heart
In your collection of
Friends for fair weather
Another bridge burning in the night
But I’ll stay burning for a while
Like a beacon lighting
The way for you to come home
Because if home is where the heart is
Then you always have a place here
In the fire you built
When you burned mine down

I’ll think of you
I’m lost in the pursuit of our finality

I wish I could stop wasting energy on you. I wish I could get you to stop taking up real estate in my heart and my head. I wish I could just be fucking okay again, because I haven’t been since that day.

I’ve never wanted to turn back time so I could choose to not date someone before. Even the worst shitty relationships I’ve been in had some kind of lesson for me to learn, something that left me better off in the long run. This… just left me empty.

Offhand, I said something the other day about “still not over him” to [Babe] and his response was “I know; I can tell. You haven’t been yourself.”
I can’t *be* a me without you as a friend. I have to rewrite my whole self again if I want to let go.

Because pointing out the truth is taboo
Asking questions is for the weak
“Haven’t you learned to read my mind?
Can’t you see I don’t want to hear it?”

Running on the fumes of false promises and fake dreams
Trying to build a castle from the ground up while the sand dries and crumbles in your wake, unseen
Under phantom touches and the trembling of your hands
Shaking from the weight of the world
The thunder of your footfalls when you
Inevitably
stumble
And what’s left of slow built foundations
Erode away with the crash of waves
you’ve never touched
You never will
sneaking up behind you
They pull you under
Fill your lungs
And
You
Don’t
Fight

How
am I meant
to move on
when I’m stuck
in my head with you
and the feelings
years in the making
yours
for the taking
so you took
and you gave
but in the end you only
brought me
one step closer to the grave
one more broken promise
in a ruined castle
gone to seed
(just left to rot)
because I forgot
to build
the walls
that would keep it
a dream
instead of a waking
Nightmare



Where
my cat is dying
and
you aren’t my friend
and
I can’t get to sleep anymore
and
it
never
ends

You said I could tell you all my feelings, tell you anything and you’d never love me any less. So I showed you my heart, deep in the part where I kept all the ways I worried about you. Now you’re gone, and the hole it left as the tide came in has weighed me down as surely as my own inability to swim.

I fucking miss you so much I’d rather not exist than go through all of this, I’d prefer to be an entire cosmos spinning full of stardust just waiting to become something again.

I never meant to do you harm, but I know I said everything all wrong. I don’t expect forgiveness for slipping into old bad habits, but I am sincerely sorry.

I will keep my promise to love you endlessly, lover friend or absentee, no matter what you tell me or where our journeys go.

Find your happy. 🖤 Not anyone else’s.

I miss you every day. It’s only been two weeks and you’re still constantly on my mind, even if you’ve gone out of your way to disappear from my life.

I have so many feelings still. Betrayal, anger, sadness.

You promised when we got together that it wouldn’t affect our friendship if we broke up. Apparently you lied. You even said when we were breaking up that you wanted to stay friends, and then you blocked me on every platform we both shared.

I feel sure I know your reasons; I’m sure you feel like you’re protecting yourself. I’m sure she told you it was for the best, too. All I ever wanted for you was happiness, so I hope she makes you happy.

I still think she drove a wedge between all of us. I think she was jealous, and wanted you for herself. I know she didn't understand that there can be different levels of affection and connection in a poly group; I know L and I didn't connect with her on the same level we connected with you. I know she stepped in where it wasn't her place, too.

I'm still upset that it was so easy to break us. I thought we were stronger than that. I thought we could handle a little stress, work it out; I thought I could tell you all my feelings and you'd at least recognize that I was feeling upset. I was clearly wrong. It feels like I was wrong about so many things with you.

The only thing I know wasn't wrong was my love for you.

But if I could go back in time, I don't know whether it would be to go back and never ask you out in the first place, or just to go back to that day and keep my fool mouth shut. Even if I was just tightly wound and wanting more than I knew you had to give, worried for your health and safety, wanting the best for you.

I thought I was meant for you. I thought you would have my back, love me the way I love you.

I forgot that the arrangement was that it was my turn to be saved, not to try and save you.

I thought you could handle me. I thought you were stronger. I thought you were going to be a part of my life, a part of my future. I believed in you, in us. I believed you when you said you wanted to come out and visit, when you said you maybe wanted to come live out here with us someday. I was a fool, but I believed.

