Everything About You

Everything about you used to make me smile. When I was with you, my heart would sing, my soul would dance. Your light was so bright my entire world was on fire.

Then, you set our world on fire. On a single night. Well, really it started in the morning. 6:00 AM. There were the texts, the pictures I saw on your phone. You wouldn’t and couldn’t be stopped. You did the one thing that hurt more than anything. I couldn’t understand it, and I still don’t. You knew exactly what to do to make me never, ever want to see you again.

I never thought I would say those words. In fact, I once sent you a letter where I told you I loved you and that I always would - that my love for you would never, ever change. Well, I love you. You make (made) me feel alive. But I also hate you. And, well, I hate it all. The weird smell in your house, the gross kitchen stacked with dishes, the odd disappearances, the visits to the house of a “friend.” All of it.

Still, when I think of you I think there may be an alternate world, a new life. One where I can win you back. Can I win you back? Why would I want to?

Don’t be cruel, Berninger says. But, well, you don’t know how to do anything that is not extreme. You loved me in an extreme way. At least for a few moments, you loved me. I’m pretty sure you did, maybe on that one day. So, it’s no surprise that you’d leave this way, in a way that hurts more than anything ever in my life has hurt. I should have known after you went away for 10 days in October. Or, when you went away again in May. But, you always came back and always more intensely. Now, though, that day - on that day, you were just intensely cruel.

“The men who love you, you hate the most. They pass right through you like a ghost . . . “

That’s so, so true.

Except, well, the times when we’d join together - when the heat from our minds and bodies would ignite your house, the hotel room, the entire street, a city. Those times when I couldn’t help but want to walk down a street of broken glass to just taste the sugar of your lips.

It’s crazy, insane even. That I loved you like that and you seemed to not know or care. The way you’d look at me when I said it - and even when you said it to me. Looking back, it was hollow. It’s strange, really. The one thing I wanted more than anything - the person I could be myself with - the only person I shared it all with.

I wanted you and us and by opening my soul to you, I lost it all. Lost everything, the only thing that mattered.

I would have loved you, would have rescued you.

I know it is impossible to take it all away. I know your mind works like mine. I know your thoughts race and your head spins. Even the third glass of wine or the fourth cocktail only calms, it never goes away.

You know I’d take it all away for you, take it all the pain from you. You know I’d hold you until it went away, all of it went away. You know my love is deep, strong, intense - and you don’t want that. Not today, not yet, probably not ever.

But know this, if I could, I would . . . let it go for you.