I didn’t expect you to know, didn’t expect you to change. Yet, I would have liked to elicit some sort of response from you, other than a long, hard stare, followed by a cold and sharp, “really, and how the hell do YOU know?”  Oh, how horrible it is to be trapped between two people! – trapped between to loves, between two loyalties, between two thoughts. I never wanted to be caught here, what kind of crazy person ever would?

 I only ever wanted to help you, you know. I only ever wanted to make peace between the both of you.

I only wanted to see the lights, close my eyes and hear the loud, popping sounds. I put up with your loudness, your insults, because I wanted so badly to feel small and meaningless again.

 It is always the moments that I think about, it is always the feelings that I remember strongest, but it is the little things, things like this, the notes scrawled messily on torn pieces of paper and folded up, neatly and tightly, and the quick, awkward drawings on random papers and items, that hurt the worst. Perhaps it is because how quickly and sudden they appear, how out of nowhere they seem to come to life, shake me up, at the most inopportune times.

 I would have, you know? I would have.  

 I’ve admitted I was wrong. I admitted the terrible person that I was. I have paid for what I did to you, for taking that lovely heart of yours for granted. I have paid for letting you believe that I loved you the most.

I learned long ago that he was right all along:  I am difficult to like, and even harder to love.

It was always so easy, for you to come here, sit, shake, scream. Tears and snot running down your face while you begged me to stay, to please not give you away

It has never been that simple; you have never been that simple. You never understood her or me fully, always caught between your love for her and love for yourself. One way or the other, you'd make her yours, but always on your terms.

What makes you the angriest was that she didn't say goodbye. You don't care that she did it, but that she didn't say goodbye.

“Listen up, kid, listen up.”

I never did. Always staring off into the distance, hands shaking, hoping to be somewhere else, imagining it was someone else's cigarette smoke flying into my mouth and eyes. I never meant any disrespect, you know, just wanted so badly to get the fuck out of there.

I hope you didn't take it personally, it was never about you, always about him, and knowing that the longer I stayed there the higher my chances of encountering him, and the higher my chances of a long, painful night.

I just wanted some peace of mind.

But that sort of thing hardly ever happens quietly. Soon, she was there, asking if my mood was related to her letter, though she already knew the answer.

“Lovers are temporary,” she said, and I know she is right, that this is worth more than that. And the moment she said “I will never leave you”, I knew everything was going to be all right.

I admitted something to her that I hadn’t admitted to anyone in a long, long time.  It’d been an even longer time since I’d actually spoken about it. Sure, I wrote it a few times, mailed that deep dark past of mine to complete strangers. She always used to say that things as vile as that need to be shared, or else they will rot you inside. I’m not sure I believe the consequences would be that extreme, but it is definitely a huge relief to know that I have shared this with someone I love, and that she understands.

“Forget S, you already know everything there is to know about her.

She’s right, I know it. It is just so impossibly difficult to let go. It goes back, partly, to this fucked up, endless, miserable guilt. The guilt that holds me back, keeps me here, tied, pathetic. The guilt that makes it all too easy to cling to this dreary life, and so difficult to pursue happiness.

 Surely, all these years must count for something. Surely I couldn’t just walk away, ignore you, never let you make me feel like shit again.

 What is it that I owe you?

Some lovely evening this is, she said.

It always mattered to her the way it never mattered to us, darling. Always with her head lifted high, a glass or bottle in one hand, cell phone in the other, waiting anxiousl, just wanting to be liked, loved, perhaps even acknowledged. She said you showed her something inside her she never knew existed –something beautiful, raw, incomplete and full of life she’d never seen.

I say that thing only existed in her when you were with her. I say she was only beautiful when you made her so, never on her own.

It was never about love with you. It was always so completely about power –pulling her toward you, holding her throat against the wall, demanding answers, demanding loyalty. Her body was yours, you always said, to touch and kiss and give to the world, if you so desired. She never did know how to get away, never understood what she had done that the others hadn't.

And you, sitting in that blue chair, laughed while she fell so completely apart, the needles still in her arms, a bottle resting against your lips, a wad of cash in your pants.

Such a filthy place for such a pretty feeling. Such a bright place for such a dark thing to happen. Her hands on my waist, her lips on my neck, my nails on her back, both of us breathing hard, barely interested in air, not caring that any minute he could be just a few steps away.

I loved her in that moment for the things she did to me, for the courage she had to follow me, slip in that stall with me, kiss me hard. I loved her in that moment, for knowing what I wanted all along.

Sexuality is complicated. None of the people I've loved have ever made it any easier. I can't for the life of me figure out what this turmoil is inside me, or how to find an answer to it. 

