Too Many Maybe's

2013

Somehow, a year came to pass. A year of us not knowing what to do or be. Going back and forth from friends to lovers to friends and then lovers again. Good and bad for each other. Wanting more but also just needing to survive. All of it was so exhausting. How didn't you crumble from the weight of it all? I know I did at times.

And I don't know for sure, why we kept up that dance. I got so dizzy from spinning in one place that it's a wonder I wasn't more confused. Maybe it helped having you as my focal point. When you were there at least. I wanted you to be all the damn time. But I also knew well that you couldn't. Because of her. And because of me. Still, anything I had the power to change I would have. Just for more time. More of you.

I can't tell you all about all the littlest things said, that meant so much to me at the time. For a year I'd hung on every small sign of affection and every lack of it too. Always weighing the lack of heavier than the signs. But I didn't have anything else.

Only I should have paid more attention to what you did rather than what you said. Words are after all just a reflection of our heads, not our hearts. And our minds are so easily misguided. By expectations or ideas or logic. And love isn't logical. It resides in our hearts and will when it matters show itself in our actions. It showed in yours. Sometimes.

But the thing is, I knew exactly what a broken mess I was. I knew the damage it did. My brokenness. My cracks, cutting everyone getting too close. And I honestly didn't think there'd ever be a way to fix it. Some things are too broken to bother.

Some people are too.

Still, we live in a human world. And we don't leave our broken out to die anymore. We care. No matter what it does to us or how much work it takes to love the unlovable. The broken. I don't really know how or why that's become part of our nature. It's lucky I suppose. That some people don't register the cracks and want to love the mess anyways.

The problem is those people that love you despite nature trying to tell them to leave you out to die. They become casualties when you finally fall apart completely. And someone opening up at the seams is destined to fall apart at some point. So, I was trying my best not to collect too many casualties. Not to have too many people in my life, that I'd be leaving behind.

But you were a match during my darkest days, and now that I have found the sun again it seems so insignificant and stupid to try and light a fire. But when you're lost in the cold dark of night a fire can save your life. Another big metaphor I know. I'm very good at those and not so good at saying what I actually feel when I feel it. I'm trying to do better now.

And the truth is I was very depressed.

Suicidally depressed.

And I was in love.

Not that I knew what love really was. It's hard to know when you're drowning. Everything becomes so distorted under water. Slowed down, blurred, and darkened. Especially love. The scientist in me always believed it all some sort of physical chemistry. Reactions in the brain. Or an evolutionary instinct programmed in our genes to make sure we pass on a new generation. The poet in me believed it a romantic notion of empty promises. Outdated and overrated. Worth it all in the end.

But whatever love is, at that time, it was you. I felt it in my deepest foundation. Like that one song that always gets to you. You know you shouldn't listen to it. But for some reason, your mind won't let you forget. You see the chorus on bus-stop commercials. And the morning traffic shapes the melody. The smallest things remind you of it. That single word so in tune with the rhythm, it's like a key to your childhood music box keeping safe the sound of home. And once it gets in your head, it runs on replay till your heart becomes its drum. I knew your rhythm so well my feet danced to it in my sleep.