If she could go back
she would, rewind all the mistakes and all of the lies, and go back to that
place. That place where friendship was
all that mattered and love was just a mystery, a promise whispered in the dark
that no one would ever mean. She’d go
back there, and she’d do everything differently. It was her worst moment, her lowest. In retrospect, she has no idea why she did
what she did, maybe because she was tempting the fates, ready to lose it all because
she didn’t think life meant anything without him. For a split second she allowed herself to be
selfish, to take what another so willingly offered. He loved her, had always loved her, was happy
that the stupid bastard had left her behind.
What had he been thinking? How could he not know what he was missing?
Who wouldn’t see the beauty that he’d seen every day for years, but had chosen
not to act on. She was weak, and he
preyed, as she prayed that another would forgive her. Different types of pr(a/e)ying, and she had
chosen the wrong connotation.
To think I’m still a writer is as delusional as it is to
think that I could ever go back there, that I could ever rewind time and change
the one mistake I am the least proud of.
I’ve always been a smart person, cautious to the point of detriment, but
that day I was not. It only took one
day, a couple hours actually, to change the entire course of my life. To change the people in it, and the hope that
I had for something beautiful. When I
was growing up I was obsessed with a forbidden love, hoping that if I loved
someone I could not have that I would never be hurt. I loved my best friend, and eventually my
roommate, my best friend’s boyfriend, and my boyfriend’s best friend (all
different roles he played at different times of my life, some
simultaneously). I brought him in to my
life and I kept him there, so that I could find comfort in the familiar, and
that fact that I would never have to be alone, because even if everyone else
left I’d always have him. It’s kinda
funny in retrospect that it is because of him that I lost everything else that
I had. At the time I’m not sure I knew I
was doing it, even now I wonder if I was that person. I don’t think that was everything. I felt like if I gave up on him, that he’d
give up on him too, that if I wasn’t there he wouldn’t have any reason to
be. Four years later I see that it isn’t
true. He could survive without me, and
me without him. But without her, I’m not
me. Losing a best friend is like losing
a part of yourself, the part you liked best.
I told myself I loved him so long that I never knew I was loving someone
that never existed. He was my boy next
door, my what if, and could have been, but never should have happened in the
end. My happy ending twisted into my
condemnation. I loved them all and I
lost them all at once, because I wasn’t afraid to lose anything, but afraid to
lose any of it at the same time.
But then we make it to the point where I question if I’d be
where I am today without all of these decisions. Would I be here, with a man that treats me
right and a family that I love, and friends that are there when it
matters? Everything has consequences,
and I guess this is where mine have taken me.
It’s hard not to look back, to want to rewind and go back to those days
that were easy and those lives that were carefree. We loved each other because we could then, we
all loved each other because it was easy and we survived because we realized it
would not always be that way. I’m not
sure I won, or that there is anything that actually even constitutes as
winning, but I survived. I survived the
loss, and the embarrassment and the mistakes that I made back then. I’m not proud of them, and I still regret
much of it, but I cannot change it. I
can only learn from it.
And I’ve learned that you can never know someone, not
completely. That you can spend each day
with someone and if they choose to, they can still hide who they are from
you. It takes a certain type of human
being to do this, a very manipulative and cold-hearted one, but they
exist. Leeches is probably the best
possible description. They take and take
and take what they need and then they rip you off and run away. Maybe we all made mistakes back then. I like to think that he thinks back sometimes
and regrets what he did too, not that he left, but what he did. I can’t help but wonder if he does, how he
feels, what n if he ever thinks… how it could have been.
But could have been’s simply lead to more regrets that my
life is not made for tv, and can’t be rewound or rewritten. Ugh. You can’t
trade in the middle if you still want to get to the end though. And I’m happy, I’m ready to let it all go,
but I wonder if I can ever get some of what I let go of back, if there ever
will be a day that she’ll see me for more than the villain in her love story,
her best friend turned enemy, turned stranger.
It’s sad to say that, stranger, but it’s the truth.
So I guess we get to a place where we have to let go, of
everything and just keep going forward.
Maybe it was all meant to happen like this because together we could
not, or would not have ever found happiness.
We were too close, too wound around each other that none of us could see
clearly until the rest of us were gone.
Maybe when we get to the point where we choose, what we want and who we
want it with, things will be different and our lives will magically fall back
together. I mean we fell together didn’t
we? It all just kind of happened and we
were together everyday, sharing everything and doing everything together. If I believe in fate, it is only because of
this.
And she hits rewind,
but realizes that she can’t go back far enough to make a difference, or that
maybe she shouldn’t. She sees what she
could lose if she went back, with no guarantees if she would change it for the
better, or if it would have just ended up worse anyway. And she’s caught within a moment in the past
that she did not expect. A moment she
barely remembered. She sat in the sand
with her toes in the lake, jeans rolled up to her thighs and sandals in her
hand. She often came here to clear her
head. Things made so much more sense
when the waves were crashing in, and the worries were farther away. It was somewhere between losing them, and
finding her place somewhere else. A
loneliness permeated the air around her, but she was not frightened, just
lost. She saw a group of kids walking
down the pier, kids that could have been them a couple years ago, kids that
would be them some years down the line.
She heard them giggle, heard them laugh and dare each other to dive in
to the freezing water. Only one did,
long after the others had gone home. It
made her wonder why the young girl had done it.
She saved all of her courage and she jumped into that water with no
caution and no regret, and no one would ever know. No one but the girl silently watching from
the beach a hundred feet away that she didn’t even know was there. She looked triumphant as she wrapped in her
sweatshirt and started her journey home.
It hit me that she waited because she didn’t do it for the rest of them,
for the approval, or the bragging rights, she did it because she could, and
because she didn’t need anything but the knowledge that she had done it. She reminded her of herself, years and years
before any of this love stuff mattered.
When she was just a girl, walking with her friends on the pier trying to
figure out who she was and what she stood for. She stood for something more
back then, back when the waves stole all of her cares away. In that moment, things didn’t really feel so hopeless. That girl, although she would never know,
that girl that could have been her, gave her hope. She might have even imagined the entire event,
getting lost within the world of no consequence in which that girl still could
live. But that moment is what turned it
all around for her, that is the moment in which she found her hope to continue
on in this world. So maybe she couldn’t
change what she had done, but maybe, just maybe she could let it all go…again.
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