I Want To Want Anyone Else But You

Every day at 11:11, I wish that for just one night I’d lie awake because of anyone else but you. You make it so hard not to care. You are like one of those bullets that explodes into too many little pieces once it hits its target. I’m still finding fragments of you in my heart; there always seems to be more, no matter how many hours I spend trying to pick them all out. It makes it impossible not to think about what we had, what I have lost, what we could have been. I am pushing a thousand thoughts of you away all day and crying a thousand tears about you all night.

I’d pay a million bucks to think about anyone else but you. I’d write a check right now just to have my breath stolen by someone else who crossed my mind, someone who doesn’t have your earthy brown eyes or your slightly lopsided smile. Sitting by the window in my favorite coffee shop, I watch people all day. I try to catch men’s eyes, try to have that lingering moment with a passerby so that their eyes are all I see when I close mine just for a little while, just for a day, maybe just for a minute.

I’m a writer, but all I can write about these days is you. What kind of writer does that make me? Whether it’s about your absence or your presence, all my stories are about you. I create a female protagonist, describe her fiery hair and amber eyes, and all I can think about is would you want her? I describe a city I’ve never been to, the winding streets and cobblestone paths, and all I think about is how we’d spend a day in it together. Even when it isn’t about you, it somehow still is. It always is. Even now, I am proving my own point. I miss the writer I used to be, the writer who could tell stories about anything and anyone else but you.

I bet my friends are sick of hearing what I have to say because they know who it’s about—who it’s always about. They’ve heard it a thousand times, but I’ll make it a thousand and one. I can’t help myself. If I talk about us, I can just about convince myself that it wasn’t just a dream. It was real. It wasn’t just a nightmare. It really happened. My friends roll their eyes and beg me to talk about anyone else but you.

I’d give anything to drink about anyone else but you. I need to crave a drink because I am trying to erase the thoughts of some other man. Would I forget my own name before I forget his, just like I do with you? I want the burning in my throat to burn away memories I made with anyone else but you. That’s not the same as wanting to forget you, though, is it?

I want anyone else but you. I want to want anyone else but you. It terrifies me to think that it will never be anyone else but you. Though what scares me more, what tears me apart, is wondering if all you want is anyone else but me.