I’m Not Supposed To Still Care About You, But I Do

It’s been a few weeks, and you haven’t come around. I haven’t gotten a late night text and I’ve been unable to sleep. You see, I keep waking up to nothing; thinking that one night, you’ll have a change of heart- but I know. I know that it’s settled.

So, this is it right? This is how it all goes. This is the destination I have so desperately wanted to reach and you’re no longer here. You were never going to be; I was always flying solo.

Ironically, I have trouble making words of this- this nothing that has perplexed every bone in my body to become still. It’s like diving into the Atlantic in the dead of winter- I knew it wasn’t right, but I did it anyway.

I lied to myself, and now I’m left with the hurtful truth.

But, this is… hard.

This is… not fair.

This is…. not how I pictured it.

This is…not what I wanted, because I really wanted this to work out.

But wants and needs are on two opposite spectrums and my want destroyed my need. It’s never going to be enough, and I don’t know who I’m trying to impress or have validation granted too- I guess I had these expectations that were not realistic.

I wanted to love you, and I wanted you to love me in the ways that you told me love is. Because truthfully, I don’t know what love is. You’ve been in love, but not with me.

I don’t know what it’s like to wake up in someone’s arms every morning, and feel a warm body pressed up against me.

I don’t know what it’s like to have fights and make up an hour after.

I don’t know what it’s like to have anniversaries and “first dates” or favorite restaurants that you spend hours talking in, realizing their closed and the waiter is standing by the door staring you down.

I don’t know how to do this, any of it. And I don’t know if what I ever felt was love, or just lack of. I don’t know if my fascination and unrealistic expectations led me so far down the rabbit hole I never got out of it.

I thought I was going to learn but you weren’t up for teaching.

I don’t know anything about you, only a boy I thought I did. But that boy isn’t you. We’re not seventeen anymore. You aren’t the boy I wish you were and I’m not anything that I used to be. It wasn’t something. I was just that- nothing. We were merely just moments to one another- if that.

When I hear your name, I shut my eyes and even then I still see you.

When I see your name my body flinches, and I get chills, piercing ones that leave me paralyzed until I can finally come to my senses- until I can finally feel that you’ve given me nothing to.

You were the most unlovable human besides myself. And I know that now, this is how it all goes. You’ll be the kid I tell my daughter about, the kid that will make you feel butterflies inside your stomach- but one day you’ll have to let them fly. You have to let go of the people who were destined to go. She’ll not know what it’s like, until she meets your son.

You are not a bad man; you were just incapable of being a good man to me.

You are a good person, I’ll give you that always, and you will be a good man to a good woman. But she won’t be me. I don’t know why it took so long, for me to get it. And you tried hard, to show me it would never be us. I’ll never actually get it, though. Like you said, some things just don’t have clear cut answers. I’ll have to live with this, till I either accept it or it destroys me.

I tried to force two people who would never be magnetic.

So it’s been weeks, and I miss you right now because I feel like I’m still hanging on to your magnetic strip, and you’re trying to flick me away. There’ll be a new magnet in town, down the road and I’ll be here, still away at school.

I’m sure in several months or so, you’ll be bored and wanting to feel that urgency I have always given you. Because that’s who I was, the one to jump in my car the second you asked me to come by, no matter the hour, time was never on our side.

Maybe you’ll have a way with words as usual and give me some speech, and I hope I don’t respond because I’ll just be continuing this vicious cycle that I hate myself for getting back on. It’s not fair and it’s not love- I don’t know what it is, but I know what it’s not.

I’m not supposed to feel this way about someone I wasn’t in love with, someone who didn’t love me the way I wanted to be. I’m not supposed to still care and cry and feel this way.

Can you tell me why I do? Could you do that, no you can’t. I’ll always want your validation, I’ll always feel this thing for you, and it’s the one thing I have that you don’t. You can’t take this away from me no matter how much it destroys me.