This Is What I Want For You

I want you to know what I want for you.

I want you to wake up late and realize you’re going to be late to work for the fourth time this month, and this will exceed the amount of warnings you’re allowed to have before you’re on probation. But I don’t want you to lose your job.

I want you to buy a coffee every lunch break, and no matter how many times they make the same order for you, it never tastes quite right, and somehow the straw has a slit in the side, so every time you go to sip the shitty coffee it spills from the edges before it even makes it to your mouth. But I want you to still find another straw to use before you toss it.

I want you to leave the sunroof of your car open and wake up the next day to fresh rain that poured for hours marinating in your seats so that when you go to sit down, your pants get wet and you have to run inside to change your entire outfit, then rush to get where you have to go. But I want you to get where you’re rushing to safely.

I want you to forget to charge your phone overnight and you’re working a double so you grab a new one at the gas station, but you plug it in and it only works for the first 10 minutes. Then I want you to have to run out on the clock to go grab another one, and that one sparks when it hits the outlet and never works again, and so you start to panic until a coworker lets you borrow theirs. But I want you to still get to charge your phone before it dies, and I want you to have someone who will offer to help.

I want you to finally find the shoes you’ve been eyeing for months right there on the clearance rack, but when you grab the box to try them on, you find that it’s only got tissue paper and a shoe insert inside ‘cause someone already bought them and just left the box behind. Then I want you to ask an associate if there are any pairs in the back room and they tell you there aren’t and you ask what other location might have them, and when they check they say that they’re all sold out and that they’ve also discontinued the style. But I want you to still find another pair that fits just right.

I want you to be a quarter short for the meter you’re parked at but have no time to find a new spot, so instead you have to worry the whole time while you’re out that you may get towed. But I want you to get back to your car that’s somehow untouched and untowed and safe in the same spot with a mere warning from the meter maid letting you know you’re lucky they let it slide.

I want you to forget to renew your license and go to a bar for drinks and they refuse to serve you without a valid ID and no matter how smooth-talking and sweet you think you are, they simply don’t buy your bullshit. But I want you to remember to renew it the next day.

I want you to pack a sandwich for lunch with a bag of chips on the side that you throw into your tote and by the time you go to eat them, they’re all crushed. But I want you to still manage to salvage the meal anyway.

I want you to wake up in the middle of the night and toss and turn from the bad dreams you keep having that remind you of what you did to me because your subconscious is more honest than your waking soul will ever be. But I still want you to eventually fall back asleep.

I want you to feel the reality of the pain you put me through when it crawls up your spine on a random Tuesday at 1 p.m. just when you were thinking you were having a good day. But I want you to still make it through the rest of it okay.

I want you to feel the tiniest fraction of devastation and pain and inconvenience and hopelessness that you put me through. But I want you to still find that you have more to live for, despite the small things that might have felt ruined for you.

I want you to think of me every single time you read a quote about regret and betrayal on social media, and I hope you feel like it’s all you ever see posted these days. But I hope you read other quotes of true friendship and remember that’s what we once shared.

I want you to always wish you just fucking said sorry. But I still want you to have the guts to say it to the next person you hurt and then again to the person after that.

I want you to finally show up to a confessional hoping to be told you are still the angel you pretend to be just to have the priest remind you that you have to admit you are in need of forgiveness in order to receive it. But I want you to still feel like you might have a chance.

I want you to live a long, long life—one that I may not be able to. But I want you to feel an everyday betrayal of the small things in life to remind you of how big the things you betrayed in mine felt like.

I want you to accept that the word ‘betrayal’ is something deeply embedded in the decisions you made in your life. But I want you to take pride in the fact that “to betray, you must first belong,” and that having ever belonged beside me was a privilege.

I want you to want to wish you treated me differently. But I want you to remember that I always wished you did too.