I built castles in the sky based on it, and when they came crashing down it left a ruin in my heart that will remain, a temple to the things that could have been.

You never meant to visit us, did you? You never meant to move. You just couldn't tell us, didn't want to disappoint us.

The same way you couldn't tell me when I had done something that upset you.

You told me you were dealing with "personal issues" and now I know-- no, I only suspect, but we're too much the same for it to be otherwise-- that those things were hurt feelings that were my fault. But you couldn't tell me that. You couldn't say anything that might hurt me, until it was too late and you said the things that would not only hurt but crush me. You never even really said goodbye.

Maybe that's what hurts the most. You couldn't be fucking bothered to tell me goodbye, to let me know you weren't coming back. You've left me with the faintest shred of hope for our friendship, waiting for the day you come back again. Which I will, because I've always been stupid for you.

I waited five whole years for a chance to be yours, and after four months of bliss, excitement, dreams... it's all gone. Worse than never getting my chance, I had it and I blew it and I lost you completely.

I miss your friendship most of all.

I try to live without regrets, but this... I know I'll regret this for a long time. Not giving you my heart, no; I could never regret that. Even if it still hurts, even if I still want to cry over the loss, even if I'm absolutely blindsided and crushed by how it turned out. But I regret that day. I wish I could take it all back and start over.


Yesterday, I found the one place you never blocked me for certain. Not that you ever answered me there to begin with, and I'm sure you're still on my friend list only because you use it so infrequently that you've forgotten it exists. But I can't help wanting to reach out, even if I know it's an exercise in futility, just to apologize and tell you I miss you. I won't, because I know you don't want to hear from me again. But I want to.

I still watch your posts on an alt account, just to know you're alive. Hoping that you've found peace. Wishing for the day that you come back to be my friend again. I won't reach out there, because I know that if I do I'll lose the last thread connecting us.

I haven't been on 'vu (save to check my inbox, to message with Rain) since you left. There's nobody there anymore except her, without you. L is here, Bec left us for SL, and everyone else I consider an actual friend hasn't been on in so long they may as well be gone completely. I couldn't even bring myself to log on to my laptop except to close everything related to the game and shut it back up.


I still think about you every single day. You're on my mind so much it drives me crazy. I spend so much time wishing I could wipe the slate clean and start all over. Wondering if maybe I should have begged you to stay, instead of just bowing my head and accepting it. The ache in my heart is constant.

I feel abandoned. The worst thing I could ever be, the voices in my head reminding me that nobody but me is really there at the end of the day. A reminder that I can't rely on anyone else, and a hard lesson in building castles that I thought were safe to build. They never are. Built on faulty foundation, made of sand and forever waiting for the tide to come in.

You couldn't even tell me why you left. I know I was overwhelming, in that moment. But that can't have been all, there must have been more, and my mind is twisting searching for wrongs I've done that left me deserving this. I must deserve it, or you'd still be here. I must have been so wrong for you. I must have been truly awful, for you to feel the need to block me and run.

But on the other hand, how was I to know? Maybe that's just who you are, always running from your problems instead of facing them. Maybe I was insignificant in the grand scheme, just another complication you didn't want anymore, to be discarded. Maybe you did lie to me all along when you said you loved me, though I find it hard to believe. Maybe you did lie when you said you wanted me, to protect my feelings. Maybe you told L the truth when you said you and he had more connection than you and I; he noticed it on our trip (and so did I but I thought I was just imagining it until he said something), but maybe even that was a lie.

Maybe that's why we never hooked up, really, never got beyond the petting. Maybe you didn't really want me that way, maybe you lied when I asked how you felt. Maybe we really were just both too shy, and caught in bad timing all the rest of the time. Maybe you only wanted me when you were drunk.

And who knows how often you were blackout drunk when we spoke, how much of what you said to me was forgotten in the haze of alcohol and sleeplessness. Who knows how many feelings were just fueled by booze, regretted and forgotten by the morning. You're too good at hiding when you're drunk, and I find myself wondering if I could ever trust anything you didn't tell me sober to my face.

