I come online to discover that someone I was talking to earlier who claimed they needed to go to bed has come back online, and instantly I am taken back to another time, another person. It was the beginning, sort of: we already knew each other's merits but were ignorant of each other's faults. I was just getting really serious about Zack and he was just getting out of a serious relationship with someone else, and the conversation that night had gone to the topic of "what if?"

What if we keep finding out things to like about each other? What if we've got too much in common? What if we spend so much time together that we fall for each other?

We mulled over it for a little while-- openly and honestly, without the stigma that would, later in our relationship, accompany this kind of topic with frustrated disdain. We talked openly about our anxiety that we might be too compatible, who we might hurt. Our intellects told us that it was a bad idea, that, for the sake of all that meant anything to us at that time, we should stay away in that regard. He being the more intellectual of the two of us settled on that, telling me we were smart, we could avoid something so obvious, so glaring.

Said he had to go, and I posed one more what if:

"What if...when we talk about how we might fall for each other, what we mean is that we might have already?"


The question went unanswered, and he logged off, to go to bed. But the question was fresh in my mind, and I stayed up an hour more, thinking about it, unable to sleep. Hoping something would happen.

And then he came back online.

He'd always been the more intellctual of the two of us, but I had infiltrated him, and his guard was down. I asked him what he was doing back. That moment, he was more like me than he'd ever been (a fatal flaw, but who's?) when he said "I've been thinking about it, and you're right. I know the next time I'm stuck in math class, I'll be thinking about sitting at the coast with you. I may be in love with you."

I don't remember what I said, or even exactly how he said what he did, and I know that any misquote is probably a terrible betrayal of the truth. But I remember it my way, and he remembers it his. Which, I think, is to not remember it at all.


I don't want back that kind of love from him, but I'd give everything I have if he'd be willing to acknowledge that we had it, for a little while. For as long as it lasted, I was divided between the two of them-- it wasn't a matter of loving Zack more than ultimately led me to where I am now. But Zack knew what I needed, how I needed it...or at least, I believed he did. Anyway, Zack was offering more of himself.

He offered, well...now I realize that what he had to offer was more of me.


It was that night that I wrote this entry, where I posed the question of what should I fight for? "My life, or my love?"


In eight days, that will be three years ago. I am sitting here, surrounded by trailer, listening to the laundry was my McDonald's uniform, about to journey boldly to nowhere special with a degree from Last Chance U. I barely write in this, and when I do, it's sappy shit mourning the life I could have had.


It's not that he begrudged me my decision, or didn't try to respect it. It's just that the part of me that he loved was the part I gave up.


I'm sorry what was left of me left such a bitter taste in your mouth. I'm sorry I have to live with that taste in mine.

On with it.