I wanted to write this on the morning of the first. At roughly 2 am (I wish I knew the time, but I think you have chat logs that went missing, because no matter how hard I try, I can't find them anywhere). And I want to start it by saying something about how this happened exactly two years ago, and how everything was so damn different then, because it would have been two years. Exactly. And that would have been such a nice and even and perfect span of time to have elapsed. But it's not the morning of the first. Or even the thirty-first. It's the evening of the twenty-sixth, but I don't really want to wait. I just want to sit up with you all night and write like I haven't written in a while.
I'm reading them again. All of the chat logs. Not mine. Yours. I'm sure someone's going to kill me one day when they figure out I've read all of those (yes, every last one, but you already knew that). Two years ago. It's certainly been a while. We've both changed in that time. A lot. We've grown up. Arguably, we've gotten better, and while I'm sure we have in many ways, there are still parts of me that are no less rotten than when you first saw them.
My world turned upside down that day. No less than yours, if you could believe it. And sure, you didn't know it then, but that week that you were busy breaking yourself? You shattered me, time and time again. And I couldn't blame you. It's funny to me now how oblivious you were (please take no offense to that, but it's so true). I loved you then in a way that was so self-sacrificing, so lonely and desperate and helpless, that it astounds me even now. Maybe that's why I still relive it sometimes. Through the chat logs, if nothing more.
I know that things are better now for both of us than they were then. And I know we've come a long way, but is it so wrong of me to miss that kind of love? It's grown into a more soothing, comforting creature, something I can rely on and look forward to with a smile. But then it was turbulent and erratic, I hated every minute that I spent loving you because I couldn't have you. I thought I hated you at times, because you broke my heart time and time again and didn't even know.
Those six months of utter turmoil were the most memorable I've had thus far in my life. Nothing has made me feel as strongly. I don't know that anything can. And I just want you to understand in light of this that when I say I miss the way things were, I don't, but rather I miss how pure every emotion was then. I miss that we never lied to protect each other (with the exception of that one big lie I literally lived).
When you told me, at two in the morning on the first of the New Year, I couldn't breathe. It was terrifying and exhilarating. I'd imagined it countless times, trying to find the key to you. Trying to figure out why it wasn't me you'd kissed, even though you could have just a month before that...even though you almost did. And all of these thoughts, about love and hope and hopelessness and loss raced through my head in the seconds after you told me.
I don't think I ever really put into words how hearing that made me feel. First off was the excitement, the racing pulse, the subtle smile. I was hopeful because it meant the end of what had kept you chained (apologies for the cruel metaphor). And then the panic set in, because it wasn't me. There was no thought of me in there. Everything was about someone else, and that crushed me. First you said you'd wait, and see, and gave me hope again, and then you shattered it. That week was no less of a roller coaster for me than it was for you.
I knew when you were breaking. But you never knew that you had already broken me then. To me, you had come out from behind a wooden fence, only to relocate immediately into a fully reinforced fort. And even as you told me more, you became more distant. It was an awfully strange beginning to a year. One that held promise yet was wrought with forbidden temptation. That's how 2010 started for me. It was a more desolate beginning than you probably realized. Certainly more of a morbid one than you'd have guessed at the time.
Yet somehow it has all led me here. To reread old stories written as they were. I love chat logs for the honesty. They tell things in a way that no blog post or story or even personal diary entry can convey because they immortalize conversations. They put the most transient of thoughts into stone and preserve the way we saw things, which we would not otherwise be able to recapture. I like looking back at who we all once were. Even if I can't perceive who I am at this moment, and don't quite know how all of the people turned out.
I often wonder where exactly this strange thing called life will take us next. I am, as usual, apprehensive, but a bit excited, nonetheless. I really do hope it goes as well as it has thus far, if not better.
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