Love is difficult

Loving someone can be difficult, it can challenge you, it can change you, but the hardest thing in the world is to stop loving someone. To stop seeing their little flaws and flukes and finding them sweet, to stop wanting them to be happy, to stop feeling warm when they smile, to stop wanting to know how their day has been, to stop talking to them every day, and feeling like sharing your every silly thought with them. It is hard to forget the sound they make when they sip their tea, the way their eyes look when they laugh, the way they kiss, the feeling of being safe in their arms. It is hard to ignore the ghostly remembrance of their fingertips on your cheek or their hand in yours. You can remember how they walk, how their joints click, the sound their hair makes when they scratch their head. It is hard not to remember tiny things like and eyelash on a cheek or a missed button, an unruly curl or a tattered shirt sleeve or a hole in the toe of their sock. It is hard not to remember a thousand afternoons of silly baby talk or bad TV, evenings walking the dog, times you cried, times you laughed, times you caught your breath, times when they rescued you from a spider, times when you got caught in the rain or went ice-skating or bowling or danced. It’s hard not to want to fix everything for them, it’s hard not to want to guide them, it’s hard not to tell them your opinion.

 It is hard not to think of all these things in the split second your eyes meet, before you look away from one another, ashamed because things will never be the same, and not allowed to be sad about it. 

I forget

I gave you all my favourite parts of me and when you took them and appreciated me I felt ok. You slowly discovered all my least favourite parts of me, and told me you loved them, and I started to feel like maybe I wasn’t so awful, like maybe, to someone, to you, I did not have a hideous side, only a side I was afraid of. And I felt whole, and better.

The problem was when you left; you took with you the ability to see the good in all these parts of me. Without you I forgot I didn’t need to fear food, or that it was ok to be sad, and that crying didn’t make me weak, that even in my pyjamas, or when I hadn’t shaved my legs, I could still be lovely. When you stopped speaking to me, I went back to thinking I was sad, and annoying, and boring. When we stopped hanging out I forgot how to be the life of the party, how to laugh unselfconsciously, that I could still be fun.

When you found someone new I remembered the fat on my stomach, and my mismatched eyes, and my frizzy hair. I remembered how sometimes I can’t bear to be around people because I’m anxious, I remembered how I was afraid to show my body, I remembered how I was no fun because I won’t drink, or smoke, and I felt again like the girl that no one has ever wanted to be.

When you changed, I felt like the same idiot who’d fallen for the sweet words of a dozen boys, only this time it was worse, because I’d known it was real, and now it felt like everything I knew was wrong. You took away all the good of you, and you took the best of me,

And I couldn’t even be sad and miss you, because you weren’t mine anymore to care about, to miss, to love. And that hurt more than all the sadness for my own self.

 Because the only thing I couldn’t forget was you.