Will i ever overcome this? Who knows. Really, who knows. I dream of it, yes, i dream of finally being free of this,. i dream of doing wild things, of having courage to take a risk, and of one day being completely happy, completely at peace. But i don't thin it's unreasonable to consider the possibility that that may actually never happen.

Even after we lost most of what we had in common, we remained friends out of convenience, and even though we spent pretty much every lunch together, we never talked the way real friends talked. We never liked each other the way real friends liked each other. You found it funny when I felt awkward, or nervous, and found humor in my misery. I grew frustrated with you, and thought you were an irresponsible idiot. We never talked to each other about our passions, broken hearts, long nights. This was OK with me. This has always been OK with me

I was only a kid when i loved her, but i really did. She was my neighbor, we did almost everything together. We played house, played little people, went bike riding and rollerskating, everything. She often stayed over at my place and we'd stay up all night talking and playing and watching movies. It really was a happy time in my life. It felt wrong to love her because i knew that she was the straightest girl i'd ever met. i shouldn't have loved her because it was unfair to her, and because in the end it destroyed our friendship.

My time here is limited. They’ll find me soon, better run along.

Thank you for the life you gave me.

i resent a lot. i resent the unfairness in the way you raised my brother versus the way you raised me. i resent the fact that you’ve said many hurtful things to me in the past, and i resent that you gave me very little room to have fun, or to express my creativity and openly get to know myself, develop a personality, beliefs, and so on. so much of it had to be done in secret. i also resent the fact that a large part of your parenting style involved fear.

I love you, but you fucked me up.

“Your skin is so soft”.

Nothing else matters in this moment. Frustration, guilt, anger, anxiety, loneliness – none of it matters. Who I am, what I do outside of here, outside of you, is irrelevant, just like where you've been and where you'll be when we leave each other. When our lips separate, our bodies detach, when our laughter is no longer in sync.

I'll miss you when you're gone, but I probably won't think of you that often. After all, how can I be expected to keep track of every one of these moments, these faces, these bodies?

It's a lot of work – loving someone like that. Giving up every part of what you were is a necessity, to which he easily complied. Nobody ever loved more than he does. It is a mystery why. It shouldn’t bother me as much as it does, but there is something terribly unsettling about such a nice, pleasant human being loving such a wretched one. Yes, wretched. Her own words, years before, when she sought to elicit sympathy from me, guilt. She succeeded then, and to this day I wish I'd told her to just fuck off and walked away.

I need courage, and the ability to not give a shit about hurting someone. I am tired of you making me feel like shit. I am tired of your whiny voice and little devastating, depressive episodes and of making a huge deal out of everything. I am fucking exhausted of your unreasonableness. I am tired of everything revolving around you, goddammit. I am a person too. I matter, too, even if you don't seem to give a damn.

I am going to try to gather up the courage to do what I need to do to get away from you.

One.
One more year of this hallway, this desk, those creaky doors. One more year of the security guard getting up and smacking the doors back into place after some idiot fails to notice the button on the wall and instead attempts to manually open the door. One more year of that stubborn door lock and that old mailbox . One more year of community kitchens, reading periods, late nights at the Reg, 171, Cob coffee shop. One more year before I need to decide what in the hell I'm going to do with my life.

Less than that, really.

I was not expecting an apology, or an understanding, or even a fucking change of mind. I just wanted acknowledgment, just a short reply would have been enough. Instead, you're going on and on and my head is starting to pulse, ears are starting to warm and the frustration is beginning to build in my chest.

You have always been so good at letting me forget that I matter. You have always been so good at making me feel that unsettling, burning frustration that makes me want to both cry and punch your face at the same time.

Someday, maybe.

A sturdy balcony, a state I'd never thought I'd be in, their voices in the window arguing. I swear I heard my name.. I hear his hushed, deep, whispers, her whiny replies. She has always sworn this world revolves around her, has demanded him to change his to do so as well. There won't be many days here, you know, there isn't much more time left. For some reason or another, she is upset, and he is in there with her, trying his best, while I enjoy one cigarette after the other, the low music and the cool, inebriating air.

Your love is somewhat twisted. I know my loyalty is not supposed to be to him but I would be the first to admit that he deserves better. He deserves a relationship, not a dictatorship. He deserves someone to laugh with him and appreciate his good humor and jokes instead of causing an overly dramatic argument over them. He deserves someone who will do anything in their power so that the financial responsibilities don't all fall on him. You've got him tied around your finger because somehow he's come to believe that he could never do any better.

He can.