Do you remember?

I remember clearly the night I told her I loved you.  It was February.  Late February. I didn't want to tell her, but it was tearing at me, so I could tell her or I could tell you, and so I told her.  By which I mean I stuttered and laughed and waffled around it until she said something about not falling for you to which I just said "too late."

I was shaking.  It was probably shortly after midnight, and I know it felt more dramatic and emotional than it really was.  It was a night entirely too similar to a night four months previous that we had spent discussing why exactly I shouldn't date you.  I think I was the one who brought the topic up, and I think I was more trying to convince myself.  I wonder if she remembered that night when I finally told her.

I think I'm only just now starting to grasp how bad things were a year ago, because I'm starting to see how good they are now.  I'm starting to think that might have come dangerously close to rock bottom.  Which is strange to think of, because I didn't think of it that way at the time.  It was bad, yes, there's no denying it.  But it didn't feel like rock bottom.  It felt hopeless and desperate, but not in the way I'd expect rock bottom to feel.  I think I might have realized it would end, which made it easier to get through.

You fell back to depression, I started cultivating anger.  I find it interesting how differently we reacted to the same things.  I think depression was too regular for me by then.  Maybe not to the same extent or in the same way, but it just didn't fit the situation.  So I got angry.  I cried hopeless, angry tears.  I wrote frustrated rants.  I clenched my fists and rubbed at the marks my nails left later.

Being happy felt weird.  Being around good people was strange and complicated.  Everything was tinged with that sense of being hunted.  And in a way, I know it's true.  It wasn't me being psychotic or strange.  It was a game of sorts, a very, very twisted one, that ultimately I won.  I still wonder if the winnings wouldn't have been bigger if I'd done what I'd thought about, what I'd threatened.  But I'm glad I didn't.  I just can't help but wonder sometimes.

I take dates very seriously.  Okay, that's not true.  I don't take dates seriously at all.  But I often remember them.  When a year passes, I sit back and think on what happened then, a year ago.  I mark time.  I can tell you exactly how long it's been since I lost my virginity, since I fell in love with you, since I kissed anyone else.  But I also remember other things.  Like the bus ride I spent crying and the most terrifying phone call I ever made.  Or, like now, what happened a year ago.

Strange things are significant to me.  For the longest time, I remembered the date I first wrote "I love you," although I can't tell you the date I first said it.  I remember when the thought of something first crossed my mind, but not when it first happened.  I remember what was said on nights when my first roommate was on the phone at three in the morning, but not what I said on the phone at that same ungodly hour, two years after that.  My memory is strange.  It never stores what I expect.

But I guess the unexpected is a part of life.  Nothing ever really goes as planned.  And that brings me back full circle to the present.  I don't know what's going to happen.  I'm glad of that.  I'm perfectly happy to wait and see as it comes.  But the point is, I'm glad you're here now.  So thank you for that.