Some Missed Connections

1. We played phone tag for weeks; I almost always woke up to a missed call. This continued until both of us just stopped calling the other person. It would take us hours and then days before one of us would respond to the other person’s previous message. Then it all just stopped.

2. I met the two of them right before moving across the country. We had been on the outskirts of friend groups for four years and then we properly met right before I moved 3,000 miles away. What wasted potential.

3. There were a couple of times where I thought we’d miss each other entirely. There was that first time over the summer. The next time in the following October. I thought we’d got it in January, and definitely in February, but then realized we were nowhere near each other throughout the rest of the Spring. The next summer I was convinced we’d made it, that we finally hit the same point in our lives for it to work. I thought it was dreamy and interesting that it hadn’t been easy and wasn’t going to be easy — those are the better stories — but then it exploded in my face as I realized that, once again, I was way off the mark. We missed each other so abruptly, it felt like that head-sucking, ear-popping feeling you experience when two trains speed pass each other at a terrifying speed. You know the one, when you’re on one of the trains? And it startles you so much, you look up and out the window? Because it feels like the other train actually hit you? I really felt that. I really felt all those stupid fucking things everyone always says they feel. Now we’re too far away.

4. I always wait too long.

5. I rarely take the Q, but to the guy wearing the flannel at 8:42pm EST on September 16th, 2017 — I’m in love with you. I can’t remember why.

6. I’d considered the friendship pretty significant (arguably even life-changing), but then we’d had a falling out and waited too long to fix everything. Looking back, I think it was actually rather unremarkable in the grand scheme of things, which is a bummer. I think we passed the point where it was all salvageable.

7. I fall in love with strangers during one of two times: when I’m really happy and when I’m really miserable. So, almost always.

8. We would normally fuck around, although we both were somewhat painfully aware that there was one similarity that really clung us together, and that was the fact that we both hated where we were in our lives and felt miserable and guilty for hating it. So we didn’t tell anyone. But it would quietly ooze into late-night phone calls and between texts — we both understood exactly what the other person was going through, but both of us were too stubborn and too cool to actually address it.

It was rush hour and also raining that day, so everyone in Union Square was behaving as if they’d never seen other people before and didn’t know how to maneuver around crowds with umbrellas, so I missed the next 6 train uptown. Right before boarding the L train, I had sent a somewhat risky message that was very vulnerable and panicked and I hadn’t overanalyzed and processed everything before sending it — so now I was stranded on this subway platform after fucking up and missing my next subway to 33rd, fully aware my phone had service. He called. I would’ve missed it if I had caught the 6. This was a good missed connection.