We Were Always Different

We were always different.

You always looked to the left and I always looked to the right and for some reason we never looked in the same direction. The things we were driven by actually drove us apart from each other and we never really tried to meet halfway.

You liked your eggs sunny side up and I liked them scrambled. You liked your coffee black and I liked it with milk. You liked red wine and I liked white wine. We never enjoyed a meal together and even when we tried, it always left a bitter taste.

You were drawn to the beat of the song and I was drawn to the lyrics. You were drawn to the popularity of it and I was drawn to the way it made me feel. Our car rides were full of awkward silences or meaningless noise. I was humming a totally different song than the one you were listening to.

We were always different.

You liked winter and staying indoors. I liked summer and chasing the sun. I wanted to go to the beach and swim deeper into the ocean, you wanted to stay by the shore — away from all the waves. I was looking for sizzling love and you were looking for comfortable companionship.

You always wanted to go the restaurants you know and love and I wanted to try every single café in the city. I wanted to be around the artists, the hipsters, the lost and confused and you wanted to be around the prominent figures, the business men, the socialites and those who seem to lead perfect lives.

We neglected the parts of us that made us feel alive until they eventually died.

I wanted to have conversations after mid-night; when the truth comes out as the words get softer, when the mask slowly comes off and the real stories unfold – the stories of pain, the stories of fear, the stories of heartbreak and the stories that made you who you are today. You wanted to sleep early and have conversations in the day light, when the words are filtered and the minds are racing and people are either trying to impress others or bring them down. We slowly ran out of things to talk about.

We were always different.

I guess we always knew we were but we still tried to change each other. We tried to mold each other to be the person we needed, we never really accepted our differences; perhaps, we never really liked our differences. I think we liked the idea that we were different and that magically our differences will collide into one another making us whole again – like we would complete each other’s missing pieces.

We thought we could make something out of nothing. We thought we could exist together rather than live together. We thought that our comfort will turn into love and our routine will turn into compatibility, but we neglected the most important thing; our hearts. We neglected how our touch didn’t move us, how our faces never lit up when we saw each other and how our minds never seemed to connect. We neglected how we would easily run out of things to say and how we had no idea if the other person was in pain. We neglected the parts of us that made us feel alive until they eventually died.

We were always different.

Even in the way we said goodbye. You left screaming and yelling and slamming the door and I left without saying anything I wanted to say.