But the way you looked at me when we were together, the ways I caught you staring in the rearview... these are the things that come back to me, that sit in my mind shattering the pieces of my heart one by one until I'm crying all over again. I haven't cried this much or this hard since Waifu and I broke up. I'm grateful to be able to cry, to not be numb, but I'm so tired of the ache in my chest.


And if you ever do come back to be my friend... I know I could never ask you about any of this. It would become taboo, a frozen chunk of time that we never speak about, that I never ask about, for fear of you leaving again. I would just have to swallow my feelings, choke on the questions and tears, and wait for the inevitable point of leaving again. Because if you've done it once... well, I'm sure you know where I'm going with that sentiment.

But I would still take that, and your friendship, over this empty space in your absence.

It's times like these I wonder if I'll ever be alright again. I know the pain has got to go away sometime, and it's usually not this bad. Someday all I'll have is a scar on my heart in the shape of her name, but right now it's still a tender injury, fighting infection.

Even in my dreams she's nothing but a fantasy, a memory twisting into my heart to make it bleed again. A twisted, beautiful memory, sharp and sweet, with the bitterest aftertaste.

I miss her like the sun and rain and wind. Her warmth, when she was true to her heart, when she smiled shyly and I knew beyond a doubt that I adored her, wanted nothing more than to make her happy. Even when she cried and screamed she was beautiful. I don't know where we got so lost.

I got so jaded, and so overwhelmed.

How can one be so jaded and so naive at the same time? To believe so strongly in everyone else, and yet never in my own self.

I still remember how it felt to wake up curled around her, protective and warm. Did I touch her cheek and smile, and tell her without words how I felt? I can't remember. It's all a blur, the words that stand out are rare in the muddle, the actions even more so.

I dreamed that I was imagining her there. Dreamed I was pretending I could hold her tight again. How twisted is that? How broken.

Even still, you haunt my memories, my dreams, my heart.

Even now, I wake with an ache inside. It's been too long for me to wake up crying, not long enough for me to laugh it off. Maybe, without the closure I never got, it will never truly be gone. Maybe I will always love you, no matter how much I think "I'm over him, I'm alright now."

Even in my dreams, I was never exactly what you wanted. You didn't want my childish adoration, you thought me a tagalong and a dreamer. You would never have made my daydreams come true, would you? You would have one day told me you'd moved on; you'd have fallen in love with someone else and broken my heart.

The look on your dream-self's face when I smiled up at you and said "I've waited this long, I think I can wait a little longer" was terribly familiar. It was a look that said you recognized the love in my eyes and you didn't want it. So by the time I'd followed you into another room, you were hurriedly making your excuses to go. Somewhere, anywhere, you were going; I thought perhaps to get a new pack of cigarettes, and I kept thinking "If only I could get a straight answer from him, because if that's all he wants then I have cigarettes he can have." If only you'd answered me, if only you'd stayed.

You never can, never will.

Not even in my dreams.

I still wonder; did you love me? Any more than any other girl, was I special like you were to me? Or did you laugh at the way I continued to be infatuated, did you think that's all it was? Too kind to outright tell me, too far away in everything you had to deal with at the time.

Have you forgotten me? Or do you still remember, do you wonder what we could have been, do you still dream of me sometimes?

I miss you.

I wouldn't go back and change things, not even if I had the power, but I wish I could see you again. Even if it's just to tell you, with a sad smile, that I wasn't just a child with an infatuation, that I still love you, that I probably always will. Tell you to have a wonderful life, with the family you've created. Walk away, and then I'll be able to never look back. I'll be able to find my closure and let you go.

But I'll still never forget you, and I'll never stop loving you.

Even if you still break my heart in my dreams.

I hope "We'd really love to hire all of you, you're all fabulous!" was a) true and b) doesn't mean they have to choose the least qualified person (that would be me) to not hire.

As for the rest of my time, let's just say I'm about ready to lose my mind.

I'm gonna go pick up some food and go sit in a park with my notebook or something.

I seem to be the problem here. I can't wait until I get a job so I don't have to be around anymore.

By then, of course, Mom'll be back and Zee will be somewhere. Christ knows where at this point.

I owe someone my soul in about five days. Maybe if I put my soul contract on ebay I can get enough for rent. Any opinions, guys?


On the bright side, the weather's been gorgeous, if cold.