Best to be the Changing Water

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.

Birthday wishes, today.

I wrap myself in a blanket to keep the chill at bay, and am never far from my phone. Will there be a response to my motion of friendship renewed? Who knows.

The past comes creeping around the edges of my thoughts again, but where the heat of late summer brings depression, and the cold of winter snow brings loneliness, here in the rain I find a kind of longing. Here in the late night drives I find a familiar comfort, warming my hands against the vents of the car heater and wondering what could have been.

We were always the traveling sort, together. Never could stay long in one place, always longing to follow our dreams, so long and so far away, no matter how wasteful and insubstantial they seemed. No matter how much they slipped through our fingers like the night's mist whenever we got close enough to touch them.

You used to sing to me. The very first night I stayed with you, you sang to me. You sang of a true love finding itself encompassing time and hardships, because of a shared past. We didn't share the right sort of past, I guess. We shared a hobby, and you were kind enough to listen to a young girl's tale of heartbreak. Kind enough to give her the affection she was craving, seeking without realising what it was she was looking for.

You took me in to your affection, let me in to your heart. You let yourself replace something I had lost somewhere along the way, but what neither of us realised was that I didn't have it to begin with. I was looking to replace a love that had never really been love, looking for someone who would play the game I was used to playing.

Instead, I found you. I found a sort of love, but one that was broken and tainted by both of our lives. We were too young, didn't know enough about the way the world works. Didn't know enough about each other and ourselves. I loved you. I still care about you enough to make amends despite all of the hurt we've cause one another in the intervening years.

I want to find you, to hug you, to tell you everything will be okay someday. I always have wanted to take care of you, look out for you, love you. We will never be what we once were; harsh words and deeds have torn us apart and make it hard to mend, but someday I would like to be your friend. I would like to be an ear to hear you, a shoulder to cry on.

I remember more good than bad, and it leaves a taste like dust and tears. You were meant to be in my life, not just as a lesson to be learned. I may have made a mistake in my judgment, in my timing, but not in my choice of person to love.

I remember best the times when I thought it was the worst, but I pick out all the amazing moments and I don't even remember why I was upset most of the time.

I remember going down to the big arcade whenever we had a little money to spare (there's one of those here; I always think of you) and playing games for hours. Somewhere I have a little metal key-tag engraved with your portrait, quietly tucked away in memory of the happy times we had together.

I remember driving for hours in the dark, music turned up over the sound of the empty roads, for no reason other than because we were young and we wanted to. Because we could.

I think that, right there, says everything about us. Because we could. We loved each other because we could. We laughed and cried and fought and made up, all simply because we were young, and we could. The world went on around us, nothing we did made a difference just then. We both made mistakes but they weren't devastating, no matter how dire they may have seemed at the time. No matter how dramatic we played things, it was always just youth's mistakes.

We changed each other. You showed me, unintentionally, everything I needed not to be. I cried because I knew I couldn't fix what I had broken. I left because I knew there was no mending for what I had been and done.

And in doing so I left you more broken than before, more shattered than I had ever meant to leave you. I said cruel things to make you hate me so I didn't have to deal with your love. I told bitter truths because I knew I was the only one who could speak up, because I was the one who had already broken your heart. There wasn't anything worse I could do than tell the truth so openly, so bitterly spoken, all with the pretense of helping you because I truly cared.

I would mend those hurts, wipe away your grief and leave you with a clean slate, free of the damage I have done, if only I could. I'm sorry.

So the tears here upon my cheeks are of loss and regret, like summer's rain pouring down to clean out her skies. A longing for what might have been, an ache of missing you. Poignant and soft, sharp around the edges where you least expect it, and so bitter for all the wrongs I've done.

Put the past away, and start again. It's your birthday. Want to be friends?

(Cont?)

This was supposed to be typed up last night and posted, but I was far too tired, so I'll just post them both tonight.

( Dear cute asian woman in the ferry terminal... )

That is all for that one...